Quick Note: It shouldn’t matter, but I’m reviewing the Xbox One version of this game – just in case it’s AMAZING on PS4 or something.

Oh Jagged Alliance: Rage, the critics and fans of the series have not been kind to you. You were to be a spirited spin-off of a venerable classic PC series, revitalised for a new age and of course a new customer base. Yet it’s hard to find anyone who has anything nice to say about this game. Even I can’t be too nice to a game that has so many issues, that it’s honestly concerning. I try to keep my reviews relatively short, but to describe all of the flaws in Jagged Alliance: Rage would take up basically my normal quota of 5ish paragraphs (plus 5ish lovely pictures). So I’ll just rattle them off in quick succession during this deftly written opener. The game looks mediocre, runs badly, crashes every few hours, has incredibly basic writing and characterisation, wastes a ton of time on inventory management, has limited enemy variety, inconsistent mechanics, a wonky difficulty curve, weird allocation of resources, some baffling design decisions and limited enemy AI. If (and it’s a big if) you can overlook all of that then you’ll find a decent turn based strategy experience. Now I know what you’re thinking “Big Boaby how am I meant to overlook the fact that apparently everything in this game is rubbish?”

Well I’ll tell you! You see, Jagged Alliance: Rage is an incredibly rough game that desperately needed a bit more time in development. I can easily envisage a version of the game that doesn’t run bad, doesn’t crash, has a bit more tweaking with regards to the inventory, item drops and enemy AI and would therefore be pretty solid. Unfortunately in spite of my sagely wisdom, I have to acknowledge the reality which is that this is the game we got, not necessarily the game we wanted. Despite this seemingly rushed (or underfunded?) development, the game still has a solid core where you are juggling stealth and normal combat in each level. Stealth is slightly overpowered, to the point that you’ll want to use it as often as possible as it grants instant killed at no cost. However, stealth also requires you to be out of position and understand the enemy patrol routes, which often requires an odd mix of haste and patience. You need to close the gap, while remaining undetected because sneaking is an alternative form of movement which eats up action points like nobody’s business. Before continuing I should explain that Jagged Alliance: Rage is a turn based game, where you move all of your guys and then the enemy gets to move all of theirs. Each character gets around 12ish action points per turn, with movement, shooting and using items all sharing this action point pool. You’ll therefore only be able to move a maximum of 12 spaces per turn (the map is split into grids of squares) or shoot around 4 times at the absolute maximum (many weapons require 5+ AP per shot). Enemies are relatively blind, but they can react to nearby gunfire, spot bodies and of course radio in your position which triggers an alarm which causes every enemy on the map to bum-rush your last recorded position. Stealth is therefore a great way to get kills without taking damage, but it involves a great deal of risk. Now you might be tempted to skip the stealthy route, but frankly because all of the enemies share vision and some of them are snipers and they all bum-rush you – things generally don’t go well. That’s not to say your necessarily stuffed, as you can make use of sight lines or bait them by having one guy distract them while the rest of your team sneaks around to deal with the enemy commander who summons reinforcements like an absolute jerk. But with that being said, stealth is generally the best option even if the intense gunfights can be quite fun to try and figure out. Yes the odds are against you, but if you can stop the enemy from getting vision (by shooting all the guys near you) then their comrades will keep running towards you like lemmings and you’ll be able to create effective killzones.

At least until you get unlucky with the hit%, or deal with a gun jamming. Which happens all the time to a ridiculous degree. Seriously you’d think that the guns were made out of unrealised aspirations and butter for how often they suddenly melt and fall apart in the middle of combat, to the point that I’d say a gun jams every… 5ish times it’s used if fires in bursts? You barely even have to reload in this game, because when your gun jams (and it will) unjamming it also counts as reloading. Don’t worry though, as your enemies guns will jam too if they live long enough. Then again, worry some more because unjamming a gun takes a lot of AP, which means you can shoot less, which means you’ll probably get shot more. Which is bad. I suppose you can just keep looting new guns and indeed you will throughout most of the game because guns continually get better while the enemies keep getting better armour, but once you’ve got a good gun with some weapon attachments it’s a real pain in the backside. To the game’s credit, Jagged Alliance: Rage has a weirdly comprehensive variety of guns and ammunition. To it’s disservice, you’ll spend way too much time looting every single enemy to see if they have the one ammo type you need because you can’t buy, sell or otherwise trade equipment. The game was smart enough to let you loot everyone remotely once a map has been fully cleared of hostiles, but it still takes a lot of time to optimise everyone’s inventory especially in the late game when you can have 4 mercenaries at a time.

