By Jim Rossignol on June 29th, 2009 at 8:00 am.
Arma II is out in Europe and on Steam. It is the single most ambitious war game ever to grace a games machine. It is full of bugs. Does that mean you shouldn’t play it? Here’s wot I think.
It seems that many of the games I have the greatest respect for start out as exercises in pure frustration. I had three or four attempts to crack Eve Online, for example. My modest talent for Quake III came out of sheer disgust and rage at the people who, when I first started playing, could shoot me in mid air with a railgun and spam ironic smilies in the text chat at the same time. I’d teach them to :/
Anyway, Arma II seems like one such familiarly frustrating scenario. I was bug-eyed with rage through some of the open levels, where repeated battles with unseen assailants left me, or my team-mates, defeated, and restarting a level, again and again. I was okay with me being rubbish, but what about the three computer-controlled Marines? Why were they allowed to die? I bitched and griped in the RPS chatroom.
Later I watched with sad amazement as my AI helicopter ride refused to land in the open terrain I’d directed it to, instead awkwardly placing itself between some trees to deposit my team. We got out, watched the chopper try to take off, explode, and then spit out the NPC air crew who had just been talking to us. The pilot stood there, unharmed and stupidly glancing about. UNKNOWN, MAN, IN FRONT OF, US, said my AI team mate. I shook my head.
Frustrations with the interface created mess after mess: I’d jump into a helicopter, and order my team to do the same. Except one of them gets into a nearby car. What? Only half way across the vast landscape of Chernarus do I realise that he is following us on the ground. I have to wait for 10 minutes for him to catch up.
There there was the sinking feeling of the sheer arcane complexity of the interface. Going through menu upon menu in the bootcamp training exercises, I wondered if they pay off could possibly be worth the amount of effort was putting in learning how to play. There are half a dozen layers of commands for individual units, and I could potentially be controlling many units at any one time. There wasn’t just a hard-as-nails infantry simulation to get to grips with, there was also a strategic-level game, where I’d be not just commanding military forces, but building them from scratch.
It didn’t help that the UI is foggy, and unclear, and that the strategic map is incredibly clunky and counter-intuitive: entire at odds with how I’d expect a mouse-driven system work. Rather than click and context menu, the action takes place where I have the mouse when I select an option on the number menu. Eugh. Horrible.
In some ways, it was like being sent back to school. An illogical school, where they teach lessons inside out.
“Welcome to Arma II High, where you’re going to have to learn gaming from scratch, starting with the first person shooter, and building up toward the… PAY ATTENTION, ROSSIGNOL!“
Bluuh!
I’ve still barely got to grips with the commander stuff, and I’m a kind of flailing sadface when playing online, despite having browsed Dslyecxi’s dizzyingly large “tactics, techniques & procedures” guide.
And yet I’m now hooked.
The main campaign of Arma II, which unfolds piece by piece, sometimes beautifully, sometimes incoherently, is arguably one of the most interesting gaming experiences on the PC. Running battles through woodlands, interrogating locals, co-ordinating UAV drone strikes, riding mountain bikes, messing about with bombs, helicopters, and stolen Eastern European tractors: the open world military sim begins to cohere, like a formidably layered cake in the Gas Mark 5 oven of your imagination. The sheer variety of what you get up to is enthralling, and it’s little more than a sampler of what Arma II as a system, as a wargaming platform, is capable of. Yes, it’s messy and ill-judged at times, and recipe is ludicrous, but it is also bold and often brilliant.
The fact that it is total non-linear, and offers multiple paths in a manner than would embarrass most RPGs is one thing, but when you look at the intricacy with which some battles play out – with weather, ordnance, and behaviour all meticulously modelled – it becomes startling.
To get a better idea about that you have to go and have a look at the editor. Drop in and start setting up scenarios: gone are the impossible scripting tasks of the original games, now you can drop events, units, and parameters directly onto the map. With these kinds of shortcuts readily available I expect astonishing scenarios to be conjured up in mere hours. Indeed, we’ve already seen what people are doing with thousands of AI fighting battles on a single map. A map that covers over two hundred square kilometers of terrain.
