Being a huge fan of the Jagged Alliance titles I was really looking forward to this game. I am fully aware that this isn’t created by the same team behind Jagged Alliance but if nothing else it has certainly been closely modelled on that series. As there are so many similarities, and because these similarities will be obvious to anyone familiar with the JA series, I’ll avoid pointing these out on an individual basis.

I have a laptop and from this I can access my emails, journal, and various game-specific Internet sites. When you start a new game your email inbox will already have a few messages waiting for you. These first few emails indicate poor editing from the developers with a string of bad spelling and grammar. One of the emails has a subject of “IMPORTANTLY” which is either a poor choice of word or it’s the tip of a little racism by using a stereotypical foreign misuse of the English language. No matter the reason behind the poor spelling and disjointed sentences in the emails they are not easy to follow and I find this very frustrating as these messages are your main source of information.

I am given a password to the I.P.A. website which you access through your in-game laptop. You are asked to input your name, nickname, and gender, then choose a photo from the vast selection of…three. If you are male, or feel like playing as a male character, you have a choice of thin and bald, thin and scruffy, or thin and evil-looking. Female characters don’t have it any better with a choice of thin and red hair, thin and short black hair, or thin and rough-looking.
I am then presented with a psychological profile test which begins by asking if I’d describe myself as Neo, Batman, Rocky, James Bond, Spiderman, or Obi Wan Kenobi, and it’s obvious that I’m Batman. The poor spelling and use of the English language is a problem once again during this test and I’ve given up the idea that this is mild racism and now believe that horrible editing is at fault.
One of the questions asks how I’d respond to a blonde girl blocking my way after a traffic jam and one possible answer is “notice that she’s pretty, naturally starting to estimate her from legs”. Please read that again, this is actual in-game text, “estimate her from legs”, wise words indeed, hold on, what the hell does that even mean!? Answers on a postcard, please!

I was happy to get through that IQ damaging test, hire some mercenaries, buy some weapons, and start the first mission, but I was soon yearning for some more leg estimations as I realised that there’s much more broken in this game than the use of English. The difficulty setting is unforgiving and playing the game on Normal has you facing enemies with super-human accuracy, tactical awareness, and the endurance of word-class Marathon runners. At the same time your character and the mercs you hired act as though they’re out in search of munchies after an all-nighter with Mary Jane. The action point system is painful to use as you can’t reserve points for using a weapon after movement so the only option is to guess how much AP you’ll need and hope you have enough remaining after moving around which results in guys left stranded and being sitting ducks for the enemy.

The graphics aren’t going to blow anyone away, they’re not horrible, but it feels like there’s something lacking that I can’t quite put my finger on and this is while playing the game on the highest setting, perhaps the style is just not to my liking.  The sound is ok, nothing worth writing home about, and I’m aware that these descriptions appear lazy but the fault lies with the developers for not providing me with anything to bite into.  An effective summary is that some aspects here are very average and they’ve been lumped in with a bunch of aspects which are awful and the end product leaves me feeling incredibly disappointed.

At the start of this review I mentioned my love of JA and JA2 and this fails to compete with either of those games but more worrying is the fact that Silent Storm, a much more recent title in the genre, is head and shoulders above everything this game has to offer. Having played Silent Storm I would love to compare Hired Guns to the individual character personalities shown in that game but I can’t because this title is almost completely lacking in that respect. I can’t get my head round the fact that this title is very much an attempted Jagged Alliance clone and yet fails to live up to the quality of those ageing games. I am especially perplexed as they had the luxury of a recent and successful fully 3D tactical squad game in Silent Storm to take notes from and they’ve failed to take advantage of this. There are plenty of tactical squad games out there and I’ve mentioned a few already but throw in the X-Com series and Battle Isle: Incubation, an old favourite of mine, and there’s no really no need for you to waste your time with this.

3/10

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