Now you might be thinking something along the lines of “well managing 4 guns doesn’t sound too bad hrurhrdudhdurr” but I’ve got news for you PAL. Because Jagged Alliance: Rage also features a bunch of quasi-survival mechanics, which require items that also take up inventory space. You need to stay hydrated (but not fed), think about bandages to heal the bleeding debuffs, have medkits and revival syringes for when you mess up a combat encounter mid-level, have weapon repair kits and armour repair kits and grenades and antibiotics if you drink the dirty water. Then there’s the fact that I picked Ivan who is cool as a character, but is an alcoholic so I also always had to have beer on hand otherwise he would be bad at shooting people. So there’s a lot of faffing around, as you’ll probably want a gun that’s decent at ranged and a gun that’s OK close up for each character, both of which probably use different ammo types, then some healing supplies and some survival supplies, before we even consider stuff like carrying grenades or whatever. Fortunately Jagged Alliance: Rage is happy to just let you focus on the combat and the inventory stuff, as the plot is very basic and consists of a series of pre-baked levels that you can do at any time – so long you’re on the right Act (of which there are 3). To access these maps the game has an overview map, which you can move across with one space taking one hour. As it takes time, you need to bring water/booze or suffer debuffs from your team being dehydrated or in withdrawal. This brings us to the day night cycle. The way it works is pretty simple, each map can be played during the day or at night. If you play at night, enemies have reduced vision and everyone except for one or two out of the 7 potentially playable characters suffers a debuff to their aiming unless they’ve got night vision goggles equipped. You might therefore be tempted to wait for night to fall upon the map, so you can sneak around better (and have the sheer thrill of shooting out the lights) but good luck. There just isn’t enough non-dirty water in the game to wait for multiple turns. Plus the game sends out patrols from enemy bases that force you into semi-randomly generated battles.

Should you stumble upon one of these patrols, you enter one small map from a pre-baked selection that will feature a bunch of enemies on two sides. You’re able to sneak behind these guys, but generally these maps are fairly easy so I often didn’t really bother and only used stealth to wrap them up. As mentioned, enemies share vision so once most of the enemy squads are dead the few remaining enemies will often have lost sight of your squad. Letting you switch back to stealth for those 1-hit instant stealth melee kills. This happens more often than you’d think, because the AI loves having one or two squad members hang back and sit in overwatch constantly. Overwatch is actually one of very few abilities that the enemy uses, although the squad leaders and commanders have an annoying rally ability which gives everyone standing near them some extra AP. So you’ll quite often have some enemies rush towards you, run out of AP, then a squad leader appears seemingly out of nowhere and lets them all shoot your exposed team member. To compensate, each of your mercenaries get some unique “rage” abilities (hence why it’s Jagged Alliance: Rage) that range from great to OK. Ivan can taunt enemies and gets passive damage resistance, Fidel can suppress enemies in an area, Dr Q has some light healing abilities and can convert rage points into extra AP and so on. To get rage you need to get adrenalin, which comes from dealing and taking damage alongside some other effects (like having the shrapnel or infection debuff or drinking alcohol). Aside from the rage abilities, basically every action is determined by what equipment you have equipped and there aren’t skill trees or anything like that.

