By Jim Rossignol on June 18th, 2009 at 2:38 pm.
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.
18/06/2009 at 14:42 Theory says:
UNKNOWN. MAN. NEAR.
OFFERING. CANDY.
18/06/2009 at 14:44 Fat says:
Got my email saying my copy will be here tomorrow, can’t wait.
And yeah the radio chatter is a bit daft at times, but it does it’s job… doesn’t break the immersion for me. I think seeing people get out of a vehicle without opening a door bothers me more.
18/06/2009 at 14:46 Dave says:
Zomg! I am so gay for this game. I’m a tad worried about the old sys req’s. Whenever I see, hear or think about it i get the fear (in a good way) that a game hasnt given me since FC’ing my first fleet in Eve. For the most part i’ll simply be burning about in various helicopters raining rocket death on all and sundry in whatever mode lets me do that with supreme satisfaction…
18/06/2009 at 14:47 Deadjim says:
Can’t wait for this to drop through my letter box, by the looks of it though my PC may stuggle :(
Any buggs poking through at all in this early stage? Heard some complaints about the German version.
18/06/2009 at 14:56 Ian says:
It’s probably as well my PC likely won’t run this, because I’m sure I would first buy it, then be broken by it’s harshness, and then be taunted into increasingly traumatic returns to the game by everybody telling me how splendid it is.
18/06/2009 at 15:01 Tim James says:
Jim, isn’t it kind of interesting how the engine has a subdued gritty look similar to STALKER compared to the bright and shiny FPS games we’re used to? I bet that contributes to the atmosphere of both games.
18/06/2009 at 15:04 Gap Gen says:
ROGER.
WILL. PLAY. ARMA II. TONIGHT. 8 O’ CLOCK.
ARMA II. WHERE ARE YOU?
ARMA II. GO TO. POSTBOX. AT. 162 823.
DAMN! COMPUTER. IS DOWN.
INJURED.
18/06/2009 at 15:05 BigJonno says:
This is definitely one of those games that I really want to play, just to experience it, but I don’t I’ll actually enjoy all that much.
18/06/2009 at 15:07 Gap Gen says:
It’s worth adding that this is ludicrously more fun with real people over Teamspeak (it doesn’t work so well if you don’t have mics, as by the time you’ve typed “Shit! Guy over there!” he’s probably already killed half your team).
18/06/2009 at 15:08 jackflash says:
Can’t wait for this one. For those worried about performance, there is loads of information on how to improve it by getting your hands dirty. For example, simply disabling bloom and motion blur is said to give a large FPS boost. Once the devs implement FSAA so you can get antialiasing without the full screen supersampling the game currently uses (a bit of a performance killer) I think performance won’t be too much of an issue for many. Also a lot of the complaints seem to be from people who insist on running it at 1680×1050 or 1920×1200. I mean, people – turn down the resolution a tad, right?
18/06/2009 at 15:08 Bhazor says:
Damn it. With such high specs I can’t really justify spending money on it without knowing how and if it’ll run. Also damn Vista 64bit and my wonky sound card which makes even boxed system requirements the least of my performance problems.
Any word on a demo or some sort of benchmark yet? Cant they release say a 4 square mile version with a couple of scripted missions and a third of the inventory? Given what I’ve heard of the mission maker the designers could churn out a dozen compelling missions in an afternoon.
18/06/2009 at 15:15 jonfitt says:
Realy want, but I’m concerned about the system specs. Arma 1 had a demo, here’s hoping Arma 2 will.
18/06/2009 at 15:21 Wisq says:
@Gap Gen: As a long time player familiar with the BIS radio system, I just wanted to say — thanks for that bit of hilarity. Made my day. :)
Good to hear they’ve done a spot-on job this time. ArmA 1 was a bit of a disappointment for me, but part of that was that I arrived on the scene rather late, when servers were struggling to attract and retain a viable number of players, and only playing a handful of most-popular maps, rather than the diverse CTF and coop offerings from my OpFlash days.
18/06/2009 at 15:23 datter says:
The specs aren’t that bad.
Minimum System Requirements:
* Windows XP / Vista
* Dual-Core CPU
* 512 MB Ram
* Graphics card with 256 MB-VRam and Shader Model 3.0 support
Recommended System Requirements
* Windows XP / Vista
* Quad-Core CPU
* 1 GB Ram
* Graphics card with 512 MB-VRam and Shader Model 3.0 support
18/06/2009 at 15:28 Mike Arthur says:
I’m really excited about this. I really enjoyed Evolution multiplayer in Armed Assault and this looks like it’s taken a lot of lessons from that.
@jackflash:
Some of us have big LCDs where viewing stuff at non-native resolution is pretty nasty.
18/06/2009 at 15:29 Anon says:
See: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,685770/Armed-Assault-2-Graphics-card-benchmarks-and-visual-quality-compared/Practice/
Video benchmarks which should give you an idea of how your card will perform.
18/06/2009 at 15:35 PsyW says:
@Gap Gen: Damn, Computer is down! Injured! I lolled…
My copy’s in the post. I spent a vast chunk of time modding and playing around with opflashpoint and playing (new-type) ArmA Capture the Island in co-op. I’m looking forward to it arriving, but I’m also looking forward to the mods and patches which are an integral part of the BIS experience.
18/06/2009 at 15:35 Vandelay says:
Jackflash – You talk about enabling Anti-aliasing and then complain when people want to run a game at their native resolution? The most important part of getting a game looking good, in my experience, is making sure it is running at the correct resolution for your screen, particular now that LCD displays are all but universally used. I would rather knock most of the options down to medium so that I could be running my standard res (1680X1050) then have to put up with the poor image quality you get from a lower res.
I always find that AA is the last option for me to turn on.
This looks like it could be interesting. My only hesitation is that I found Operation Flashpoint to be exceptionally boring. Fights always seemed to end without my involvement or the difficulty would be unbearably hard. Weirdly though, I might be more interested in the name only sequel to Op Flash. Looks much more polished then this, which will hopefully make it more accessible.
18/06/2009 at 15:43 jackflash says:
The Arma 2 demo should be out within the next week, according to the devs.
18/06/2009 at 15:49 MadTinkerer says:
“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.”
This could also be related to the actual vocabulary the AI understands and uses to think. If so, that’s actually pretty awesome.
18/06/2009 at 16:05 phuzz says:
Checking out Anon’s link not only makes baby phuzz cry (my 8800GT, even on a much better rig only gets 16-22fps), but it looks like nothing is capable of running the game at full whack.
ArmA2 – The new Crysis!
18/06/2009 at 16:17 Joq says:
Why the hell does the game have to be so desaturated? It could use some more colour.
18/06/2009 at 16:19 Joq says:
Eh, sorry about double-posting, but the game could use some rivers, too.
18/06/2009 at 16:31 Freudian Trip says:
My Quad Core 9800 GT should be able to handle this but I’ll wait for the demo anyway. Operation Flashpoint made me cry so I’ll see how I react to the gameplay.
Any word on the maximum players on multiplayer?
