Part 1: Table of Contents

Fanart!




both by ScotchDK

Overview

I was given this game by a friend who bought it while on a student trip to Russia. He played it and hated it and so gave it to me. After a bit of playing and poking around in the game files I've assembled a mini-mod that enables me to change the names and stats of hireable NPC mercenaries.

Of course, this means I have no choice but to cast some fellow goons in the roles of guns-for-hire. More on how that'll work in the second post; for this one, I'll talk a bit about the game itself.



7.62mm is a squad-based tactical game by Russian game developer Apeiron, released by 1C Company to Russia in late 2007. It is supposed to be published in the EU by 505 Games sometime next month, but I didn't see a publisher listed for the US. It is the obscure sequel to 2006's already-obscure Brigade E5: New Jagged Union, which was itself supposed to be a 3D spiritual successor to the Jagged Alliance games. Brigade E5 suffered from awkward camera controls, glitchy collision detection, and visuals that would have been bland by 1997 standards.


Brigade E5: New Jagged Union

By contrast, 7.62mm suffers from awkward camera controls, glitchy collision detection, a rather heinous memory leak, and visuals that would have been bland by 2002 standards. So, you know, it's got that going for it. With all these pretty big flaws, however, it's still fun enough to play, and hopefully what I have planned for this LP will inject some more redeeming fun-factor into it.

In 7.62mm, the player character is a mercenary hired by a big-time bounty hunter to track down Ippolit Fakirov, a crooked Russian businessman who has fled the motherland and sought haven in the fictional banana republic of Algeyra, a country still struggling for stability after a recent crippling civil war. You step off the boat in the resort town of Las Vacaciones (how creative) with a pistol, some spare ammunition, and a chunk of walking-around money. After a conversation with your employer, you're on your own to make your way through the war-scarred nation and its various conflicting factions to find your man. Along the way you'll cross paths with dozens of other soldiers of fortune, and they'll gladly watch your back-until the money runs out, that is.


7.62mm

Game sites are fond of calling 7.62mm a turn-based game, but this is flat-out wrong, seeing as how there is no turn system in the game whatsoever. The flow of combat has much more in common with Neverwinter Nights than Jagged Alliance. Pausing the game is a central feature, allowing you the time to direct the actions of your individual party members. Each action takes time to perform, from rearranging items in your backpack to unjamming a weapon to taking careful aim, and while it's going on your enemies are busy performing maneuvers of their own. Think the combat system of Neverwinter Nights meets the setting of every John McTiernan movie ever made, ever.



One of the features that 7.62mm really has going for it is the exhaustive array of weaponry that you encounter, all of it real-world stuff and all of it usable. Aside from the 150-odd weapons are the attachments: scopes, dot-sights, bipods, drum magazines, folding stocks, suppressors, lasers, grenade launchers, and so on. For those of us who don't fap to TFR image threads, I've asked Private Smilie of the 62nd LP Instructional Regiment to take time out of his busy schedule in the infinite-loop scrubtoilet.gif to point out facts and figures about the weapons and military jargon we'll be encountering, as well as explain game and UI mechanics as they come up.

Thanks, Squint! I think I'm up for this mission.

Beats scrubbing the latrine, doesn't it, private?

Sure does!

So, you uh... you gonna go ahead and put down that toilet brush? Maybe pick up a proper pointer?

Negative. On the good chance you haven't seen a military pay chart lately, I'll just let you know now that I'm not exactly pulling down the salary of, let's say... an English 101 professor, for instance. I can't afford one of those fancy-pants non-toilet-brush pointers, but in the military, you go into an LP with the pointer you have, not the pointer you might want.

Well, perhaps Professor Eng would be willing to let you borrow his-

No.

I see. Moving on, then...

The game-provided story and quests are full of so I'll be dismissing them where convenient for a more streamlined narrative accompanied by screenshots illustrating what's going on. One reason I feel I should do it this way is because the unofficial fan-made translation I'm using is not the most pleasant thing to read via screenshot; its quality ranges from "passable" to "the translator didn't know what the English word was so he threw up his hands and left the Russian word in." However, it does translate the UI well enough to allow me to play the game, so I shouldn't complain too loudly.


I plan on updating every few days once we're underway. To start out, though, I'll give some time for goons to visit the thread and sign up for merc duty. Also, I'll be fudging the in-game money a bit to ensure I can afford a full complement of goons at all times. What fun would it be to have to wait through three updates of me grinding cash before I have enough to afford somebody?