7.62 – Wild cocktail of Jagged Alliance, Commandos and… Tarkova?

Perhaps this retrozor is not coming out quite on time and it would be more logical to release it a month ago along with the release Jagged Alliance 3, but I will show you the wonders of mental balancing act and with all my strength I will pull the owl of my review of the globe of the news feed from the video about Commandos Gleb Meshcheryakova. Paint your face with shoe polish, gentlemen, load your trusty gun, call mercenaries from all over the earth, because we are going to Algeira!

In fact, this Rambo-style poster does very little to convey the essence of the game. I don’t know why the developers chose this particular style, which would be more suitable for another Polish shooter, and not for a tactical strategy.

However, before starting to talk about our today’s hero, I must make an important remark. U 7.62 there are two versions: original 7.62 High caliber and fan modification Hard life. The bottom line is that “Hard Life” is not just a mod, but rather a full-fledged semi-official add-on, which has its own page on Steam, which expands the plot, adds a bunch of functions, weapons and quests. I’ll talk a little more about this as the review progresses; Now this note is needed so that you do not get confused by periodic mentions of Hard life. We’re done with the formalities, let’s get started.

Back to 2007!

7.62 is a bright representative of the Russian game development of the 2000s. A wonderful idea with a bunch of functions, but with a unique plot, the same humor and an incredible number of bugs. I’ll say something about the latter separately — calling games from the post-Soviet space bugged is not entirely correct. Most domestic games from the 2000s have technical problems at some fundamental level; that is, the problem is not an explosion of bugs, but rather an extremely crooked game design, where bugs become part of it. Torn animations, strange artificial intelligence, mechanics that are not always clear, stupid logic in quests, and so on. Here it is "Seven» typical representative of such games. The most striking example that describes this idea is the disgusting wayfinding system of your charges. Let’s say you gave one fighter the command to simply walk straight 10 meters and take a position on a small hill. Get ready for your Rambo to turn 180 degrees from the target and cheerfully circle through a clearing under fire, then pathetically throw back his hooves, getting stuck in an invisible bush. However, there are no fixes for this problem. You just have to keep in mind the possibility of such a circus, and therefore always be ready to scam, exploit and engage in other vulgarities on a regular basis. Thus, for lovers of a polished and competent gaming experience, our today’s hero will only bring frustration.

It looks like this fighter decided to use a magnifying glass to find the optimal path to that very door located three meters away. Let’s not disturb him.

Latin American sad dictatorship

U "Sevens"There are two main game components that you don’t want to dwell on: graphics and plot. If, in all seriousness, discussing the graphics in a niche Russian game from 2007 is bad manners and you can safely skip this moment (people/weapons are distinguishable, and that’s okay), then a few words can be said about the plot. The main line can’t be called particularly exciting. You are given a task: to find a big shot who deceived some others no less important big shots. To find our big shot, you need to make friends with big shots already in the host country. You complete storylines, progressing in relations with the Partisans, the Government, or, at a certain point, you can begin to go through as if for yourself (if you play in the addition Hard Life). The narrative will not provide you with any serious revelations or charismatic characters. The situation with side quests is somewhat more interesting. The atmosphere of the entire game is the spirit of a military action movie, so the quests here are without any special complications: ambush the enemy, save the VIP, go to the switch, kill whoever you need, escort the convoy, go and fetch, and so on. However, it is worth noting that the atmosphere ultimately created is very good, if you do not focus too much on the quests and perceive them as a context for tactical mochilov. And the quests here are not exactly primitive, rather unimpressive and unmemorable.

"Gringo, you are the chosen one! You must save Algeira! Hmm. What am I talking about? Yes, just go and kill everyone in the next location and the plot will move on."