18/06/2009 at 16:41 Dave says:
im seeing different min and max specs, im hoping to run it on a 8800GTS with 2 gigs of cheap RAM…. so far im either incapable of running it or at the recommended limit.
18/06/2009 at 16:51 Mike_in_the_USA says:
I’ve got an ASUS G50VT-X1 laptop with:
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8400 (2.26GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 cache)
NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT with 512MB of GDDR3
Vista Home Premium (64-bit) SP1
4GB (4096MB) DDR2 Memory
and it runs smooth as butter… you don’t need a QuadCore for this game….
18/06/2009 at 16:52 Optimaximal says:
@Gap Gen
Surely you mean… SHIT! GUY. OVER. THERE.?
18/06/2009 at 16:58 unclelou says:
“here’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”
That’s the biggest problem for me right now. Maybe my eyes are getting worse, but I don’t think it was that bad in OFP and ArmA 1. Everybody, including my character, spots each other from ridiculous distances, in the woods, and whatnot – and I don’t see anything. I often just go prone and listen to the AI battling it out.
The spotting distance might be realistic, it just doesn’t feel like that in the game – particularly as the image quality (as terrific as the game often looks) can be quite shonky. Going below 100% fillrate is suicide, but even at 100%, popups, lod switching, and jaggies make it nearly impossible to tell a man from a tree at 500 metres.
18/06/2009 at 17:00 shamanic miner says:
Reminds of the bug in OFP, “OH NO! …….. FOUR IS DOWN” ad infinitum.
All part of the charm.
18/06/2009 at 17:35 Wisq says:
@unclelou: I know that going from a barely-supported Voodoo-something video card to a near-top-of-the-line GeForce card made a massive difference in my ability to spot enemies back in the OpFlash days. I wonder if it’s the same these days.
18/06/2009 at 17:41 l1ddl3monkey says:
Hot dogs, ARMA Hot Dogs
What kinds of kids eat ARMA Hot Dogs?
Big kids, little kids, kids who climb on rocks
fat kids, skinny kids, even kids with chicken pox
love hot dogs, ARMA Dot Dogs
The dogs kids love to bite!
18/06/2009 at 17:46 Lack_26 says:
@JackFlash,
1680×1050 since it’s my LCD’s standard resolution, anything else and it looks like someone vomited Vaseline over it.
18/06/2009 at 17:49 Serondal says:
It would appear that the general reader base of RPS is rich.
“LCD displays are all but universally used”
I don’t KNOW anyone with an LCD computer monitor, I don’t have one. Don’t even have a dual core machine in fact. I dunno who has the money to spend upgrading their computer every couple of years. Obviously not me. To assume the specs aren’t that bad since you’ve got free money to waste on expensive hardware is false.
18/06/2009 at 17:49 El_MUERkO says:
I’ve got a bit of a beat, quad core, 8gigs of ram, two 4870s in crossfire, a 26″ monitor and decent eyesight and yet i still have trouble spotting people
at 500/800 meters in rolling terain they may only be a couple of pixels high, throw in some wind blow trees and grass, some butterflies and a deer and i have real difficulty spotting people
but my bigger concern is how the enemy react when you’re spotted, they lie down, rotate toward you and start to fire, within a couple of bursts you’re dead now if you try that you’re in two feet of grass and cant see shite
or maybe you see them first, you kneel, go to iron sights and zoom them, control your fire and just miss, now they may choose to run for cover or they may respond with total calm and shot you in the head
i don’t want to be a super soldier but i’m fairly convinced that it’s not a fair fight, i see a rich and detailed world with all it’s complexity, they see smooth shapes in two colour 1)the enemy 2)everything else
PS: they also hear like fucking bats
18/06/2009 at 17:58 dsmart says:
@ Lack_26
LMAO!!! This is why I love this place so much. Where else would such sentiments be uttered by mere men? :D
18/06/2009 at 18:00 Joshua says:
Once the devs implement FSAA so you can get antialiasing without the full screen supersampling the game currently uses (a bit of a performance killer)
Whaaaa? This game has been released without FSAA? No doubt there will be some mongo 200+ meg patch on day one, too?
Flashbacks to Empire: Total War here. And really virtually every big name PC game. The complete collapse of pre-release QA is a huge problem with PC exclusive gaming now, and us gamers have developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome-esque affinity to it (“can’t wait for the patch”).
don’t KNOW anyone with an LCD computer monitor, I don’t have one.
How many people do you know? They are fairly common, very cheap, and provide tangible benefits (less eyestrain, etc.) over CRTs. We’re talking about less than $200 US for an “okay” one, not much to pay when you are talking about something you likely watch for at least a small amount of time every day.
18/06/2009 at 18:04 Tim James says:
The FSAA thing is probably because of their renderer. I don’t think the original STALKER ever got it.
18/06/2009 at 18:06 Walsh says:
Whaaaa? This game has been released without FSAA? No doubt there will be some mongo 200+ meg patch on day one, too?
Most games that use that fancy bloomy crap will ignore your FSAA settings, this is one of them.
18/06/2009 at 18:10 Jim Rossignol says:
I used a CRT until very recently. The “native” resolution aspect of LCD monitors still annoys me.
18/06/2009 at 18:21 Joshua says:
The FSAA thing is probably because of their renderer. I don’t think the original STALKER ever got it.
Sorry I didn’t clarify. From the person’s post it seemed as though they released this game without FSAA and said, “we’ll get to it later, in the meantime here’s this ass method that kills your frame rate.” That’s what I was referring to – the idea of patching it later and whatever. I don’t care if a game doesn’t have FSAA at launch, after all I primarily game on consoles. *rimshot*
18/06/2009 at 18:39 Howard says:
LOL! That benchmark page is hysterical and has convinced me to cancel my order.
Running at 1280×1024 on high detail I can expect a whopping 15 FPS! That’s just awesome. =)
Yet again Behemia prove that they are utterly talentless at coding functional engines. Great stuff…
18/06/2009 at 18:41 Serondal says:
@ El_MUERkO – If the enemy is so far away they’re just pixels to you, you probably shouldn’t shoot at them at all. Instead try to find a way to get closer to them and engage when you’re sure of a kill. I always have my gun set to single fire or 3 round burst and aim for their torso.
Trees and grass ect is NOT cover it is concealment. You’re assuming they can see you but really they’re just shooting where you were. They can kind of guess that if you JUST went down into a bunch of grass you’re probably still there ;) You can do the same, just because you can’t see them directly doesn’t mean you can’t shoot at the tall grass where they should be.
Cover – wall, building, the ground itself if you can get behind the crest of a hill or something. Laying down makes you a much smaller target but it also means if they DO hit you, they hit your head! My biggest suggeston is just wait until you’ve got a sure kil or get better at aiming which will take time :P
Don’t assume the game is to hard, just keep at it and you’ll learn. It isn’t like most over FPS games out there but it is still a lot of fun.
