Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge Reviews

A handful of new reviews for Matrix Games and GFI's Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge are now available, though they're predominantly unfavorable.

The first is at HonestGamers with a score of 6/10:
But perhaps the biggest obstacle Hired Gun had to leap was its own reliance on being the unofficial bastard lovechild of the Jagged franchise. It simply falls short in every category but where it stumbles the hardest is in its complete lack of personality, something the title it wants so hard to emulate almost drowns in. The foundations for a stellar strategic title are all there in spirit, but someone forget to fill in the content.

The second is at Bright Hub with a score of 1/5:
There is a quite a bit of depth to Hired Guns and completing a game could take you a while. You could also replay and have a different experience which compensates for the lack of any multiplayer option. What it can't compensate for is the fact this is no fun at all to play. I'm not a fan of the turn based approach when you are commanding teams of gunmen and women in combat situations, it just seems daft. In Hired Guns they have overpowered the enemies and made much of the combat total guesswork. Combine that with the inescapable feeling of low budget, low quality and low standards and there is no way this could ever be recommended. If I paid money for this I would be angry. Fans of turn-based games like X-COM or Jagged Alliance might get something out of this, for me it was simply dreadful.

The third is at HEXUS with a score of 5/10:
There are plenty of good ideas in Hired Guns Jagged Edge, but most haven't been implemented very well. Guesswork is a core part of the gameplay, which certainly doesn't appeal to us. If you're patient enough to try and master the turn-based combat you might get some satisfaction out of beating the very tough opposition, but we can't imagine many people hanging around to find out.

The fourth is at Electronic Theatre with a score of 67%:
Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge comes close to living-up to the genre's forbearers, but falls just short due to some infuriating difficulty and a lack of on-screen information. Though most issues could easily be fixed with Patches and probably will be - right now, Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge is a game for the fans of turn-based Strategy titles, and not set to make any new ones.

And the fifth is at Alltern8 with a score of 4/10:
If Hired Guns had been released several years ago, it might have found, or indeed deserved, a more enthusiastic reception. Time has not been kind to the turn-based tactical genre that X-Com once made popular, but all it takes for this style of game to see a revival is for one brave developer to reinvent it. Hired Guns needed to be an evolution, but is instead an uninspired throwback that only acts as a reminder of how things have moved on. One for the hardest of hardcore fans, then.