In conclusion then, Jagged Alliance: Rage is a game with plenty of issues but a nice balance of risk reward through the effectiveness of stealth, ability of enemies to rack up the damage through large numbers and extra AP abilities and the introduction of rage abilities which require you to take and deal damage or suffer from debuffs. This keeps the game fun and frantic, aside from the admittedly large amount of time you need to spend dealing with the inventory system and survival elements. The enemy variety is fine, but by tying abilities and damage to equipment Jagged Alliance: Rage is able to scale the difficulty with each batch of maps. As for variety and the other elements of the game like the OST, visuals and so on they’re pretty lacking. The music is fine and the maps are generally varied albeit fixed, so replayability isn’t the best. It’s a shame the performance isn’t great and that the characters are so bland, but you can’t have it all. I’d therefore say that Jagged Alliance: Rage is an OK/10 game. TBS fans might have a good time if they are patient, but for genre newcomers I would recommend another game like Wargroove or XCOM: Chimera Squad.

The post Jagged Alliance: Rage appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note: While I did play the original DS version back in the day, this review is based on my recent play-through of the remastered version which came out in 2017 for PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One.

Before diving into what makes Lock’s Quest such an interesting game, I’d just like to give credit where credit is due for the fact that THQ Nordic had the sheer balls to consider it for a full fledged port. Not only did it only receive modest success upon it’s initial release for the Nintendo DS (with it’s 81% rating on Metacritic sadly converting to below 100,000 units sold worldwide according to VGChartz), but the entire game is designed with touch screen controls in mind and obviously these had to be entirely reworked for the game to be playable. Even once the controls were totally reworked, most of the game’s assets including character portraits, unit and turret sprites and the soundtrack then had to be rebuilt for platforms with considerably higher display resolutions and standards. Now it’s true that there were some cutbacks, including the loss of multiple levels and the game’s multiplayer mode. Yet almost a decade after the game’s initial release, THQ gave it a second shot and I’m personally grateful that they did.

The reason for my gratitude is simple, Lock’s Quest is a pretty unique game and it’s combination of tower defence and active offence make it an enjoyable experience. The game itself is split up into 74 days, each of which functions as a level although these levels are played across a smaller range of maps. The way it works is simple, the game will load up a new map and then you’ll be tasked with defending it for multiple in-game days with each day being represented by a time limit (generally 3 minutes but occasionally longer). Before a day starts, you get 2 or 3 minutes with which to setup your defences, which take the form of a variety of turrets, walls, traps and occasionally AI human defenders. Walls are critical as not only do they keep the bad guys at bay, but they also link up with turrets and give them a defensive bonus which vastly increases the amount of HP your connecting turrets have. Therefore a large amount of the game’s strategy involves juggling the offensive power of your turrets (and the types of enemies they can engage) while building enough walls to ensure these turrets don’t melt while you’re distracted.

And you will be distracted! Lock’s Quest starts off gently and initially seems pretty straight forward as you only have a handful of wall lengths, turrets and traps that can be used against a small amount of different enemy types. Alongside these defensive buildings, you also have the ability to attack enemies yourself and will soon be able to build up a power meter which can be unleashed in the form of powerful abilities. A significant part of the game is balancing the need to repair your structures, attack enemies yourself and keep an eye on your health. If you don’t repair your buildings, they’ll be destroyed and you’ll need to use a significant amount of your limited resources to rebuild them. If you don’t attack the enemies, you won’t build up your power meter and you’ll really struggle to churn through the enemy waves before they can build up a critical mass. If you don’t keep your eye on your health, well… I think you can guess why that’s an issue!

As Lock’s Quest progresses, juggling defence, offence and Lock’s mortality continues to become more complex as the game continually ramps up. Each new map consistently introduces new enemies, abilities, defensive structures and ways that you can attack. By the late game, you’ll have 4 different wall strengths (with different costs), multiple utility turrets that give certain buffs, multiple turret types with have different ranges which counter nearly a dozen different enemy types and a wide variety of attacks and abilities that Lock can use. Oh and did I mention that the game likes to mix things up even further with boss battles, or the occasional need to conduct an offensive mission (such as sallying forth to clear enemy camps while under attack or reach a certain part of the map to complete an objective)?

