I miss the *good* squad based games like the X-COM and the Jagged Alliance series.

Haven't seen a good game in this genre for quite some time.

Wolfenstein 2 is about to be released (21th August). If its anything like RTCW/ET (Curiously info on multiplayer hasn't been released yet) then you have yourself a team-based multiplayer FPS.

personally i thought that Ghost recon and Rainbow 6 were great squad-based games.

Except that has absolutely no resemblance to Jagged Alliance 2 whatsoever.

There have been some attempts to convert the genre to 3D etc. but I haven't seen anything really good except for Silent Storm. And that's not exactly new either. It had some spinoffs like hammer and sickle but that one seemed impossibly hard in the demo and had bad copy protection or something so I never bothered with it.

I think there were at least two attempts to revive JA but one was p. much a failure and really, really hard and the other I don't know, might still be in development. A new game that could live up to JA2 would be really awesome though and I'd wish for a cinematic mode where you can watch the whole battle play out in real time again once it is over.

Mmmmm Ground Control.

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Originally Posted by rvg

Haven't seen a good game in this genre for quite some time.

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You ever try UFO: Alien Invasion? It's a free open source game inspired by the X-COM series. When I last checked in on it, it was still missing some features and polish, but it's been awhile and besides, you can't complain about the price. :2thumbsup:

I miss good turn based tactical games also.

The sad truth is their never coming back.

Game developers think everyone wants a Company of Heroes and not an XCOM.

The truth is their right as older gamers become less of a market share and younger ones that want instant gratification take their place.

Younger gamers associate turn based games with Monopoly and Candy Land and the majority wouldn't touch one with a ten foot pole.

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

You ever try UFO: Alien Invasion? It's a free open source game inspired by the X-COM series. When I last checked in on it, it was still missing some features and polish, but it's been awhile and besides, you can't complain about the price. :2thumbsup:

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Just sunk an hour or two into that. The lack of documentation is absolutely killer. Lost a dropship with eight troopers on it because I didn't know the flying UFOs could intercept (and blow the crap out of it) on its way to go places. I learned from the wiki that you get more personnel every month, but I don't know how funding works (you seem to magically get some every so often). The production menu is absolutely undecipherable. I queue stuff up and it eventually gets made but I have no way of judging how long it will take or if there's an order to it or if I can allot workers for individual items. The research screen is straightforward (only thing worth mentioning I got was bolter rifles which look pretty sweet but nothing can top the flamethrower). The email system is cool but I can't figure out how to go from reading one back to the inbox. I have to read one, go to the map screen, then go to emails.

It's really neat when you get your team set up and you're fanning through a supermarket with four guys and letting the other four mow down tangos outside.

It's not cool when you have purge a six story deep mine in Australia. I took one look at that and quit. No way man. I'm not particularly claustrophobic but I was going to come down with a bad case of it if my team went down there. No way man.

If they clear up the non-combat interface (and maybe make the combat one a little more intuitive) this will be an extremely compelling game. On standard difficulty it's rather gloves-off though. Your personnel are somewhat fragile and absolutely irreplaceable. You will never have enough draftees. I wish there was a way to decline missions. Sorry Australia, that mine should be sealed - or better yet, used to test underground nukes.

Thats where we do our roo shootin.

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

It's not cool when you have purge a six story deep mine in Australia. I took one look at that and quit. No way man. I'm not particularly claustrophobic but I was going to come down with a bad case of it if my team went down there. No way man.

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I remember doing an underground map.... they are definitely pretty intimidating. I succeeded, but I know I took some casualties. IIRC, the path to success was paved with grenades. :beam:

Regardless, it was a Pyrrhic victory. We took losses that we couldn't easily replace and before long the aliens were knocking at the doors of my severely understaffed base. We lost, but it was epic. :smash:

*Makes note to redownload the game and set aside some play time.

Edit: If anyone wants to see what's coming up in 2.3, you can find development builds here, just be aware that they're not considered stable releases.

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

You ever try UFO: Alien Invasion? It's a free open source game inspired by the X-COM series.

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It looks interesting. I find the original X-Com (and even more so, JA2) still hold up after all these years, and tend to go back to them once a year or so.