The last time I played Arm-A I jumped out of a helicopter, got shot by an enemy helicopter after I opened my shoot, landed in some guys back yard bleeding and dieing. While I was on the ground I saw 4 soliders looking for me but they couldn’t see me because I was behind a small wall. I layed there half awake until finally my guy regained the power to stand up. I shot three of him, got hit again and fell down. While he was coming up on my I got the power to shoot from the ground, shot his feet out from under him :P
Finally I was able to stand and bandage myself a bit. I was still hurt and limping but I managed to go through the town street by street, killing 20 people by myself (the last 15 or so I had to use their guns on them because I ran out of ammo) finally I found the towns radio town and blew it up with 4 charges c4 AND when it exploded it took out an enemy transport helicopter that was near by.
WHAT other game can you do this in?
That doesn’t even mention the times I engaged T-72 from 4000 meters away with a Jav rocket launcher, that in and of itself is intense.
18/06/2009 at 18:43 Serondal says:
Howard do you ever have anything good to say about anyone? I’ve never seen anyone spend so much time bashing developers who create fantastic games on a low budget just because you yourself can’t play the game O.o I’d like to see YOU do better with the same amount of money. For that matter I’d like to see you do ANYTHING close to what they’ve done with ANY amount of money .
18/06/2009 at 18:48 Howard says:
@Serondal
1. Uncalled for, unfounded flame bait: When did I swap to a different forum? You have no evidence of what you are saying.
2. This prissy, self-righteous, fan-boy attitude of “you cannot criticise until you have done better” is just childish. I can’t make a car but I can criticise a badly made one so, yes, I bloody well CAN criticise bad/badly designed games.
18/06/2009 at 19:05 unclelou says:
@unclelou: I know that going from a barely-supported Voodoo-something video card to a near-top-of-the-line GeForce card made a massive difference in my ability to spot enemies back in the OpFlash days. I wonder if it’s the same these days.
Well, I’ve already got an overclocked 260 GTX I am not really planning to replace right now. ;-)
f the enemy is so far away they’re just pixels to you, you probably shouldn’t shoot at them at all. Instead try to find a way to get closer to them and engage when you’re sure of a kill. I always have my gun set to single fire or 3 round burst and aim for their torso.
That’s fair enough, except the enemy sees and shoots you with pin-point accuracy at that distance. To be on equal terms with them, you basically need a sniper rifle when they have assault rifles. Trying to get closer will get you killed.
I’d like to stress that I am an OFP “veteran”, and played ArmA 1 quite a bit, and I don’t remember it being that extreme.
18/06/2009 at 19:11 Serondal says:
@Howard I might call what you said above flame bait. Over the last several days or so I’ve seen nothing but you attacking and complain about various games.
@2. I’m far from a fan boybut if you’re going to call someone talentless at something it would make sense if you yourself had some talent. How can you be a judge of something you so obviously do not have? What you’re doing is not criticising a badly designed game. You’re crying because you’re computer can’t run it. You never mentioned ANYTHING about the game, you just made a totally random attack at them for something that is obviously not true.
If the engine is not function how did Jim play it at all? Where are all these in game videos coming from? The game and its engine run fine and your wild claims that BI are talentless are FAR more flaming than anything I’ve said
I was simply wondering why you have such a bad attitude about everything. I’ve not read a comment from you in the last several days that was attacking something or someone.
18/06/2009 at 19:15 Serondal says:
@Uncelou Sounds like they certainly need to tweak the AI a lot if that is the case ;) AI has always been one of their weaker points. I don’t know what is worse the AI being horrible and unable to kill you at all or being uber and killing you instantly. I can’t speak about what might be wrong with Arm-A 2 I was just trying to give him pointers to help him survive. But if the AI is spotting you from beyond your engagement range and killing you with pin-point shots to the head from that far away then something is obviously wrong ;) OR maybe you’re just fighting extremly well trained special forces lol.
18/06/2009 at 19:43 jackflash says:
@ Vandelay :
Good for you.
18/06/2009 at 19:49 Paul Moloney says:
“I used a CRT until very recently. The “native” resolution aspect of LCD monitors still annoys me.”
I still have a Hansol CRT, 8 years old and still working fine, but am toying on getting the Dell 2209 WA IPS panel that is being raved about, but the native resolution thing about LCDs would seem to be a deal-breaker for me… did anyone worry about this before they got an LCD, then realise they had nothing to worry about?
P.
18/06/2009 at 19:53 Psychopomp says:
@Datter
I can say from personal experience, those specs are a load of shit.
18/06/2009 at 19:53 Jim Rossignol says:
The ArmA 2 engine is incredibly tweakable. I’ve yet to finish playing with it, but I’ve managed to squeeze many more fps out with just fill rate and view distance changes. I’ll try dropping the res next, and up the fill rate again.
That said, I will be building a Quadcore CPU with a new graphics card in soon, and Arma II is encouraging me to get on with that process.
18/06/2009 at 20:06 Howard says:
@Serondal
If you have “not read a comment from you in the last several days that was attacking something or someone” then you are just not paying attention. There si nothing more to say on that bar you are just making random statements without any actual information to back it up.
As to what I said about ARMA2 – Seriously get a grip I’m “crying because my computer cannot run it”? What are you smoking? What I was commenting on is that this new game runs like a dead dog on ANY setup. It is chock full of badly implemented features that cripple performance yet it is incapable of doing such simple things has managing its texture cache during dynamic loading. The graphics it produces are , at best, okay when compared to its peers and yet its performance is mystifyingly poor.
The exact same thing happened with ARMA1 when they took the old OFP engine and just loaded it up with high-end graphical wizardry without fixing fundamental flaws. OFP itself may have been a ground breaking game (and one I am still very fond of) but its coding was diabolical. It simply did not scale with hardware meaning that even on todays PCs it still runs like a dog.
Behema have a great passion and are determined with each game they release to reach further and further towards that elusive goal of “Full Combat Simulator” but until they actually get some base level talent with the fundamentals of coding and manage to make their “Super Orgasm War Sim” actually run at reasonable rates, without massive hitching, without HUGE asset pop up, without ridiculous texturing distances then I will continue to call them half arsed.
All they had to do to make the game that their original fans want to see is IMPROVE what they already had in OFP, not add a million tonnes of unworkable bells and whistles that add nothing to the gameplay. I would have though a site that is so filled with Luddite “GFX do make a game” types would have gotten that by now?
I am all for very pretty games; they are the reason I own a VERY powerful PC, but I also require that they WORK as advertised. Producing a game requiring hardware power that will be unavailable for 5 years is a nonsense as the game itself will be LONG outdated before anyone is able to run it well. Moreover that is not what they are doing here. What we are looking at is simply badly unoptimized code, the same as with every other Bohemia release. 6 months from now and a patch the size of a moon later and no doubt this will be running flat out on recommended spec machines so either way you slice it, Bohemia fail again.
18/06/2009 at 20:08 Howard says:
@Jim
I sincerely hope you do get better performance after tweaking and I will be interested to hear how you get on because running anything at 1280×1024 is simply not acceptable for most people.
18/06/2009 at 20:11 Serondal says:
@Howard I do apologize ahead of time as I realize what I said may have seemed like an attack against you over this game or the other.
Really was just wondering why you only seem to have negative things to say about games lately. All the extra dribble was unnecessary and again I apologize.
