In Jagged Alliance: Rage, I pause before taking the final shot in each mission. If you were to examine my face during these moments, noting the hollow look in my eyes as my cursor hovers over a button labelled Do it , you might suspect some crisis of conscience. Perhaps I ve started to doubt the cause my small team of mercenaries has been fighting for? Maybe killing hundreds of nameless soldiers in exchange for cash is part of the problem? Nope. That s not it. Far from it.
What holds my trigger finger is the knowledge of what comes after I ve taken the shot. Just like its predecessors from the 90s, JA: Rage is a game of two halves. It s a turn-based strategy affair in which your small team of elite, grizzled mercenaries trudges through a hot jungle. They take on entire armies of laughably evil bad guys while making quips about how good they are at doing exactly that. But it s also a game about ensuring your mercs remain armed to the teeth over the course of what will be a long and trying campaign.