A solid tactical system but no much else to experience

Dec 22, 2014 13:10 GMT  ·  By

Next up in our Softpedia Game of the Year 2014 awards is the biggest disappointment of the past 12 months.

When I was young, there was a small number of games that I would play for a while, usually more than I should have, then drop in order to enjoy something new but always returned to because their mechanics were so elegant that I wanted to feel the pleasure I associated with them once again.

The trio that defined my early gaming years is made up of Alpha Centauri, which was recently updated with Civilization: Beyond Earth, Baldur’s Gate, which can arguably be seen as the grandfather of Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Jagged Alliance 2, which was resurrected under the Flashback name.

The concept of the series is relatively simple: take a team of mercenaries to a functional country ruled over by a powerful tyrant and depose him by killing most of his soldiers and securing resources that allow him to power up his army.

In Flashback, the development team at Full Control tried to keep the core mechanics while creating a game that could appeal to a modern player.

Unfortunately, the resulting experience failed to deliver all the mechanics expected from a Jagged Alliance title and never managed to capture the essence of the series.

Flashback and the distribution of resources

Initially, the game seems to look good and allows players to recruit a few mercs before jumping into the first battles, bringing back solid memories about cover, flanking and other tricks of the trade.

The combat system in Jagged Alliance: Flashback is solid and, considered on their own, the engagements with the army forces can be very enjoyable, even if sometimes a little too challenging.

But the rest of the game fails to entertain the player or to sustain the fantasy of leading a small group of mercenaries to overthrow a regime.

The story lacks any sort of depth and all the characters are bland.

The graphics can be serviceable but never manage to show the personalities of the mercs or deliver enough info about the battlefield.

But the biggest failure of Flashback is that there are no cool moments to build memories around, which is a shame given that I can remember lines that Ivan uttered in Jagged Alliance 2.

I have not spent enough time with and do not have a personal connection to either Assassin’s Creed Unity or Halo: The Master Chief Collection to list them as the Biggest Disappointments of the year, but more dedicated fans are telling me that the shape these titles were launched in negatively affected their enjoyment and might actually lead them to no longer buy franchise entries in the first weeks of 2015.

Jagged Alliance: Flashback Images (9 Images)

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