After a successful release on PC, Jagged Alliance 3 got ported to modern Xbox and PlayStation consoles to bring one of this year’s best strategic games to the console market. Does a game like this work on consoles? Time to find out!
Jagged Alliance 3
My colleague Nick reviewed the PC version of Jagged Alliance a while back and concluded it’s a great game that feels a bit outdated sometimes. If you want to learn more about this game and what it’s all about, I would recommend you read Nick’s review first:
PlayStation 5 port
Up to speed? Good, let’s talk about the PlayStation 5 port, the main reason to write this second review. Jagged Alliance 3 is playable with a controller on PC already so translating a complex strategy game to a controller is a challenge the developers already overcame. This means the port doesn’t really struggle with bad controls, they feel snappy and intuitive as they should and in no time, you’re going through menus and sending your troops everywhere to defend and attack. Your thumbsticks are used to move, pan, and rotate the camera but also enable you to zoom in and out of the map. With just a click of a button, you’re sending your squad where you want it to be. The action buttons are mapped to manage your squad so switching between members is easy and even rotating between them works like a charm. The menus are all well-mapped and it’s all pretty impressive to see how well the controls work on PlayStation. Of course, it never reaches the level of accuracy or speed that you would get with a mouse and keyboard but I must admit, playing this with a controller certainly doesn’t feel like a downgrade at all.
Graphically speaking it offers the same quality and performance modes as the PC version and stays very close to that version which means it’s a good-looking game. Zoomed out you’ll easily see what’s important and zoomed in, you’ll enjoy all those small details the developers put in their designs. Compared to other games in the genre it certainly is a great-looking strategy game.
Conclusion:
Jagged Alliance 3 runs as it should on PlayStation 5 and the controls are as snappy as you would hope for. It’s basically the same game as the PC version and comes with all important patches which makes it as good as the PC version.