Occasionally with a frustrating or difficult game it’s a single experience that makes it click, and makes me know why I like it, or why I hate it and must castigate it unto destruction. But not so with Arma II. Instead it was a gradual, sedimentary build up of smaller happenings that vindicated the entire thing. During the campaign this included the introduction of support elements and the escalation of the war, the slow realisation of the enormity of the thing, winning a battle against a much smaller force with just Razor team, seeing my first tank battle, watching attack helicopters in action, seeing the strategic elements build into the game and take advantage of them, delivering an artillery strike correctly, using targeting toys for friendly aircraft, and so on, and on.
While there seems to be something slightly too washed out and shaky about Arma II’s engine, it nevertheless bags the feel, the overall sense-data of being in a warzone, better than anything else out there. The crackle and crump of nearby battles seems exactly right, and the sudden confusion and violence of coming under fire is about as harsh as it could be. Struggling towards an injured member of Razor team, dragging him into cover and patching him up: that’s a desperate kind of drama that you don’t get in many other games.
Mechanically the game is variable. While I hate the UI and almost all of the interface, the feedback of controlling the character is precisely what I want from a game like this – at least once I’d reduced the default headbob a little. Throwing myself to the ground as gunfire kicks off, rolling behind cover, and then crawling for the nearest best point to return fire – it all feels grim and hard. As you play more you realise you can step over low objects – those foe that have foxed gaming protagonists for decades, and even move your gun and head around independently. All this starts to make you realise – as the gun battles slowly become more and more transparent – that sticky-to-wall cover systems in other games might be more fun, but they are as ludicrously artificial as Mario’s ability to jump five times his own height. When you’re running through woods, or shattered villages, and diving into bushes as bullet zip and snap towards you, the use of cover in Arma 2 feels very real indeed.
Indeed, the sense of adherence to reality, the overall verisimilitude is painfully high, but it’s nevertheless consistently broken by all kinds of rough edges and randomness, particular in the behaviour of anything that isn’t a human-controlled entity. There’s a definite sense that the AI is teetering on the brink of madness, especially when you see tanks flailing about in front of rabbits. For the most part, however, it holds it together. An impressive feat, when you consider quite what it has to deal with. I can’t even imagine how you’d begin programming such a monstrosity.
Yet all this is preface, and almost irrelevant to the main engine of long term enjoyment. It takes multiplayer to really explain what the appeal of this game is about. From playing with a friend in the co-op campaign, right through to embarking massive 30-man operations, this is a game where multiplayer is king. I’ve had just a small taste of this so far, but it instantly banishes any idea that the huge and wide-ranging single player campaign is really a useful focus for any review of the game.
While the options for solo, single player gaming really are vast, it’s only when co-ordinating with other players that you really begin to see why this game’s predecessors took hold of people’s entire lives. Even with the few scenarios that come with Arma II, you’re able to play through dozens of hours of war in the Chernarus or island Ubtes theatres, with tank battles flattening entire towns. Many more scenarios are already being produced with that versatile editor.
What’s more, once you’re hooked up on voice comms you’re able to perform far more complex actions that you could hope to do with the AI, as you crudely thumb them around the map. Tactics become real, rather than implied or imagined. Board the helicopter, go in low to avoid anti-aicraft fire, bail out because you’re hit, regroup in woodland, hit the target, cripple enemy AA batteries, get picked up, head to the next waypoint – all splurging, organically, into your game. It’s enthralling stuff, and only possible because of other people. I wholly recommend the co-op missions over the versus type multiplayer too. Co-ordinating with other people to take on huge AI armies is awesome like little else.
Of course, like plenty of other games I’ve already sunk lifetimes into – aforementioned Quake III and Eve Online being acute examples – Arma II is a game that rewards practice and organised play. Dropping in to play a random bout of virtual paintball is okay for cheap kicks, but it can be monstrously frustrating. I suspect the real rewards are going to come from playing with practiced groups of players who actually attempt to deliver something approximating soldierly behaviour. That realisation, of course, adds an atmosphere of intimidating inaccessibility for anyone who isn’t being introduced to the game by friends. I think that barrier will remain, no matter how good the single player element of the game is. Making the leap beyond mere paddling in the shallows is going to take some gumption. It won’t be for most of us. I can see the appeal, now, but I am still hesitant.
