Welcome to our review of Jagged Alliance: Rage, a game in a series taking the tactical turn-based approach.
Jagged Alliance is back – With a new take on turn-based tactics, adventure elements and the well-known quirky mercenaries! Set 20 years after the first Jagged Alliance, this spin-off lets you experience a road trip into a jungle hell to test your mind and body to the limits! This time it’s just you and a few allies versus an entire island ruled by a drug overlord and his crazed army.
Constantly on the brink of breakdown, faced with dehydration and no support from home, you lead a team of seasoned mercenaries against vastly outnumbering armed forces. Use tactical brilliance and guerilla tactics to destroy their structures and strengthen the island’s population to take back what is rightfully theirs. Do you have what it takes to rise to old glory?
Jagged Alliance: Rage is basically X-com in the jungle with tons of features that just do not work properly on a console. This game is clearly meant to be played on either a touch screen or a PC. This may sound harsh, but this game is basically destroyed by its approach to a controller being used and how clunky it really is.
There are numerous issues and flaws here, despite a great genre. I would say more, this game would probably score at least 2 full points more when playing on a keyboard. The entire user interface is just straight out janky. Regularly messing up positions or whether you need to sneak or run, I ran into a lot of technical issues due to this way of handling the game.
Another issue I encountered, owning a PS4 Slim and not a Pro, it stuttered quite a bit. As this is so strange to encounter in a two-year-old game, that is just too much. My overall impression really got a gut punch due to this. The game itself is fine, tons of stuff to do, sneak around, killing people or trying to survive by finally finding a health recovery item. I just wish I was able to play this on Switch or PC instead.
Let’s just take the opening minutes. The game is all about how you got ambushed and how you want to escape the place you are held at. The scientist trying to help you, he basically leads you through the tutorial and simply sneaking behind an enemy and taking him out, it did feel like it would be a fun game, though I was surprised how long it took me. Having played this genre before more than a few times, Mario Rabbids, for example, does things so right. It is fluid in its movements and technically on a “lesser” device. My love for Switch is well known so people will know this is not meant as a jab towards the lower power of my preferred console.
It is just what it is. I got the review code for this game, but in all honesty, I would feel very disappointed if I had paid for this game.
In conclusion, Jagged Alliance: Rage is a game to avoid when you need to use a controller to play. So many improvements need to be made to this game before I would even give it a passing grade…
