Line of sight works well most of the time. As the player clicks on each character, enemy troops that can be seen are highlighted by a red target. If a player can hear but not see the enemy, a sound marker shows the approximate position of the bad guy.

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The LOS system works wonderfully most of the time but sometimes comes up with strange determinations. In one battle, this reviewer had two mercs standing next to each other, looking at an enemy down a clear street. One merc saw the enemy fine, the other did not. While this does not happen enough to affect game play, it does happen enough to be noticed.

Some really cool things can happen during HG battles. Bullets fly their entire path, for example. Often, a missed shot will hit another enemy soldier or something in the background that explodes. In one game, this reviewer’s sniper completely missed her target, but the bullet kept going and killed an enemy officer who was unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong spot.

Along with the good, a few irritating things also happen in battles. Of particular notice is that your mercs, despite being professional killers, are all badly out of shape. All actions take breath points, so if characters don’t pace themselves, they run out of breath and must rest. While this feature sounds good, in practice your mercs can’t run to the end of the block without collapsing from exhaustion. This is not an issue in most battles however, since running around in a gunfight isn’t good for your character’s health anyway.

The tactical AI is mediocre. The game relies on large numbers of mostly inept troops to keep the player on his toes. Even if your squad faces a dozen of the Dictator’s troops, they never fight as a unit, but come at you as individuals. That is not to say your opponents take no action. In a typical fight, the bad guys move towards the player’s troops until they are within hand-grenade range. Then the fight becomes very nasty. Fights are still fun to play, even if enemy troops fight with half their brain tied behind their back.

There is some other AI behavior worth mentioning. Bad guys, once really hurt, give up the fight and try to escape off map. The game offers quite a few Dirty Harry moments where your mercs administer the coup de grace on a bad guy who is crawling away from the fight. In some battles, when the player has turned the tide in his favor, the enemy troops decide that discretion is the better part of valor and start to rout off the map.

At the latest patch level, the game is stable, and this reviewer did not notice any major bugs. The learning curve is pretty easy, and the interface is fairly intuitive. The manual covers many of the key aspects of game-play, but some details are purposely left out so players can discover them for themselves.

When the sun finally sets on a free Diamond Coast, the player is left with the warm glow that comes from playing a good game. Hired Guns takes great pains to emulate its spiritual ancestor, Jagged Alliance; the result is a fun game that satisfies. Fans of the original game and those turn-based gamers who want a good gunfight can’t go wrong with this one. So check ammo, chamber a round, and put Morah and Dagger on point. It’s gonna be a bad day for the Dictator.

Armchair General Score: 79%

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ACG Intel:

Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge

Matrix Games

Game Factory Interactive 

Larry Levandowski has been a wargamer for more than 30 years, and started computer gaming back in the days of the C-64. Until he recently discovered the virtues of DOS box and virtual machines, much of his computer game collection was unplayable. A former U.S. Army officer, Larry has done his share of sitting in foxholes. Since leaving the Army, he has worked in the Information Technology field, as a programmer, project manager and lead bottle washer. He now spends his spare time playing boardgames, Napoleonic and WWII miniatures, as well as any PC game he can get his hands on.

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Tags: PC game, review