Arma II game is already divisive: it was always going to be. It’s impossible to examine this game without seeing it as a kind of exemplar of some of the larger issues about what is good and bad about PC gaming: the unfinished code, the performance issues, the difficulty of breaking into established communities – all these things will push people away. But the sheer scope: the raw materials that BIS have forged for gamers to make their own entertainment, their own stories with. I can’t say that’s a bad thing.
What PC games are is a wide open landscape, and that monstrous, uneven terrain is only getting larger by the day. Thank fuck for this twisted little peninsula of realism, without it gaming would be a whole lot less interesting.
[Want to know about performance issues? The demo thread is here. Go take a look.]
Good write up, I’m probably gunna pick it up after a few patches, but right now my plate is full.
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I couldn’t agree more. It’s just unfortunate that BI can’t deliver such an epic game bug free and polished to perfection. But that’s not going to stop my buying and playing it, helicopters clipping through trees and flying jeeps are part of the hilarity that came part and parcel with the serious military atmosphere of OFP and ARMA, I don’t see why ARMA2 should be any different.
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I’m on board.
I hear that 1000-man AI battles are within the reach of the average man. I remember long hours painstakingly adjusting the “azimut” on a score of AI-controlled RPK gunners and lining them up in rows to blast the ever-loving shit out of each other in Operation Flashpoint only to run the damn thing and watch my poor 666mHz Xeon keel over with the sheer weight of it.
This, on the other hand, sounds awesome.
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I was really looking forward to this, but the demo just runs too poorly on my mid-range setup.
Maybe something to return to in a year or two.
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I was really interested in buying it till I played the demo. I was a big fan of OFP back in the day, and played it to completion and spent far too many hours in the editor blowing things up. ArmA 2 on the other hand seemed like the same game with a lick of paint, almost. It all moves the same and handles the same. It even looks the same underneath, you now, if you just put the OFP tech forward a few years obviously. While none of that is bad, it’s just a little off putting, the worst is the AI by a long strech. They’ll get themselves killed all the time and when they don’t do that they complete and objective and then just give up and stand there. The missions where you weren’t in control in OFP worked where as far as I can tell from the demo of this, they don’t here, making much of the single player game from my assumption, not really worth it.
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Fav moment so far slowly moving towards a town that needed to be cleared and hearing a chopper coming from behind, alt looking at the chopper while continuing to crawl forwards then instead of landing the 6 – 8 people inside parachute out probably to there doom, was fun to watch.
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Nice review, although it isn’t game for me.
OpF is still one of those games that carve their memories into your brain with hot knife. Getting shot in the field to the leg, just lying there, not being able to move and seeing an APC casually riding towards me and signalling my death. When you are dying and all you can think of is:”This is awesome!”, then yeah, the game can’t be bad.
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Hunam: there are bits of the single player game that are buggy, but as a whole it’s far superior to OpF’s campaign.
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How is a game which is in a series of games being basically the same as the previous games a bad thing ive never understood that thinking. devs are screwed if they change to much and screwed if they dont.
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This game needs a new UI badly. However, the shooting bits are great.
My Core E6400 is struggling with Arma2, I guess I’m going to be needing a new PC this year. :(
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Jim: I’m just talking about the demo mission Trial by Fire, which I failed a grand 5 times. Only the first time was by my mistake of running around getting shot in the face. After I figured out how to not attract bullets I’d have no trouble killing the guys in the first village and keeping the squad alive, but as we approach the air strip they would just start running around out of cover and getting their head’s blown off whilst I’m doing what I’ve been told to. The isn’t much more frustrating that failing a mission multiple times when it’s not your fault.
Any chance you’ll be giving us a feature in a few months time when they’ve had a chance to carpet bomb it with patches?
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I’ll definitely be following this for mods, patches, etc, so updates seem likely.
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I finally got a chance to play this for a couple of hours over the weekend, and I’m blown away by it so far.
