Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business

Just when you thought the terms of your contract had been satisfied—you liberated Arulco and earned your R & R (not to mention a crate-full of loot and not a few casualties)—your recent employer, Enrico Chivaldori, has contacted you again for yet another urgent mission. It seems the former owners of Arulco's lucrative mines have holed up in neighboring Tracona and are promising a mini-Armageddon of missilefire if they don't get their former property back. Chivaldori needs you to infiltrate Tracona and put a messy end to the threat, and you are all too eager to help an old friend—especially when there's a paycheck involved. You're a gun for hire, after all, and battle-weariness or no, you're always available for a good old-fashioned seek-and-destroy mission.

True to the nature of most seek-and-destroy missions, Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business is supposed to be quick and dirty. But thanks to the enemy's great numbers and superhuman powers of marksmanship (or so it seems), getting in, destroying the missile base, and getting out will prove to be an effort of Sisyphean proportions. To make things easier (and, as a result, more linear), Sir-tech streamlined the game's non-combat portions. You now start with a set amount of money and hire your group of mercenaries outright; gone is Jagged Alliance 2's system of establishing and tracking revenue streams for the purpose of keeping your mercenaries good and paid. Otherwise, the action in Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business is essentially the same as that in Jagged Alliance 2. It's just a bit concentrated; that is, it's shorter—essentially, one extended mission with a few non-vital side quests—and much harder.

Sir-tech did throw in a couple of battle enhancements, but in keeping with the overall difficulty of the game, these enhancements are either cumbersome to use or relatively useless. Those enhancements are: a line-of-sight indicator and a cover indicator. The line-of-sight indicator is supposed to make aiming easier, and the cover indicator is supposed to make staying alive easier. Both of these are really excellent ideas, but they don't do much to counteract the abilities of the overhard enemies.

Perhaps Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business's biggest drawback is that its gameplay is somewhat unbalanced. Regardless of the difficulty setting, you'll find yourself in plenty of firefights that test your resilience and force the question of whether you want to roll the boulder up the mountain only to have it do it once again in the next sector. At the beginning of the game you have the option of importing your mercenaries from Jagged Alliance 2, but if you do so the game is made even more challenging (in terms of enemy strength) to compensate for your mercenaries' advanced abilities.

Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business was a little slow to market and, as a result, it feels a little more dated than it might have if it had reached store shelves closer to when it was actually ready to go. Thanks to the strong points of the game on which it's based, however, it still manages to offer a deep combination of setting, story, and sound that rewards patient persistence. Plod along the path, taking far too many hits but healing up when you can, and you'll eventually come across a wide variety of knockout-punch weapons and supplies that will help you get your feet firmly under you for the long haul through the remainder of the game. Veterans of Jagged Alliance and Jagged Alliance 2 will appreciate the new characters and voices, new weapons (including some awesome sniper rifles), and new terrain tiles (snow, mainly). Also included for your game-extending pleasure is the same mission-building program that the game's developers used—a worthwhile bonus that'll earn just about any title a higher score.

Although having more of a good thing is usually a good thing, gamers generally like to see advancements in their games from one version to the next. Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business might not offer enough to satisfy that requirement for most casual gamers or even some Jagged Alliance fans; for that reason it's only recommendable to die-hard fans looking to add a little to their Jagged Alliance 2 experience with a story extension and the innumerable user-created maps that are sure to infiltrate the Internet over the months to come. Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business does offer gamers a lot for their money, but a richer overall experience will be had with the original Jagged Alliance 2.

Install: Easy
Not only are your installation options gracefully limited, but even after choosing the full-installation option, the entire game gets transferred onto your hard drive relatively quickly.

Gameplay: 8
If you buy this game just for the sake of finishing it, you're in for a surprise. The turn-based combat goes slowly, but that's perfect for gamers who want to dig in and strategize each assault (and when you're not in combat, the game keeps things moving in real or compressed time). Identical to the original, the interface is refined—divided between laptop, map, and tactical screens—and there are oh-so-many options (and corresponding hotkeys). Create your own mercenary and/or hire mercenaries from competing organizations, train your mercenaries in the field, and engage in hand-to-hand and grenade-tossing combat (or choose to let the computer auto-resolve combat as you travel from one location to the next)...thanks to it's depth and complexity, Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business offers more fun than the average turn-based strategy game. Unfortunately, simplifying the game's economic aspects only detracts from the well-roundedness that the original offered.

Graphics: 7
As good as (well, the same as) the graphics in Jagged Alliance 2. Carried over also, however, are the hyper-lipped talking heads and sometimes-hard-to-distinguish characters. The terrain tiles are crisp, and it's cool to see your bullets dart across the screen and kick up snow dust. Sneaking, crouching, and lying prone are rendered with excellent, tight animations, but the line-of-sight and cover indicators don't do much to keep the bad guys from popping in and out of range. Camouflage is a bit extreme, too; with the treetops toggled on, you often can't make out onscreen enemies who would otherwise be visible to your mercenaries.

Sound: 8
One of Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business's best features, the sound effects and voices in the game are first-rate. Although the music is rehashed from the original, it's still unobtrusive and it sets the pace nicely. All the guns and explosions sound authentic, and the voices are so good that you can distinguish the characters without even checking to see who's talking. Fresh environmental sounds and new music would have been small but welcome additions.

Difficulty: 6
Darn tough enemies are the game's major wrinkle. You get a sense, too, that the reason the enemies are so ungodly hard to kill is because Sir-tech wanted an otherwise short game to last much longer. Too bad that this decision directly diminishes Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business's fun factor.

Concept: 7.5
You have to take points off for the fact that the game is not so much a sequel, but more like a chapter that's been added to a book that's already a masterpiece. That said, the Jagged Alliance series of games are highly original, and although Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business's additions to the series aren't monumental, they do represent some moves in the right direction (hopefully there'll be a Jagged Alliance 3 and it'll be even better than everything that's come before). The streamlining decision to scrap the economic system was a bad one, but the attempts at clarifying each character's line of sight and available cover could prove valuable additions with some refinement. Lastly, the mission builder program is a much-appreciated must-have for any die-hard Jagged Alliance gamer seeking to prolong his or her enjoyment.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 7.5
Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business might be too little, but it could never be too late. Despite the fact that its "bonus" hours of gameplay come as a result of unbalanced enemies, the game still demonstrates that Jagged Alliance 2 is an original, lasting game that rewards patient gamers with a steady, gripping experience. You might find yourself saving and reloading quite often; your determination to get each battle "right" will signify whether this "one-more-turn" perfectionism results in addiction or frustration.