In spite of the ever developing complexity on paper however, I actually felt that Lock’s Quest was most challenging earlier on. As mentioned previously you only have a limited amount of currency, called source in the game, which means you can’t have too many turrets at once. Due to this you need to be quite careful with your positioning, as maps have plenty of obstacles that make forming a nice neat-and-tidy line tricky. In addition, most maps have multiple routes that the enemy can take and so you’ll often need to split your defences between multiple angles which further makes things difficult. Fortunately Lock is no slouch and can deal significant damage to enemies himself which helps you finesse this challenge. The reason the game’s balance is a bit wonky however is that initially his abilities are so limited that he often needs to venture forth and then retreat so that his health can regenerate. Due to this you’re very dependent on your turrets to provide you with some shelter and so you are constantly bouncing between attacking enemies and repairing turrets while you’re regenerating health. Around halfway through the game however Lock gains a health-steal attack which funnels health from the enemy to Lock for a period of time, and from this point onwards HP management becomes much, much easier even as the enemies you face continue to increase their health and damage output. Not only does the health-steal attack give you the ability to stay in the fight longer, but if you hit multiple enemies you’ll continue to steal health from each of them while building up your power meter. This not only enables you to use your powerful abilities more frequently, but while you’re using them you can’t be hurt and so you will regenerate your health… which then lets you continue to attack the enemies!

As such I found that I didn’t really die after a certain point and only enemy attack routes I failed to foresee caused me any trouble. Don’t worry, the game wasn’t a cakewalk and there were still some close calls but generally the difficulty actually decreases as the game goes on. Fortunately it’s around this point that the game’s plot really starts to pick up from a relatively slow start and there are multiple twists and turns that belie the humble beginnings that Lock (and his perennially cute sister Emi) find themselves in. I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll just say that some of the twists come out of nowhere and the whole thing is surprisingly engaging even if it does have that slightly twee vibe that is more associated with Japanese games. To give a basic idea of what I mean, Lock and Emi are orphans who live in a quaint, peaceful village that gets attacked by the evil robot army. Lock gradually becomes the ultimate Archineer (as the game calls those who can build defences) and realises that there’s a sinister backstory involving his family that ultimately culminates in him becoming a hero so that he can save his sister and the world. Again at a basic level it’s not particularly high brow, but it is a fun little adventure and it helps justify a few unique scenarios that give the game some memorable moments.

These memorable moments culminate in a great series of final levels that really pull the game together and provide a decent amount of challenge. My personal pro-tip for these is that you have enough resources to spam traps, so you should build a thicc wall of cannon turrets with a healthy dose of traps everywhere, while using the health-steal attack and alternating between the power that lets you repair everything and the standard lightning power. Just be careful as the true final boss hits like a freight train and can phase through your walls!

Finally once Lock’s Quest has wrapped up, you’re treated to a cute series of cutscenes that are slightly vague before being left back at the main menu. At this point you can either play-through it all again, or engage in the additional defence mode. Unfortunately the multiplayer aspect of the DS original didn’t get carried over, but fortunately the defence mode itself provides an extra bit of challenge to help bolster the game’s modest playtime. Essentially you are tasked with defending the city map that re-occurs at multiple points throughout the main campaign, but this time there is no respite! Instead you must fight wave-after-wave-after-wave of the enemy with every third wave including a boss. As always, resources are very limited and the meagre amount of incoming source means that losing turrets is a massive pain in the backside. Those seeking to achieve 100% completion will need to clear 10 waves, which includes 3 boss fights and as such this mode adds a dollop of extra content to what is otherwise a fairly short game. For context, clearing through the campaign took me around 9 hours on the normal difficulty setting.

In conclusion, Lock’s Quest is the epitome of short but sweet as the game contains a large amount of content and plenty of heart for a modest price tag. While there are issues with path finding (both yours and the enemies), some instances of slowdown and a plot that starts off slow the game is ultimately rewarding and has it’s own unique gameplay style. If you were one of the approximately 8 billion people who missed this game on it’s first release, then I would strongly recommend picking it up.

The post Lock’s Quest (Remastered) appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.