It is definately the child of OpFlashpoint, with all the idiosyncracies you’d expect from it, but when it comes together, it’s huge amounts of fun.
I think it says a lot about the feel of it that I’ve probably spent more time in the editor, playing with aircraft, then I have in the main campaign at the moment. They make so much more sense once you realise you can use a 360 controller for them, instead of a keyboard and mouse!
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Speaking of buggy military games, no mention of Americas Army 3 so far, is that by policy?
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I used to tell my squad to wait right here, on the reverse slope of a hill, and then rambo the real hard parts. Some things they are just too stupid to do.
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If by policy you mean vague disinterest, then yes.
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Yes the SP campaign may be superior to OFP’s, but it was really short. When it ended I was like WTF ????? I was expecting some all out war between US and Russia, but nothing happened…
Still it’s the best SP experience I’ve had in the last couple of years.
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I couldn’t be happier that games like this exist and get made, but I don’t think I’d appreciate it enough if I ever managed to get through the bugs and difficulities of learning how to play the damn thing.
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Great review, it’s really refreshing reading a piece by someone who ‘gets’ it, but isn’t blindly infatuated with it. By ‘it’ I don’t mean Arma II specifically, but various niche or semi-niche gaming experiences — in this case the ‘hardcore’ multiplayer FPS. Too often it seems that reviews of multiplayer games are either quick-and-dirty critical examinations by writers whose interests lie elsewhere, or enthusiastic but unhelpful love-letters from fans.
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My thoughts exactly on the game, after finishing the singleplayer feeling the game was good, but not great, i joined a few friends on a server and my god was there a difference, as soon as i spawned i had 20 people shouting at me to get in the plane that was taxiing across the runway, after managing to get in we flew to the nearest objective, theres nothing cooler than 20 people HALO jumping in a long line…
Its best when everything goes wrong though, an unseen piece of AA can kill your whole team
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bi seemed to of learned nothing and do not want to …i would rather play a ofp sequel with more convincing ai and fewer bugs and a solid engine (for gods sake sort the clipping) but the same graphics as old ofp ,,,that would be more impressive–bi created the crown and i suspect the market is too small for anyone to bother taking it from them (obviously it will not be code masters effort)… i suspect i will still give it a go or its sequels when my kids grow up and i have more time….at moment i am watching from the sidelines with envy…good write up..keep them coming as arm2 grows
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I think you need a good community, not an experienced one. I played with nine friends last night. We’re by no means Delta Force – one player tried to land a helicopter in a forest to meet us up, alerting everyone in the vicinity to our presence and destroying the chopper – but it was still great fun, it still created genuine excitement and battle scenes that might have been scripted in other games. It’s stunningly good fun, and the realism isn’t omnipresent.
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I personally love the editor, I’m re-familiarising myself with scripting as well. I made a great mission the other day, a hot para-drop from 4 C-130s of men (of course I had to write/adapt the scripts first). So the forces land spread out in land infested with enemies, so you spend the first 15 minutes lost trying to link up with friendly forces. If you do take the objectives enemy forces will come to attack the newly seized objectives, so you fall back to a village. If the enemy keep coming (despite the 2 airstrikes you can call in) then the survivors can fall back for a helicopter evac. But of course that is over run as well.
Oh yeah, I find turning the game to Veteran or expert, turn on Super AI and disable 3rd person and tactical view for Gods sake. But reduce friendly AI accuracy to about .4 and enemies to about 0.15. It’s great if you don’t have the GPS, only the compass and some Grid co-ordinates of your squad and you have to first find out where you are and then the correct heading to get to them. I reckon all those years in the scouting movement and a good sense of direction help.
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I shoot ONE shot in the firearms tutorial and take out a target and the instructor tells me we will have to start again. Happens everytime…
For a game where you will be traipsing around for ages just to find that when something happens its bugged I’m not real keen to waste my time until they can at least get simple bits like this fixed..
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I think I might take a peek.
I’ve been playing the BF2 mod Project Reality. Brings together the worst and best of playing online; at times, amazing squad play and real tactics, but coupled with serious anti-noob, anti-you-don’t-know-everything-get-off-our-fucking-server ‘tude!
