Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge Review (PC)

Jagged Edge? Jagged edges, to be more precise.

This is a game that is oddly reminiscent of Jagged Alliance 2. Well, actually, no. It’s not oddly reminiscent at all. If you took a bunch of carbon and copied it, you’d maybe get the same result. That’s if you took away some of the carbon and added some kind of different carbon. Erm, ah… looks like that metaphor didn’t mix very well. Let’s try another tack. If you took JA2 and added new graphics but took out the JA2ness, then that’s what you get with Hired Guns: New Jagged Alliance. Sorry, sorry…I that should have read Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge.

This is a game that is oddly reminiscent of Jagged Alliance 2

So, let’s begin then. Jagged Alliance 2 was a squad based strategy game which came out way back in 1999, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and subsequently got exterminated by the 3.5″ disk drive. Or something like that. JA2 was revolutionary in the sense that you could jump over fences and low walls. Only the recent ARMA 2 has had such a distinction. On a side note, in JA2 you managed a squad of mercenaries, out of which you could choose to hire from over 50+ individual mercenaries to your cause, equip them with countless armaments, then tweak said armaments with scopes, ammunition types, silencers and custom weapon mods (such as a shortened bolt for a higher rate of fire). And when I say you could hire individual mercenaries, I do mean individual mercenaries. Each character had separate stats and traits and a very distinct idea of who they wanted to work with. Plus, they each had custom speech files, so each person had separate and quite disparate speech, some of which manifested into rudimentary back and forth banter dependant on who you had in your squad. This process gave each character their very own unique personality, with attendant quirks and foibles. It was quite a feat. The game was based around the story that a deposed ruler of a small country had hired you to take back what he felt was rightfully his. So, after you bought some weapons and created a squad of fellow desperadoes, you went off to bring the country to it’s knees in approved turn-based and isometric fashion. So, nigh on ten years later, along comes Hired Guns. You get all of the above features, just without the personality that JA2 so charmingly displayed. Oh, and you can’t jump over fences and low walls anymore.

After all, it’s not very surprising that such a game as Hired Guns should come tooling along eventually. JA2 collated quite a cult following back in the day. More importantly, that self-same following is still going very strong today and still modding their venerable engine. The JA series managed to capture a niche market. It contains a bunch of tactical play which it then combined with a global level of strategy. That self-same formula created XCOM and just look how misty eyed and nostalgic a PC gamer of a certain age can get when you mention that hallowed game. ‘It’s turn-based, it’s tactical, it’s terrifying, it’s XCOM!’ they’ll scream before rushing to the nearest abandonware site to root around shamelessly. No, what is more surprising is the fact that the game and the genre should be so overlooked. It would appear that many developers have forgotten how create an in-depth strategy game that incorporates a campaign map and a tactical screen (oh sorry, did someone say the Total War series? ‘Cause that ain’t a game till they fix the A.I.) Anyway, we’re taking modern warfare here, not muskets. As a premise, it would seem that the split between campaign management and tactical expertise is near solely the domain of Creative Labs. So then we can welcome another contender. It’s just a shame that the new contender is riddled with issues.

To begin with, the graphics are passable but don’t expect a miracle. The AI can act a bit odd, being very indecisive whether it wants to sit or stand and seems to be happy wasting a turn in order to artfully pose some NPCs. It ain’t odd to see an opponent spend all their points standing up only to change their mind and sit down again, repeated endlessly. The translation from Russian is not very good, often leaving you to figure out what the next step in the campaign is. I do like an open ended campaign, but some milestones on the way would be lovely, thanks. It makes me feel like I’m floundering away without any concrete idea of whether I’m making progress. The UI does leave a bit to be desired as well. You’re often presented with a bewildering array of weapons, all of which are different at some level. What you are not told, however, is if that high-powered lump of metal, synthetic and plastic is more accurate than some other, near identical high-powered lump of metal, synthetic, plastic with extra shiny bits. The NPCs also fall flat, character wise. Very few people talk to you and the game area seems to be more sparsely populated than the Moon, or even *gasp* Canada. Localisation hasn’t come across well, giving you annoying speech with misplaced and odd dialogue. To be honest, having one of my hired mercenaries tell me about their favourite cereal kinda makes me wonder why they volunteered the information in the first place. At the end of the day, with shoddy UI and poor interaction with NPCs, you cannot help but compare this game to the great granddaddy of the whole private mercenary company strategy with RPG elements genre (the PMCSwRPGe genre, as it’s otherwise known). Stand this game next to JA2 and you’ll find Hired Guns lacking. Sure, it’s nice, but it comes across as a homage to a relatively unknown classic, made with slightly ill-fitting parts and happy thoughts. Still though and but, if you’re happy with the price and you have a soft spot for this type of game, then I would recommend it heartily. As a concept it really appeals to me. Running around a country with a squad of mercenaries attempting to bring order to chaos and also getting all sorts of hardware to play with makes for a good game in my book. It’s just a shame that the game only partially realises the potential it has.