I’m going to be taking a fairly serious amount of time to do a review of this, but I wanted to lob some preliminary impressions up here in the meantime. Blimey, BIS really have got that warzone feel nailed down. This is one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played, despite exhibiting a veritable alphabet of atmosphere-breaking elements. The most obvious of these being UNKNOWN. MAN. FAR.
Arma II is ludicrously ambitious. It wants to encompass modern warfare in a single game, and not in a Call Of Duty cinema-splurge way, but in a crawling-around-forests in the middle of the night to win the war way. Fortunately it doesn’t get over-excited at the start, and gives you fairly digestible infantry exercises to go through. Your early missions are about small engagements and covert ops, in which you must learn to operate with your team. One aspect of this is the enemy spotting, delivered in a manner similar to how actual military types bark out their commands and observations. It’s a little unnerving. ENEMY! MAN!
Once I become a more proficient Arma II player I am certain my ability to spot the distant wiggling pixels of my enemies will improve dramatically. For now, however, I’m somewhat put off by the automatic enemy-spotting systems, which cause not only my AI team-chums, but even my own character to yell, in separate-word enunciation, exactly what he’s seen. There’s a man ahead, my character has seen it, I’ve dived to the ground: and I still have not see the problematic man with my own, real eyes. Chances are he’ll kill me without me seeing him too, but at least I know he’s there.
Of course this kind of scaffolding is essential to staying alive. Arma II puts you and your special ops team into a ludicrously enormous warzone, and it’s filled with unhappy chappies AK’s, and worse. Staying alive requires you to pay attention, because battles don’t tend to play out the same way twice. It should go without saying that this isn’t like other FPS games, and as I hit the first urban centre with my team and watched a tank get to work on enemy armour ahead of me, that was made very clear indeed.
Yes, there are serious concessions to realism, precision and accuracy, but there are also more than enough videogame supports to keep this comfortable within the realm of simulatory entertainment. So far, at least, I’m enjoying myself. Partly this is down to BIS’s warzone being so astonishingly rich and believable. The environments are brilliantly rendered, and the open mess of the world rivals that of the real. Not only that, but the various open world events you’ll encounter, from planes screaming overhead to full-blown tank battles taking place across huge valleys, endow it with a kind super-versimilitude that no other game can rightly lay claim to. I almost want to recommend Arma II purely on the basis of you have to see this, just you that you know what games are capable of.
There are rough edges poking through the achievements – an American soldier suddenly speaking to you in what is clearly the voice of a Czech videogames developer, for example – and early frustrations, such as docile AI and my team getting themselves killed, thus ending the mission. But I know that I’ve barely scratched the surface: hours into the main campaign, I know that I’ve sampled little more than a teaser of what lies ahead, whether that be ludicrous bugs, or a multilayered, multiplayer open-world campaign with strategic RTS elements and a comprehensive mission editor.
I love BIS for even attempting to make this, even though it means I need a bigger PC. Tune in for a more comprehensive analysis next week, hopefully followed by co-op campaign conversations.
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@datter, I expected to pay $49.99 retail here so the $52 I paid via Nexplay was about equal to what I paid at retail plus tax.
Took most of the night for me to download via DSL, excitedly installed it this morning with the idea of at least e-mailing myself the manual for perusal during work … only to find there is no manual included, d’oh! Me and everyone else have e-mailed Nexplay support but haven’t heard back yet.
i have seen tons of pictures of ingame graphics online and they all look WAY better than the 2 pictures used for this article. if people are judging the game off those 2 pics, then i dont blame them for thinking it looks poor.
what resolution and detail settings were those taken with? looks like 1024×768 with low detail. lol
If Arm A 2 is anything like Arm A 1 the quality of the picture depends totally on the settings you use. There are some screen shots from Arm A 1 that look better than the pictures above just because someone had everything MAXED out. I’ve seen pictures from that game that look almost real.
The fact that you can tweak the graphics up and down to that degree speaks volumes for the developers in my opinion. As much as people say the game isn’t optimized I disagree, they just make you optimize it yourself.
I’ll not bother with too much detail. I have been playing since it landed on the door mat this morning. I have not bothered with the single player and have just been online in the MP game.
Graphics, landscape and vegetation is photorealistic! Buildings are 10 times better than ArmA the Viehicals are nicer too. People are better, well at least the soldiers are. Civilian are a bit ropey because of their movement. The buggers will steal cars and run you over! Gits!!
It would appear that a lot of the ArmA server mods work just fine so there is a lot of variety of online play to be had.
If you can get it now, do so if not put it on pre-order!
My first impressions: It won’t load at all thanks to Securom. Yes, I paid for it.
1.02 is up!
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1317760#post1317760
also, go see The Hangover, tis a good movie!
I’m raring to try this, and all of the bug complaints don’t surprise me. As a guy who once played OFP years ago on a 666mhz Xeon with some mid-to-low-range NVIDIA PCI card, I will relate a real live event from a LAN party:
“Hey Nicko, get in that helicopter over there and cover me while I go along in this tank here.”
“Okey.”
And so, I march to the helicopter. Before I can get close enough to enter, I nudged one of the fins that house the rocket-launcher. NUDGE, mind you, with MY BODY. Our ONLY helicopter began to vibrate vigorously, and within moments, it began to BOUNCE, I repeat BOUNCE, and then LEAP, yes LEAP, into the air, until it took enough damage to EXPLODE and kill myself and my good friend, removing us from play and forcing us to endure a soaring view of the massacre of the tank crew from the eyes of seagulls. YES, SEAGULLS.
Later that evening I would shoot down a helicopter with the main gun of a tank.
And that was Operation Flashpoint.
Also if you have maxed view distance the ground detail can only be normal over 6500 and its high anything under that and it can be v.high.
under 6500 not over damn early morning comments
sorting out that giant fail above.
7600 – max distance = normal terrain detail
3900 – 7599 = high terrain detail
anything under that can be very high
Words don’t really help illustrate the scale that multiplayer operations can take when they’re done by guys who’re into it, so this video might help.
It’s by a group of guys called Shack Tactical (on Steam) who play what you could call “serious but fun”.
Anyway, large scale coordinated operation with about 55 players.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5nqxxJg6qY
Would people say this is worth getting for the single player aspect a lone? It sounds like an intriguing title in terms of scope etc, however I rarely have time for MP these days. Thoughts opinions appreciated.
@ Kadayi, while multiplayer has always been a key aspect of both opflash and arma1, I’d say it is worth getting arma2 for its singleplayer. There’s more than enough content included, as well as the mission editor from which you can create your own missions, etc… Not to mention that the campaign is apparently much better than arma1’s, and of the mountain of community mods and user content (missions, campiagns, you name it) that will inevitably arise. So in short yes.
Meanwhile, in Tehran: http://www.youtube.com/v/cjcgYycnlHI
@redviper
Cheers thanks for the feedback. I’ll ad it to my future purchases list.
From the pics of the game, how come all the environment and object shots look awesome, but the people models look old gen? Bad shots?
Late to the party as always, but…
ShackTac, the group from one of the above videos (or Dslyecxi, rather) have written a that’s making me giddy with the depth they play with.
My copy is in my bedroom, 100 miles south. Grr! And is it wrong that two of the things that excite me most about this, is the excellent sounding Direct Mode for local vocal (ha) communication, and the medical treatment stuff?
Yeah its a nice upgrade to the one he wrote for the first arma well worth a read.