You are certainly well inside your rights to complain about a game for any reason regardless if you’re able to program one. In this case I was just a little excited because you called them talentless based only on a benchmark without ever having played the game at all .Further high detail in ARM 2 is more than high detail in other games currently out. With extra view distances and all the jollies turned out I doubt very few computers could run it at high FPS.
That isn’t to say if you try to run at medium settings or some medium some high that you can’t have a fantasic and beautiful game. Arm A even with all the settings on low was often breath taking for me.
18/06/2009 at 20:13 dsmart says:
@ Howard
Well in all fairness, it is still a densely populated world.
And this is the sort of thing that made me not go overboard on our game. There has to be a point at which you determine the difference between playable and barely playable.
….at least until we put in SpeedTreeRT foliage in AAW 2.0. Then all bets are off. :)
18/06/2009 at 20:14 jackflash says:
I had no idea my comment on changing resolution would elicit such vituperation. I use a 22″ Samsung LCD and play at lower than the native resolution all the time. I’m not sure what issue people have with scaling on LCD’s; it’s never bothered me. At least for me, the scaling gives the image a slightly softer look that I have never found displeasing. To each his own, I guess.
18/06/2009 at 20:14 ourdreamsoffreedom says:
I bought the German version when it was released and I gotta say my disappointment grew with time. There’s just such an unreasonable amount of blatant bugs in this game. The game is simply unplayable after a few missions in the campaign and the multiplayer is an utter glitch and lagfest.
NOTHING IN THIS GAME WORKS. I’m not kidding. It’s waaaay worse than ArmA 1 with patches. I don’t even know how this is possible, since this is just ArmA 1.5.
18/06/2009 at 20:20 Howard says:
@ Serondal
Fair play, and sorry if I took your head off in response. But the point is having seen ARMAII runnign fkat out, it is no big deal. Quoting draw distance not excuse any of its failings. A good engine can handle ANY draw distance with good scaling: the ARMA games do not.
If this thing came out with jaw-dropping GFX and was clearly just future-proofing itself so that it could stand the test of time then fine, but it is not. All the reviews and technical breakdowns I have seen of how the game runs have nothing but negative things to say. They are are simply allowing their reach to exceed their grasp.
As to my views on games: yes, I am negative a lot of the time, but that is simply because I do not buy into hype, do not own rose-tinted glasses and have no compunction about pointing out that the vast majority of current games are utter tosh. If a game is good I will sing its praises with equal gusto, however, and if I am forced to eat my words over ARMA2 I will do so and do it publicly.
18/06/2009 at 20:26 Pavel says:
My 24″ NEC also has absolutely now problem with resolutions other than 1920*1200. All the resolutions from 640*480 higher look great on it : ).
18/06/2009 at 20:26 teo says:
@Jim why did you stop using CRT?
The only downside with them is their size. When it comes to functionality they are simply better than flatscreens. Personally, I’ll just make the space for one
I have a good LCD right next to me at the moment and the image is not the same. It’s not as crisp. And the resolution thing of course sucks really badly
18/06/2009 at 20:26 Howard says:
@ jackflash
It is a contentious issue. I for one still stick with a good CRT but obviously this will not last as the tube will, as they do, eventually fade.
Right now there are LCD monitors than can equal or exceed the quality you get from a top CRT but do not expect to get change from £400. Even if I bought one I would need to ensure that the rig connected to it was capable of running ALL my games at its optimal resolution because downscaling makes me want to tear my eyes out, but then I am hyper sensitive to such things.
There is a way to test for those who wonder how much down scaling will bug you. Go to a friends house who has a huge HDTV and a Bluray player and take a DVD. If you can stand the HORRIBLE up-scaling that this will produce (I know I cannot) then you will likely not be bothered by downscaling on an LCD.
Only other thing to not of course is that LCDs make every thing look like it is built of Lego due to pixel definition so you have to be able to run everything with at least SOME AA.
18/06/2009 at 20:28 Jim Rossignol says:
Teo: Space, my current office is tiny. My CRT was the size of a cow.
ourdreamsoffreedom says:
Given how early the German version came out, I suspect that might be your problem.
18/06/2009 at 20:30 Serondal says:
@Howard Fairenough .I have to admit I am a fan boy for Arm A so I’ve got Rose-tinted gasmask on ;) And I apologize for attacking you.
I guess I just never expected to become so attached to a game so fast. When I first bought Arm-A I couldn’t play it. Tried again a year later, still couldn’t play it. Just tried it again recently when AAW came out and suddenly it all went well and I have the time of my life. For example playing online with 70 people all on the same team was amazing. Seeing 20 tanks roll over a hill in perfect formation while you’re the gunner of an apache gunship that is supporting them is just . . . I dunno you’d have to try it.
18/06/2009 at 20:38 Pavel says:
Jim – may I ask on what configuration are you playing right now, on which settings and resolution, and what are you planning on buying?Thanks
18/06/2009 at 20:40 rivalin says:
Serondal says:
I’m far from a fan boybut if you’re going to call someone talentless at something it would make sense if you yourself had some talent. How can you be a judge of something you so obviously do not have?
Have you, in all your wisdom, perhaps ever heard of the standard way of assessing consumer experience in western society over the last couple of hundred years or so?
There are these funny little people we call “critics”, they review things and the general public takes their opinion seriously, despite in almost all cases their having no talent in the field they criticise, in fact, somewhat ironically, you are on a website run by several of these people, and yet i’ve never seen you mock messrs Rossignol et al. I’m fairly sure none of the writers on this site could do any better than the developers of ARMA, shall we tell them to shut up too?
18/06/2009 at 20:40 clive dunn says:
Can i be the first to offer my sympathy with the German people.
Why them?
Are different countries just being used as Testers for these nearly complete games?
I think we should be told!
18/06/2009 at 20:41 clive dunn says:
As an aside, did everyone see the full breakdown of the MP’s expenses today…..
“Nigel Griffiths. £29.99 for a Playstation computer game, Premiership Arsenal”
18/06/2009 at 20:44 Serondal says:
@rivalin – ooookay. I already apologized to Howard and said that I was wrong for calling him out. Second I never told anyone to shut up I just asked him a question. So well done mate on jumping into the fray after the fight was already over.
18/06/2009 at 20:46 Serondal says:
@Clive dunn – I listened to a podcast the other day making fun of the media reporting so much on MP’s expenses. He said they should just start making up stuff as no one would know the difference.
One of their made up things was 2000 pounds to have the MP’s desk fitted with extra padding because the MP keeps slaming his C@#@# in the drawer.
18/06/2009 at 20:49 clive dunn says:
This is the closest to thing to genius i have encountered this year….
“George Osborne. £47 for two DVDs of his own speech on Value for Taxpayers’ Money”
@Serondal. You couldn’t make it up.
18/06/2009 at 20:51 GregP says:
Anybody know if this will be available for digital download on the 19th? I’ve seen no mention of it on Steam, D2D or GameAgent. I’m in the US and don’t want to wait another week if I don’t have to.