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I think ArmA 2 (and its ancestors) works best with sweeping objectives. “Destroy this AAA and retreat to here.” Complete the mission however you like.
What I’ve played so far of the ArmA 2 campaign is not leveraging this strength. Missions revolve around little details which can fail. Example: talk to this civilian to advance the plot. If he gets hit by a stray grenade, or worse, suicides by venturing too close to the roads populated by insane AI drivers it’s game over and you might have no idea why.
I guess I’m trying to say that ArmA 2 is an open, unpredictable world where things can go wrong. It’s best to create scenarios where things going wrong add surprise and unforseen dilemmas rather than just game over screens.
I’m certain that mission makers can do this. I’m just a little disappointed that BIS didn’t. (Perhaps the sales people had too much influence?)
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A very fair write up of Arma2. I would have also emphasised BIS’ track record of supporting their games excellently and the unparallelled modding community.
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God damn this game is equally frustrating and good. The problem I have now is the bloody AI getting killed all the time and you failing the mission. Stuff i can’t control failing the mission for me is rubbish. Sure I’m usually rubbish at games and it takes a few tries to pass any given mission for me.
I may try that Editor and wait for a patch/mod to take out the 1 kill equals fail.
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Co-op was where it was at for me in the original OpFlash. Fortunately the bunch of guys I found to play with were the antithesis of the groups that were forming serious military style units. We were all fairly casual gamers and didn’t take it very seriously, and we all had a great time playing OFP. Indeed most of us still game together today and we still have very fond memories of our OFP sessions.
Unfortunately more than half of us no longer have the kind of rig required to run Arma2, which is a shame as it sounds like it’s managed to recapture the old magic of OFP. We’ll just have to hope the Codies effort on the 360 is OK, as I think that’s the one we’ll all be playing. Although it doesn’t sound like the Codies one will have quite the grand scope and vision of Arma2.
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Yeah, from what I’ve seen from OPF 2 it doesn’t seem to be nearly as good as ArmA II is.
Also, I think RPS needs to do a small post on making the AI a bit less prone to sniping you at 2 clicks with an Ak SU. There’s a mod out there that reduces the Russian, Chekadki, CDF and NAPA guns accuracy. But the simplest way is to knock the AI accuracy in the difficulty level options panel right down, that makes the gun fights a lot more fun and there is a far lower hit ratio, making it a bit more realistic. I just want a mod that reflects the actual tactics of the Russian and Easten armies, i.e. get drunk run out of cover, fire of a full mag of AK on full auto and run back and hide under a truck until the get the courage to go again. Just see the Ossetia, Georgia war to see what I mean.
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Right after reading “It is full of bugs”, I clicked on the “Read the rest of this story” link to see the review. Internet Explorer froze up, and then crashed.
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I recall reading somewhere that BIS are a very small studio – about 30 people, total? If so, then that makes the ridiculous ambition and scope of their games all the more impressive, if they’re doing what devteams many times their size don’t dare to try.
As has been said, the singleplayer is decent – probably better than OFP vanilla – but where the game shines is multiplayer. I was with my regular group last night, replaying again and again a brilliantly simple scenario:
US forces (18 people max) have a truck and four armed humvees. They must follow the main road and escort the truck to the target town.
Russian forces (12 people max) have a couple of satchel charges, two RPGs and are tasked with killing the truck.
It is so simple. It was thrown together in the editor in half an hour. It is infinitely replayable and something can and will go wrong every time. The truck will get lost, one of the humvee drivers will barrel on ahead and manage to run over one of the ambushers by accident, the guy with the satchel charges will misclick and blow up half his team, etc etc.
And that is one tiny unscripted scenario thrown together in no time, made into a massively replayable playground just by adding more players. Even better if they’re not the ultra-realism-loving tactical types, as there’s more room for hilarious fuckups.
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Fair write-up, excellent read, too. People do seem to confuse their early disdain with ARMA2 for it being objectively bad. Actually, it is bad, very bad in some cases, but it’s also the best thing you’ll ever play.