The only thing I want to note about the plot is 7.62 is a shift in emphasis compared to Jagged alliance 2. In Jag, the player represented an entire PMC hired to perform a specific job. He was faced with the task of liberating the country, which is what he did. IN 7.62 the plot is more classic: you are a mercenary hired to carry out a task that is not formally related to the liberation of the country. But in the process, your hero becomes increasingly drawn into the politics of Algeira, where he can liberate or seize the country for one side or another. Is it good or bad — you decide. Personally, I like this approach better, as it makes me more immersed in the role of a mercenary who is free to choose his side, ready to betray his former employers for the sake of a more lucrative offer today (well, at least until a certain point in the plot). However, I also agree with the position that such “down-to-earthness” of our alter ego loses the sense of globality and the sense of managing a large organization.

Commandos without stealth or Jagged Alliance without action points?

Finally, we got to the very meat of the sixteen-year-old gaming experience — the gameplay.

IN 7.62 gameplay is the same as Nonukcasinosites.co.uk in Jagged Alliance, is divided into two parts — global and tactical. In global mode "Seven"(especially the original) is inferior Jagged Alliance. The global map here is essentially a variation of the map from the first Fallout: you move from location to location, occasionally meeting squads of friends or enemies. Here you cannot capture resource points, you cannot train the militia, and in general, as noted above, the game has a slightly shifted emphasis. We play as a hero who came to the country to do a job, who can create his own team of partners and mercenaries, and not as an organization that forms squads of its soldiers to accomplish strategic goals. However Hard Life saves the situation somewhat. Here you can put an old mine into operation, create your own guard, design your base and add a turntable to your fleet.

"UAZ? Seriously? But there is no hummer?"

"Of course there is. It’s just that the car is big and armored, it eats a lot — it will only get you into a serious mess.”

Now you can move on to tactical battles, for which it’s worth launching our old lady. Essentially, 7.62 the same Jagged Alliance, only in real time. Instead of moves, a certain amount of time is spent on each action such as aiming, crouching, changing weapons, which is, as it were, a single replacement for the required moves and action points. For example, aiming from the hip may take 0.3 seconds, but a full-fledged tab can already spend 1.5 seconds. It sounds good, but in practice it turns out to be too overloaded, because as soon as you have partners (and they appear quickly) the battles turn into sheer hellish microcontrol, although the general stupidity of the artificial intelligence saves the player from immediate destruction. Under no circumstances do I recommend Hard life enable disabled or limited save mode, no matter how hardcore you consider yourself to be. If you are not afraid of the complexity or duration of battles, then constant bugs and stupidity of artificial intelligence will quickly cool your ardor.

The squares on the right are all enemies. Unfortunately, developers (especially in Hard life) too often compensate for the stupidity of artificial intelligence with the number of dummies.

But the problems described above, in my opinion, are more relevant when fighting in open spaces. Indoors, maybe the bugs and stupidity of enemies are not greatly reduced, but the atmosphere and the feeling of the “weight” of each action definitely adds up. If you are a fan of tactics (like me), then you will get unreal pleasure from the battles: “while one is covering the passage into the corridor with suppressing fire, you pass through the room to the rear of the enemy, open the door and kill the adversaries with clear shots in the back of the head.”. At some moments I felt like I was in some kind of porn parody of Tarkov’s “The Raid” (and that’s a compliment!).

The battles are quite complex and have a set of interesting, although not always polished, mechanics. For example, each fighter has an adrenaline gauge. The higher this scale, the faster the soldier aims, but the worse he shoots. If adrenaline jumps to the maximum, then the fighter falls into a stupor and cannot move. Together with other mechanics, this feature works well in battles at short distances, sometimes allowing weakly armed fighters to have a chance to overwhelm even the most armored enemy. For example, it is quite possible that you, being packed by a PMC and having lost all caution, fly into a building where you meet with a poor fellow armed with some kind of APS. Smiling maliciously, you can already imagine how this insignificance falls, riddled with a burst from your heavy Emka, however, you notice that your fighter somehow very sluggishly raises his hefty drum. No wonder — it wasn’t worth carrying a heavy barrel with a grenade launcher and an enlarged magazine to the CQC. The enemy immediately raises his light pistol and discharges a burst at you. Well, it’s not scary, you’re wearing a bulletproof vest with a plate of the fifth class of protection, you can “tank” the homeless person! But after the first burst, your goon doubles over in pain; Even with a good body armor, armor-plated injury from a dozen hits does not go away without leaving a trace, which gives the enemy another precious second of your confusion. With the second burst, the enemy hits your unprotected legs and arms, then the rifle falls out of your hands, your legs give way, and you fall backwards. Now already poor guy grins sarcastically — you shouldn’t have relied too much on your equipment. He calmly aims between your eyes and pulls the trigger.