18/06/2009 at 20:54 Serondal says:
@Clive That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of! There is the obvious reason but also where in the world do two DVDs of ANYTHING cost 47 pounds? That’s llike 80 US dollars
18/06/2009 at 21:01 Mman says:
Reading the impressions I’m confused how the campaign structure is; various ones mention something along the lines of linear missions, while other speak about sandbox type free-roaming and missions. Or is it a standard sandbox structure where you have a “hub” area and go somewhere to do the actual missions?
18/06/2009 at 21:03 ourdreamsoffreedom says:
Given how early the German version came out, I suspect that might be your problem.
Not really. BIS released the 1.01 patch a few days later, which is the version that’s shipping internationally. That’s the version I’m basing my criticism on.
The game is unplayable.
18/06/2009 at 21:08 Turin Turambar says:
I am in love with ArmA 2 and even then, i am waiting for the 1.02 patch before playing seriously the campaign. Everybody should do the same.
18/06/2009 at 21:18 Serondal says:
How is it in multiplayer Turin?
18/06/2009 at 21:30 Rook says:
re: LCDs and non-native resolutions. I honestly think that issue was more down to going from a 5:4 (1280×1024) to a 4:3 (1024×768). Really don’t have any issues with changing resolutions on my Dell 2407 and if I do get desperate, I can just turn on 1:1 pixel mapping on my graphics card.
18/06/2009 at 21:54 IdleHands says:
I am confused by the link from Anon, the hardware tests. People I heard saying their comp could run the game reasonably well on quite high, should apparently be running at 15-20 fps on low. Don’t know if I quite trust the information on there all that much (though this may be my denial tactic, until I run the game myself and find out the truth).
@ourdreamsoffreedom
Before I say anything I want to clarify that I am not insulting you or calling you a liar (yes, I know that is usually followed by a string of insults calling you a liar). Just wondering how reviewers like our Jim here played it if it was unplayable due to bugs. I’ve heard reviewers mention bugs but they have never mentioned major, game-breaking bugs. Just interested what your problems with the game are, and whether they are common or rare (or medium-rare).
18/06/2009 at 21:58 dsmart says:
/in before the inevitable lock
YER.BASTARDS. YOUR.BASES.ARE.TEH.BELONG.TO.US!!!!
18/06/2009 at 22:16 Slippery Jim says:
People forget those on the Internetz are prone to hyperbole.
I’m going to try the demo to make my own decision, since so many people say it’s “the best game they’ve ever played”, and others are saying it’s “unplayable”.
If the YouTube vids are anything to go by, this game will be awesome!
18/06/2009 at 22:16 Turin Turambar says:
Multiplayer is basically the same as Arma I, but with all the new enhancements (new logic modules, new vehicles, first aid, better graphics, etc).
18/06/2009 at 22:17 psyk says:
Game should arrive tomorrow, going to be good and that benchmark website left off the 9800GX2 but used multiple versions of other cards bit lame.
18/06/2009 at 22:18 tigershuffle says:
As I understood it ………German release – v. 1.0
now patched to 1.1
UK/US/RoW release 1.1 with patch 1.2 available on release date.
All the Youtube stuff has really whetted my appetite for it, and reading the comments on their seems quite positive since 1.1
18/06/2009 at 22:24 tigershuffle says:
Also reading various Arma2 forums it seems that some of the modders have already added new scripts/models and ported some Arma stuff and its working fine. No doubt 1.2 will fubar alot of it but thems the breaks. I see nothing on a par with all the problems that Empire:Total War was released with.
18/06/2009 at 22:32 ourdreamsoffreedom says:
@IdleHands
I think most reviewers played only the first two or three campaign missions which work relatively well.
If you want to be informed about bugs you have only to browse the ArmA 2 community issues tracker, but be warned that that is only the tip of the iceberg. Quite frankly I thought about reporting bugs I’ve encountered, but why in the world should I do BIS’ job for free? I think most would agree.
I could sort of accept all the bugs if this were a radically new game, but it’s just ArmA 1.5 with a new map.
It’s just too bad BIS has no real competition.
18/06/2009 at 22:34 psyk says:
Since when has arma been mainly about single player? I know thats not why im buying it.
18/06/2009 at 22:35 psyk says:
Edit – seen lots of talk about single player but nothing about multi.
18/06/2009 at 22:43 Serondal says:
That’s what I want to know about ! :P
I love how in Arm-A when you voice chat your character’s mouth moves , that adds a lot to the game play experience :P I love looking over in the helicopter and talking to someone next to you in the back and you can see their character talking when they respond O.o very awesome.
Is this feature in Arm A 2 ? (I can’t undrestand why people complain about Arm A 2 being like an upgraded version of Arm -A , why fix what isn’t broken? )
18/06/2009 at 22:48 Nick says:
“Quite frankly I thought about reporting bugs I’ve encountered, but why in the world should I do BIS’ job for free? I think most would agree.”
So they get fixed and your game works? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
18/06/2009 at 22:48 ourdreamsoffreedom says:
MP doesn’t work half the time (receiving… receiving… receiving…), and when it does it’s a glitch-y lag-fest. A lot of servers have basically disabled AI because the AI cheats so much. The first time you get through a coop mission with 100+ kills and 3 deaths (respawns because you got stuck in the bug-ridden geometry) is kind of fun, but it gets old.
There’s the editor of course. Kind of fun, but don’t bother with the ambient combat and secondary operations modules, they only work 1/3 the time. Etc, etc.
18/06/2009 at 22:54 Serondal says:
Anyone flown a KA-50 or any airplane for that matter? Is it pretty much just like Arm A ?
18/06/2009 at 23:13 Warduke says:
Really looking forward to your final thoughts on this one Jim. Good stuff so far..
18/06/2009 at 23:18 IdleHands says:
@ourdreamsoffreedom
Hm, I guess the best way is to find out for myself tomorrow. I tend to find official forums full of hyperbole, probably due to being tainted by reading steam forums (OMG VALVE BREAK GAME WANT REFUND etc…).
I think Tim Stone over at Eurogamer got quite far but to be honest you can’t quite tell how far they’ve progressed through the game.
Thanks for the reponse though, just trying to get a picture of how buggy the game is. Seems to be mainly two sides at the moment, one saying it’s buggy but nothing major and the other saying it’s quite broken.
I can forgive Sandbox type games (which from what I hear is what this turns into later down the campaign road), because the open world adds a lot more variables. So much so that testing each and everyone of them could take decades (on different systems as well). Though like I say I could find out tomorrow that there are bugs that really should of been caught by QA.
18/06/2009 at 23:24 TheSpork says:
Been playing for a few hours (thank you Game pre-orders!) and as a complete newbie to Arma and OF I’m seriously enjoying it. Looks good on normal or high (C2D 2.4, 2gig, 8800GT, 1920×1200) which is a pity because I haven’t got an excuse to upgrade now.
The ‘armoury’ test-range is a nice idea for trying out weapons/vehicles. Got in a long-range fight with 1 guy shooting and running for 5mins and it was pretty exhilarating. It also has optional ‘challenges’ ranging from target ranges to defending a position, giving points to unlock more weapons to test.
Did the chopper training and it took a bit of getting used to after Black Shark but found it ok with the mouse, auto hover makes things easier. Also can’t speak for the campaign but only seen 2 bugs, both minor graphical problems (one chopper sat 1/2 foot above ground, sunglasses aren’t black).