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@Lack_26, afaik you can reduce the accuracy of enemy fire manually in the config files.
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I always love the writing in RPS, this was an excellent example. I’m installing the demo as I write this, it really looks quite different from anything I’ve played.
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Thanks for this ‘review’. Please keep us up to date with bug-reducing patches for this game. I spent some time with the demo but it was too buggy for me to enjoy. It’s the sort of game I’d love to sink some time into though, so let us know when it’s better.
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I downloaded the demo, but finally it seems even a 256mb 8600M GS and a gig of my laptop’s ram running as video memory isn’t enough to run the newest games full stop. Playable settings = invisible foes and blurry everything. PLus the whole ‘turning head = blurred screen’ was making me quite unwell.
That and you need a Good mouse. I couldn’t even do the firing range exercise with whatever (presumably very small) DPI this one does.
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@Jim – you don’t have to touch a config file. You just go to the Difficulty menu and click ‘custom’ and the enemy/ally accuracy sliders are right there, along with a bout fifty other options.
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@ Dominic. So they are. Presumably that’s a recent addition to the code, as it wasn’t there when I was looking at the difficulty a week or so back.
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Excellent write up. Sums up exactly how I feel. I’ve still spent more time tweaking than playing, but what I’ve played feels more open and organic than anything I’ve done in years. The world truly feels alive, even if it somewhat fulfills my anticipation that the majority of (artificial) intelligence out there isn’t all that. You can replay the same mission 5 times and get 5 different outcomes, even if you attempt the same thing every time. I’ve still really only been playing SP. I haven’t had time to dedicate toward doing some good MP work yet. With my mum in town this week, it will be quite a bit of time before I can do so, sadly. The SP seems to really just be an introduction to the meat, as it should be in a game of this scope.
She’s a terrible mess (the game, silly) and needs a lot more optimizing. Given their track record with ArmA, I have full confidence the game will run better over time. I also have no doubt the community is what will make this game. Already mods and maps and basic scenarios are popping up. People are converting their Co-Op missions they had made for ArmA and there’s a wealth of content to fool with, even if ACE and some of the other biggest boys haven’t gone yet. Great game. I can’t wait for it to get better, but it’s already miles ahead, in scope, immersion and freedom, than most any other games out there.
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Well I played the training missions and cannot complete them due to bugs. I jumped into a MP game and instantly got stuck on a tent I was trying to run around. I cannot configure the target button to my logitech joystick. There are far too many buttons that could quite easily be grouped together.
I have put my copy on the shelf and may play it again after a few more patches.
The main thing I have found is that I didn’t enjoy it. It just frustrated and infuriated me.
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Nice writeup Jiim and sums up my recent experiences perfectly.
Considering issues like AI and pathfinding (AI jumping into jeep instead of chopper) and other mishaps, it is evident that they released this game ahead of time in order to beat OFP2 (and MW2) to market. And they’re going to pay for it. Especially since the other game is multi-console – but has to compete with MW2.
My guess is that they’re not going to attract many (if any) new adopters and this game was primarily released for the fanatic fanbois who have put up with Arma1 over the years.
They needed at least another six months to cook this. And judging by the obvious problems – and the littany of bug fixes in the three patches thus far – they knew that but chose to just ship it rather than continuing fixing a seemingly un-ending littany of bugs.
This game’s release in this condition is yet another example of why PC gaming keeps getting a bad wrap and why most publishers won’t go near a title that isn’t multi-platform (unless it is a console platform). Oh well.
Now we know why the console version was canned. No way in hell was this going to run on ANY console, let alone pass cert. For one thing, they ran out of buttons on page 1.
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@Jim – Nope, it was there from the start. I bought the German version at V1.0, and it was there.
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I’ve found ArmA II to be an outstanding game, but as it stands, that’s only true when it works. I love it online… but it takes maybe half an hour to find yourself in a decent server. The single player campaign is one of the most intriguing in years… but I’ve found it impossible (or at the very least, entirely un-enjoyable) to fight past the bugs that begin to crop up in the mission “Manhattan”. As I said in my review, it’s basically a bloody brilliant game. It just doesn’t work yet.