I never got into Silent Storm - dialogue and atmosphere were too goofy and lacked crediblity. (Where X-Com and JA2 really shine - in addition to the gameplay - is the atmosphere).

Fallout Tactics was ok, if you can get over the fact that it is neither Fallout nor JA2 (i.e. it's markedly worse than both).

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Originally Posted by Husar

Except that has absolutely no resemblance to Jagged Alliance 2 whatsoever.

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I guess so (turn-based isomorphic vs real-time FPS), although you can play the original Ghost Recon almost as a squad tactics game - ordering your three squads into cover and setting up nice ambushes, upgrading their gear and stats etc. (In these respects, Mount and Blade is in the same tradition). I like it a lot. The latest GR seemed too much run and gun for my taste. I suspect John the Mad is right and the old style squad tactics games are not coming back, so we must look to tactical shooters and hybrids for something similar.

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Originally Posted by rvg

Haven't seen a good game in this genre for quite some time.

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Buy a Nintendo DS, library is filled to the roof with TBS goodness. It's alive, just not on the pc, sadly. If you can find Silent Storm for the pc, GET IT.

The original Jagged Alliance has been ported to the DS. A full port with nothing cut out and no big changes. It's only out in the USA but the DS is region free so importing is possible for those outside the states.

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

... On standard difficulty it's rather gloves-off though. Your personnel are somewhat fragile and absolutely irreplaceable. You will never have enough draftees.

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This is what I dislike about a lot of X-COM knockoffs. In the original X-Com, you could lose a mission, and it would certainly be a setback, but you could bounce back. In UFO Extraterrestials, for example, because you get replacements so infrequently, a mission team being wiped out is a catastrophe and if it happens twice, you've basically lost the game - save-reload time. (You can't even drag wounded team-members back to safety, unlike in X-COM, so anyone who goes down is automatically a loss if you have to abandon the mission.) I'm not particularly a fan of this sort of "Do It Again, Stupid" gameplay, especially as the original X-COM demonstrated an alternative that works perfectly fine.

On the plus side, if you do poorly on a map you can just replay it (I had to do that when the last alien was hiding from me and I couldn't find him. They had nailed three of my squaddies with particle rifles - first time I saw them, nasty surprise - and I welcomed the chance to do it over).

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Originally Posted by pevergreen

Mmmmm Ground Control.

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Mmmmm Ground Control 2, it's got a rather neat storyline to it as well. I picked it up for about $10 AUD some years ago and never regretted it since. :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

On the plus side, if you do poorly on a map you can just replay it (I had to do that when the last alien was hiding from me and I couldn't find him. They had nailed three of my squaddies with particle rifles - first time I saw them, nasty surprise - and I welcomed the chance to do it over).

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It also lists as a "tip" taking an expendable squadmate or two along for tough situations. If you're gonna send someone around the corner to get lit up, better that it's a redshirt than one of your highly skilled combat vets. :yes:

It's not that you can't lose men, you just shouldnt throw them away. But it's your skilled troops that are a precious commodity.

What about the SWAT series? (Only the third and fourth game, others weren't squad based)

I actually bought XCOM Terror from the Deep on a whim ($5 on Steam) and it's a good sight more difficult than UFO:AI. Obviously it's more polished (the graphics work fine even though it's antiquated) and it's a good deal more creepy (mostly due to the excellently unsettling music). Losing rookies isn't as fatal in the early on as it can be in UFO:AI - which is a good thing because they'll do a ton of dying. I was doing ok on my last game (fortunately I have a save game) but I went on a terror raid. An alien pops a grenade into the area right around my transport, wipes out 10 of my 11 squaddies. :(

Good stuff though. I never played it way back when but it holds up (even though it's insanely more difficult than popular modern videogames are these days).

I looked around and ended up getting me UFO: Afterlight, which turned out to be a surprisingly good game. This one is gonna keep me busy for a while.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Commandos games yet. I only ever played Commandos 2, but it did an excellent job of combining squad based tactical combat with stealth. I suspect it would stand up well even now.

Commandos was *too* stealth-oriented imho. Couldn't do anything without triggering an alarm somewhere, which led to countless, countless reloads.

The second one allows more freedom, the first is more of a puzzle game.

coming riiiiiiiiiiight over .................................................................................................... ...........................................................sir