18/06/2009 at 23:28 Serondal says:
Is sunglasses aren’t black a bug ?
18/06/2009 at 23:32 IdleHands says:
Just wanted to say that it’s worth reading the Eurogamer comments section (linky incoming!), as one of the games developers turns up and answers a few of the gamers questions. Says the publishers pushed them to release earlier than they wanted, so interesting read.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/arma-ii-review/comments
18/06/2009 at 23:32 Timber says:
Ourdreamsoffreedom: I’ve seen a few of your youtube vids, I’ve heard your complaints, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you ARE having problems. But from my experience with this game, and that of my squad, you are either in a quirky hardware minority, or think a pin prick to the finger feels like it was done with a Sig .40… Or you simply have a chip on your shoulder. Either way you’ve been ‘victimized’ and seemingly won’t wait for the patches that are coming for this awesome title.
18/06/2009 at 23:38 Timber says:
Sorry missed this point: Any game can be picked apart piece by piece. Typically speaking, if they survive this, the ‘whole’ of the game isn’t enjoyable. Arma II can easily be picked apart by those who don’t look at the whole. Dive in and enjoy being part of something so monstrously large, capable, and provocative as this combat environment. The latest 50 player coop in germany was an absolute blast this afternoon (and I couldn’t understand anything past ‘ya’)
18/06/2009 at 23:45 TheSpork says:
@Serondal: In the player profile section I selected black sunglasses and they appeared white. This hurt my innate sense of style, so was forced to go with aviators. (it also occurred on an npc in a training mission)
18/06/2009 at 23:55 psyk says:
http://forum.armedassault.info/index.php?s=c664876567b19e29000d3a362aebf075&showtopic=3618
from eurogamer comments.
18/06/2009 at 23:59 Shamanic Miner says:
@thespork
You may have to wait until 1.3 for that one :)
19/06/2009 at 00:08 ourdreamsoffreedom says:
@Timber
I do not like your attempts to marginalise my experience. I expected to encounter some bugs in the game, but I did not expect to have to replay each campaign mission three or more times before the scripting is so poor, nor did I expect the AI to be able to see through grass, trees, buildings, vehicles and even hills. I did not expect to have to look away when riding in a vehicle in MP because the game is so jerky it makes me want to throw up. Et cetera!
I am frustrated by all these people going around claiming that there are only some minor bugs. There are a lot of minor bugs, yes, and an unacceptable amount of major bugs, as well.
I am not giving up on the game in the least. If I did I wouldn’t be here. I will try the patch tomorrow, but it seem unrealistic to expect them to fix the campaign, AI and multiplayer in two weeks. We will see.
PS. I saw some people comparing this to STALKER. As someone who played through an unpatched STALKER I can tell you that ArmA 2 is quite on another level with regard to bugs.
19/06/2009 at 00:29 Serondal says:
Arm A 2 is on quiet another level than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. peroid. Stalker was TINY compared to Arm-A2. They were just comparing the general style which in reality it can be directly compared. The location that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is set in is actually set in the Ukraine and Arm-A 2 is set in the Czech Republic which are very close to each other as far as land scape/trees/climate ect goes. This is the only thing people were comparing the games for, they are on a totally difffrent scale technology wise and the amount of bugs can not be compared either as the amount of world space and area to test is vastly larger than in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
As far as vehicles being so jerky you want to puke are you saying this is unrealistic ? Are the vehicles jerking unnaturally or and bugging on the terrian? If so I agree that’s a bug but if they’re just jerking around because the terrian is rough that is just realism getting to you ;P Try wearing a track-Ir head set and then see how long you can go without puking while racing aross the hill sides in a humvee lol.
19/06/2009 at 00:55 Fenchurch says:
Oh my gosh I would kill a man with a spoon for a mod that combined STALKER with the scale of ARMA. <3
19/06/2009 at 01:34 Ozymandias says:
Alright, I hope Jim sees this as i think it’ll help him a bit (I am assuming he is new to the OFP series?)
I suggest you go into the ‘difficulty’ menu in your options, where you can change the game to your liking. If you don’t like your guy calling out the enemies on his own then you can disable that, leaving you to have to do it manually (default right mouse with them in your crosshair)
You can also disable the enemy appearing on the map… and many more things.
Disabling the AI voices is an option but I think that would disable cutscene voices too? (sound option)
Also, Bohemia is known for releasing patches long after release, so if you want you can wait a few months before trying the game (when it should be patched) as for the rest of us we can enjoy the game and not bitch about the little bugs that will be soon fixed.
19/06/2009 at 02:12 EBass says:
I’d like to say for everyone thinking about diving in to this. DO NOT take the minimum specs as even a minimum. I bought a new PC specially to play this which I’m building now, but I thought I’d download the German version before I got my English one in the post.
On my current system which just exceeds the minimum requirements (and exceeds it significantly in RAM and GFX card specs) it was utterly unplayable with EVERYTHING turned off and on low.
That could be the pirate version talking, but I doubt it. Still I’ve got my nice packaged copy here now, and I’ll get playing when I figure out where all these wires go.
19/06/2009 at 03:29 psyk says:
That makes no sense also if it has the same copy protection as the last one the crackers are going to have fun.
19/06/2009 at 08:55 Turin Turambar says:
EBass, what are your specs? Perhaps the problem is in the CPU area, the game likes cpu even MORE than a powerful gpu.
19/06/2009 at 09:19 now wait just a sec says:
Don’t tell my wife, but I bought a i7 920, 6 gb memory, 64 bit Vista and a HD 4870 in order to put 1500 AI in one battlefield just like like that youtube-dude did…
19/06/2009 at 09:29 dave says:
Some guy asked about digital downloads (sorry cant remember the name) anybody in the know on a UK dl’able version released on the 19th (aka today)?
19/06/2009 at 09:37 Lack_26 says:
People always have a go at STALKER, but I never patched mine and other than that ‘Get out of here STALKER’ guy [who I actually quite like] I’ve never had any problems.
Although I’ve got a habit of not patching games since I know it worked from the box and I enjoy it, why risk breaking it. So I guess I got used to slightly buggy games and I don’t notice them any more.
19/06/2009 at 10:03 MultiVaC says:
“Get out of here STALKER” guy is one of my favorite video game characters of all time. He’s great. I also like “I said come in, don’t stand there” guy, and Professor Sakharov, who you can hear saying “Hello, hello” to himself repeatedly from outside the bunker. If only all video game bugs were so lovable.
ARMA 2 seems like a glimpse into the future of video games. This sort of scale is something people have been dreaming of for years, and now it’s actually starting to happen. It’s probably the buggiest, sloppiest mess of a game I’ve ever seen, but it’s amazing.
19/06/2009 at 10:04 Vasara says:
I’m inclined to agree with ourdreamsoffreedom regarding the bugginess of the game. There are tons of small bugs (getting stuck in the terrain, glitchy AI, textures disappearing on occasion et al.) and major ones in the campaign that force you to revert to an earlier save or even restart the whole mission. I’ve had to attempt many of the missions twice or more due to the aforementioned scripting bugs and other severe bugs, so I’d wait for a patch before even attempting the campaign.