"Get out of the way, you stinker. One drum magazine for my AK-103 costs more than you!"

"But what, fifth grade. "

Sounds cool, really? Well, on paper yes. Meanwhile, this mechanic has one nasty effect. Adrenaline surges every time a fighter sees an opponent. Therefore, sometimes I was faced with a situation when my mercenary turned around the corner, saw an enemy detachment of 10 snouts (and Hard life this kind of zerg rush doesn’t happen so rarely), and instead of cosplaying as the holy father from the meme, he quickly scurried back around the corner, stood rooted to the spot, watching in horror as the whole horde of enemies calmly took their pipes at the ready and shot the unlucky sucker.

And so everywhere. For every cool mechanic there is a small (or not small) bug or game design miscalculation. As I noted at the beginning, don’t expect a polished gaming experience. To enjoy the game, you have to periodically overcome.

Mexican draw in Alguerian style. Pay attention to the stripe in the lower left corner. The shooting has not yet started, but our fighter is already pretty tense. Quite fair considering the number of enemies.

Of course, the local arsenal of weapons contributed the lion’s share to my feeling of tactical ecstasy. It’s just some kind of endless stream of firearms of all colors and colors! From the “echo of war” in the form of Mausers and Garands to completely modern representatives of the AK, AR, HK, VAL family and so on. Moreover, all this beauty, as mentioned above, is remarkably modified by collimators, silencers and other grenade launchers. Moreover, if you play Hard Life, then the arsenal becomes even larger and begins to very well complement the desired atmosphere of civil war in the banana republic. Many weapons have several variations: Chinese AK-47, Argentine Beretta and the like. You really feel like there’s a black market at work here. Finding a barrel “in oil” and from the original manufacturer’s factory is extremely problematic, but a lower-quality copy of it is easy. I wanted an SVD? Or maybe the Yugoslav Zastava is better? Need AKM? I don’t know what about the Kalash, but you can take the Type 56 off that corpse over there. Ammo works the same way. You can easily get a couple of packs of 7.62×39 locally produced, but the damage from these is no stronger than pneumatic weapons. Chinese ones from Norinco sound a little better, but Russian-made cartridges are sold only by smart dealers, not to mention the standard demarcation of all sorts of armor-piercing, expansive, all-metal and other armored rifles with needle cases. In short, Tarkov to all lands. From above, this whole celebration of tacticality and militarism is polished by the micromanagement of equipment such as loading magazines, changing destroyed armor plates in body armor, loading unloaders (kek) and other thrills for the mother’s operator. Magazines, by the way, can also be loaded with different cartridges (for example, alternating regular ones with armor-piercing ones).

It seems that this is my paradise~ There are only 10 varieties of Kalash alone, and these are not all the AKs that are in the game!

To summarize, I want to say that 7.62 fits perfectly on most of my wishes. It is a pity that the general technical condition and crooked AI do not allow you to fully enjoy the game, but get a unique gaming experience that combines the spirit of mercenaries from Jagged Alliance, RTS combat from Commandos and tactical management from Tarkov, it’s quite possible. I don’t really like to give ratings, since they do not reflect the entire opinion about the object, but if you make some distinctions, you can evaluate it like this:

For perverts like me, who are ready to put up with crazy management and use bugs if necessary — 7.5\10

For lovers of jaga 6\10

For regular players 3.5\10

Thank you for reading my humble opinion on this not at all modest game. Be sure to write your thoughts in the comments both about the game and about the genre of tactical strategies in general. It will be interesting to get acquainted!