Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is a mercenary tactics game intended to revitalize a dormant franchise. No, this isn't the long-awaited Jagged Alliance 3 (which is apparently still happening) but instead a remake of 1999's Jagged Alliance 2.
The monarchy of the nation of Arulco is deposed and you take command of the mercenaries hired to restore the rightful ruler. I checked out a hands-off demo to see how this operation would go down.
To accomplish missions, you hire teams of mercenaries from an available pool. Each merc has his or her own habits and idiosyncrasies, and a team will only be as effective as the compatibility between teammates. The interactions between teammates, whether they hate each other's guts or not, adds levity to the game.
Now, a bit of a stink was raised last year when it was announced that Back in Action would drop the original's turn-based combat. Trust me, this doesn't make the game any less tactical. Instead, you have two gameplay options -- a traditional RTS style and the new "Plan & Go" system.
The way "Plan & Go" works is that players will plan several commands that they'd want the mercs to follow before hitting "play" and letting them do their thing. At the bottom of the screen is a timeline not unlike a storyboard found on video editing software; here, you can perfectly sync the movements and actions of your mercs.
Once the commands are set, the mercs will run on autopilot until a certain waypoint is hit. These waypoints are triggers that pause the action and allow you to re-plan your strategy. You can modify your triggers -- when a merc is low on health, when an enemy is spotted, when a weapon jams, etc. -- so that the game runs at your own pace.
Doesn't sound too bad, now does it? If you want to give it a shot, Jagged Alliance: Back in Action will release on the PC on October 18.
Contest:
11:40 AM on 06.13.2011 | 
A shocking twist isnt it lol. Glad theres some dev's out there with the balls left to release something retro like this in this day and time, without losing everything that made the previous retro games awesome.
The benefit is that a semi-real-time system like this gives more tactical freedom without sacrificing the ability to extensively plan out your actions like in most RTSes. You're able to coordinate actions between multiple mercs and partake in simultaneous flanking maneuvers. The added amount of realism makes it more intuitive, as opposed to Jagged Alliance's convoluted system of interrupts.
Looking forward to this, I hope that Plan & Go is better realized than Brigade E5's and 7.62's "Smart Pause" system.
I mainly remember it for having a ton of guns and even more moddability than JA2 though, as I don't believe the v1.13 team was ever able to break the "4 attachments" limit.