The game is very rough around the edges and could have used more polish prior to release, there are many bugs and the performance is pretty bad. When it works though, it’s incredibly atmospheric and exhilarating — with some (or a lot of) patching it’ll be amazing. If you ask me they should have delayed the game a bit to properly finish it, but I guess there was pressure from the publisher’s part to release it ASAP.
19/06/2009 at 10:18 Larington says:
Looking forward to seeing the full analysis article.
19/06/2009 at 10:46 Ozymandias says:
MultiVaC said “ARMA 2 seems like a glimpse into the future of video games. This sort of scale is something people have been dreaming of for years, and now it’s actually starting to happen.”
If that’s the case, it’s been starting to happen since Operation Flashpoint’s release in 2001 =)
@Vasara: Arma was -extremely- buggy at release, so much so that people were actually putting it down for good without even waiting for a patch. From what I’ve heard Arma2 is less buggy than Arma was at release. As for release, the German publisher was demanding a release a whole month before the rest of the world!
19/06/2009 at 11:25 Owen says:
“This is one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played”
“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.”
High praise indeed. Wow.
19/06/2009 at 11:50 psyk says:
Love that new game box smell, time to see how this beast runs.
19/06/2009 at 11:57 Vandelay says:
I might be dragging this argument back up again, but I really can’t see any reason (outside of the native resolution issue) that a dedicated gamer wouldn’t be using a LCD.
My HP w2207, bought almost two years ago, was sub-£200 and is brilliant. The image quality, particularly on DVDs, is stunning and is just as good as any CRT. The amount of space you save, particularly when you start going for a larger display, is definitely worth it alone.
And yes, LCDs are pretty much used by everyone. Go into PC World and try to pick up an off the shelf PC it will be LCD, guaranteed. This would have been the case for along time now. Buy any pre-build machine with a monitor, anywhere, and it will be LCD. The only reason you wouldn’t have an LCD is if you haven’t changed monitor for years, possibly even this century, or out of choice. The only time I ever hear of people still using CRTs are a few stubborn people on the Internet.
19/06/2009 at 12:02 Gap Gen says:
You cannot not buy this game
19/06/2009 at 12:54 psyk says:
Seems to run ok on my pc (qx9650, 9800gx2, 4gb ddr3) only played the training so far though. Settings are on very high, fillrate at 100%, view distance maxed, no anisotropic filtering and res is 1600×1024. The motion blur produces some slowdown but then for me it seems to on most games that have it, normally the first thing that gets turned off but can’t find an option for it. Got stuck in the land once but going prone and standing back up sorted that also a few of the training guys repeated there lines a few times.
19/06/2009 at 13:09 El_MUERkO says:
The motion blur is there to hide choppy frames and v-sync issues, the more blur you see the lower your settings need to be :)
I was tweaking my settings last night and managed to break the game \o/
Off to town after work to pick up the 505 release, need my boxed copy for the collection :D
19/06/2009 at 13:10 psyk says:
yeah lowered to high notched the view distance down a tad and all is good.
19/06/2009 at 13:24 AndrewC says:
Oh my. Can a dog drive a car?
19/06/2009 at 14:03 ourdreamsoffreedom says:
Neither dogs nor women can drive in ArmA 2.
19/06/2009 at 14:25 AndrewC says:
But can you strap C4 to dogs? Or women?
19/06/2009 at 14:54 TC says:
Not going to pick this up until Sunday when hopefully patch 1.02 will be out.
Does anyone know of a good UK based group for online gaming?
19/06/2009 at 15:12 Slippery Jim says:
http://www.gol-clan.net/
19/06/2009 at 15:18 teo says:
@Vandeley
Assuming desktop space isn’t an issue I don’t see why any serious gamer wouldn’t use a CRT :p. Except that they’re hard to find
For a long time ghosting was a serious issue on flatscreens. Now that they’re down to 2ms it’s not as big of a problem anymore.
But honestly, if you play a where you turn around a lot and really quickly, like CS and Q3, and you’re serious about the game, then you do notice quite a bit of difference between an LCD/TFT and a CRT. In CS it’s also benificial to use low resolutions like 640*480 or 800*600 which doesn’t help.
I’ve heard very good things from CS-pros about the new 120Hz samsung TFT screen but I haven’t tried it myself yet
19/06/2009 at 15:21 sun says:
Definitely going to get this. Really loved Operation Flashpoint and Resistance. Can anyone remember the name of the mod for OP that upgraded the graphics?
19/06/2009 at 15:37 Fat says:
Been playing my copy today, done all the training missions so far. They are a bit more substantial than the old ones, though i guess it’s down to the new base building stuff.
I have to say, it’s quite fun. I only have a couple of nags… like how you have to move to raise your gun again after looking at the map, or how ”evade forward” actually just sidesteps left.
The combat flying is also quite a bit hard, imo. The attack chopper was quite hard to shoot accurately with and you really feel the weight of the vehicles now when turning too sharp. The fighter jet was also pretty impossible to shoot stuff with i found, i couldnt seem to lock onto stuff with my mouse… though in hindsight i think you can do that with the ‘Tab’ key anyway.
I like the way you control armies too, it’s a bit like RTS if done on the map screen, really easy. And base building is simple too, i can see it being pretty intense online… i used to love playing the Capture The Island mod in OFP.
The main problem i’ve found is that it’s quite blurry as with most games these day. If i increase the sharpness past 100 it gets a little choppy. Plus when you’re running along you can’t really make anything out anyway. I guess that’s partly down to how sweet the graphics are now. Camo actually makes things hidden in ArmA 2, quite well.
Impressive so far, and looking forward to playing more over the weekend. I’ve also got myself a beta for new MMO, ‘Aion’, so i’ll be switching between the two. :)
19/06/2009 at 15:40 Fat says:
Oh also, for reference… i play on Medium/High settings, though all High was fine, i just wanted to lube up the framerates a little more. 1500-2000m view distance, 90% err ‘sharpness’ option, i forget the name. Running at 1680 x 1050.
AMD X2 6000 3Ghz
9800 GTX
6Gb RAM
Vista 64bit
19/06/2009 at 15:42 GregP says:
Found an answer to my question about buying it online. It’s available on Nexway, $52 US:
http://arma2.nexway.com/payment.html?REF=671796&killcart=1
19/06/2009 at 15:56 dave says:
Nexway.com apparently have digital copies via thier online store whatsit (their french, check the bottom of their page for the store linky) going to give em a go…
19/06/2009 at 15:57 dave says:
aahh fook reading for the lose, greg beat me too it, erm content… yeah… i have a LCD monitor, its cheap as chips and i play most things on 1024×768 anyway, god knows what its native res is, you guys are too pernickety
19/06/2009 at 17:13 Max Steele says:
I don’t understand the fascination with this game. The graphics look terrible, it’s poorly animated, the controls are unrefined, the AI is poor, and the gameplay is unbalanced. Why do people like these games? OPF was even worse. The reviews for these games are the few times that the critics have actually gotten it right.
19/06/2009 at 17:15 Thirith says:
I have to admit, I don’t get why people ask questions along the lines of “X sucked big time! Why did you like it?” Not the best motivator to get an actual discussion out of people, to start by insulting something they like.
19/06/2009 at 17:17 psyk says:
HAHAHAHA the graphics suck man you need your eyes tested.
19/06/2009 at 17:24 datter says:
@GregP : I just bought from them earlier. Started downloading about 45min ago and the entire 8gb load should be done in the next 20 to 30min. A bit pricey after the exchange rate, but I’ve been a big fan since the original OFP days.
19/06/2009 at 17:36 dave says:
@ Max. Graphics. sod graphics! They are the bane of the gaming industry and the reason a good 80%-90% of all computer games are utter shite. eleventybillion man hours spent on making it look pretty and 2 on concept, mechanics and scope. BIS arent making flashy Halo clones for 14 year olds (im not implying your 14 years old or that there is anything wrong with being 14). They are making what , to me, is what pc gaming is all about. The big idea, the grand design, cramming as many cool ideas into one box as humanly possible and attempting to make real those games you come up with on the bus thinking “wouldnt it be lovely if we could have a tank/helicopter/jet sim tied together with a FPS”. It might be buggy, the graphics might suck but i dont care im going to try it anyway because games like these deserve a go for the sheer balls, effort and vision put into them. (all numbers were made up on the spot)
19/06/2009 at 17:38 syrion says:
It’s listed on Steam in the U.S. at $49.99, along with various trailers and in-game footage.
19/06/2009 at 17:40 Thirith says:
And frankly, anyone who looks at the landscapes of Arma 2 and says the graphics suck needs new glasses. The game may be buggy (so many Eastern European developers have extremely dodgy QA), the animations may still not be that great – but I don’t know many other games that feature a landscape that gorgeous and real-feeling.
19/06/2009 at 17:43 Max Steele says:
@Thirith.
I’m simply pointing out the weak points. Maybe someone will point out something I am missing that draws them to the game.
@psyk.
Yes. The buildings are low poly and look awkward in the environments since they don’t blend into the terrain. The terrain has low resolution textures, the grass textures are low resolution, the shadows and the lighting system leave a lot to be desired.
19/06/2009 at 17:47 Gap Gen says:
Multiplayer is far better than single player (OpFap’s SP was great, but not repeated in its sequels). It’s basically a big military sandbox, and there’s currently nothing like it. It’s a shame it’s a bit dodgy, but once you get past the slight dodgyness it’s really gripping.
19/06/2009 at 17:47 Gap Gen says:
(Disclaimer: I haven’t tried ArmAII yet)
19/06/2009 at 17:48 Max Steele says:
@Thirith
http://e3.gamespot.com/image_viewer/6211212/operation-flashpoint-dragon-rising-screens/11/?tag=thumbs_below;thumb;1
http://e3.gamespot.com/image_viewer/6211212/operation-flashpoint-dragon-rising-screens/12/?tag=thumbs_below;thumb;2
19/06/2009 at 18:02 psyk says:
Well from playing the game on my rig for a good few hours today I say your wrong. I was going to take some screenshots but prnt screen gives a black pic with the taskbar instead of the game and I cant be arsed to find a way to get them.
19/06/2009 at 18:11 Serondal says:
@Thirith And then let you blow it all to hell
19/06/2009 at 18:20 Thirith says:
@Max Steele: It’s all about tone and style. Your initial post didn’t sound so much like criticism as it sounded like “This game sucks!” Not the ideal starting point.
I’m not (or no longer) into overly forbidding games. I’m definitely not a military-head. But Operation Flashpoint, much like Stalker pulled me in. Admittedly, it took 2-3 attempts and a couple of hours. During that time I wasn’t enjoying myself. After that time, though, something clicked. I noticed that I was getting better but that I still had lots to learn, in a way that few other games accomplish. And the graphics, which at first looked drab and flat to me, revealed their charms, to the point where I’d get out a chopper and fly over the island, or hop in a jeep and take it for a ride.
However, the game’s pretty much the exact opposite of, say, Call of Duty or Crysis. It’s pretty much the definition of delayed gratification. Although you can get to a point where you’ll get as much of a kick out of taking down an enemy soldier who’s only a couple of pixels high with a well-aimed shot, which in no way compares to the hundreds of enemies you’ll blow away during a level of CoD (which I also enjoy, though very differently).
19/06/2009 at 19:34 redviper says:
@ Max Steele I don’t understand the complaints about the graphics, especially considering how much the game is actually doing. Not everything will look or perform perfectly, but I’m glad that there are devs that are willing to push games to the limits, and I feel that this game is one of them. If thats not what your looking for, then fine. They’re are plenty of other games that play it safe and that visually will look better or more polished, but have only a fraction of the ambition. It might be buggy and complex, but I’ll definitely be playing this far longer than the unfortunately generic looking ofp sequel.
19/06/2009 at 19:41 Dominic White says:
There are RTS games that creak and groan rendering fewer units than ArmA2, and they’re generally a helluva lot less detailed and intelligent than in this game, either.
As others have said, when the game does so much, over such a wide scale, it’s very easy to overlook the flaws, because they’re pretty much an inherent part of doing anything as massive as this.
Sure, the graphics aren’t up to Crysis levels, but Crysis groans in my PC once you’ve got more than about five characters on-screen. ArmA2 can do firefights with a couple of hundred soldiers and keep on rolling.
19/06/2009 at 19:56 GregP says:
@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.
19/06/2009 at 23:10 Aaron says:
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
19/06/2009 at 23:20 Serondal says:
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.
20/06/2009 at 00:13 Pendragon says:
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!
20/06/2009 at 00:21 Nick says:
My first impressions: It won’t load at all thanks to Securom. Yes, I paid for it.
20/06/2009 at 02:19 El_MUERkO says:
1.02 is up!
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1317760#post1317760
20/06/2009 at 02:19 El_MUERkO says:
also, go see The Hangover, tis a good movie!
20/06/2009 at 09:36 Kommissar Nicko says:
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.
20/06/2009 at 09:37 psyk says:
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.
20/06/2009 at 09:39 psyk says:
under 6500 not over damn early morning comments
20/06/2009 at 10:02 psyk says:
sorting out that giant fail above.
7600 – max distance = normal terrain detail
3900 – 7599 = high terrain detail
anything under that can be very high
20/06/2009 at 10:50 subedii says:
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
20/06/2009 at 16:34 Kadayi says:
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.
20/06/2009 at 18:04 redviper says:
@ 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.
20/06/2009 at 18:08 Jimmy Santo says:
Meanwhile, in Tehran: http://www.youtube.com/v/cjcgYycnlHI
20/06/2009 at 19:14 Kadayi says:
@redviper
Cheers thanks for the feedback. I’ll ad it to my future purchases list.
23/06/2009 at 19:38 DrChi says:
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?
25/06/2009 at 04:44 Jeeva says:
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?
25/06/2009 at 05:17 psyk says:
Yeah its a nice upgrade to the one he wrote for the first arma well worth a read.