I actually fully intend to follow the game though. I know in 6 months to a years time, we’re going to have an utterly absorbing experience with ArmA II.
What baffles me more than anything else is the fact it was brought forwards. A week wouldn’t have been enough, but it would have been something.
Ironically though, despite the fact I can’t recommend people buy it in its current state, I can’t help but keep going back to it. Especially online – where AI issues aren’t always as important.
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On paper this is pretty much a perfect game for me, as was the last one, but I find I just can’t keep playing it (or the original ArmA) for the following reasons:
1. I just find it insanely difficult to aim (I play a lot of FPS’s, both single and MP and generally consider myself fairly good at them). Using iron sights or not, the mouse seems really laggy, or something… it’s just not quite right. I see a group of bad guys for e.g. – in any other game I’d have had them all no probs (they’re close together, weapons down and haven’t seen me), in this I’m lucky to take down more than the first one – in fact even if I didn’t ‘get them’ in another game I’d know it was my lack of skill/judgement/aim but here I feel cheated. I just can’t draw a bead on them quick enough or follow their movement accurately enough. Just the looking and aiming feels really clunky, like the way your weapon jerks around the screen even if you make the smallest movement without the ‘walk’ key pressed. This frustrating lack of control (which currently makes the combat feel really unsatisfying, even if the encounter is a success) is only made worse by the high difficulty, which otherwise I would be enjoying immensely.
2. Performance, Resolution, blurriness – Even with all the all the post processing off it somehow manages to look blurry and feels sluggish to respond, even at 40+FPS @2560×1600. Vaseline on the screen effect… Maybe this is all tied in to the feeling of mouse lag, not sure.
Anyway, be very interested to see if others are having similar issues. Just tried the demo so far. I will persevere as I say, on paper it’s a near perfect game for me (I tend to not like + play lots of games but the ones I do play – I love and play for years, H&D 2 being a good example). It’s the lag issue really, even hitting targets on the range is a chore :(. I put in a fair few hours with ArmA 1 trying, unsuccessfully to over come this very issue, I hope I have more luck here, but am not that optimistic.
I can live with/work around the performance issues.
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I’ve still got a lot of gripes carried over from Arma.
The weapons are a bit improved and I do love the dual targetting system and optional deadzone but they still have a certain clunkyness to their animations. The LMGs and miniguns still feel a bit off with sounds that don’t match the firerate. A lot of the mounted weapons lack proper sights.
All vehicles appear to be center pivot and if you run out of torque to go up a hill you just come to a dead stop with no wheel spin. No gearboxes either.
Vehicle physics are bizzare. Tanks don’t seem to have any weight to them and can happily flip onto their sides or roofs. I flew a C130, the massive transporter plane, into a line of trees whilst failing to take off and it just stopped dead and fell to the ground. Same with helicopters. The game doesn’t even seem to care if you catch a blade on a solid object.
Damage modelling is still bland. You can’t knock things out by shooting the engine block. Aircraft don’t lose engines, helicopters don’t lose tail rotors.
Most of the systems are undermodelled. You’re lucky if you get one or two instrument panels on any vehicle and they are underfeatured. The Horizontal situation indicator in aircraft only functions as a basic compass. Where’s the thermal sights?
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I gave up on OFP because of the bugs, the final straw being my entire team leaping out of a flying helicopter on the way to a mission. I assume they thought we were already there, but we were still coming in to land.
It’s nice to see they’re keeping the tradition alive.
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I played throught he demo mission 5 times and had a different experience each time, the most notable being when a sniper tied up the entire team on a fence 2 minutes in. just ordered the full game off amazon should be arriving tomorrow.
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I want to try, and I really do, but the whole thing is pretty intimidating.
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I got this on release day and for the first 2 days it was fine. I could play single player stuff and played some MP campaign with friends.
Then, on the 3rd day (dum dum dum!) it all started going downhill. My buddies started having crashes, graphical bugs, i also had bug where all the polygons seems to turn into something resembling ‘modern art’ when i zoomed my view in.
The game would crash my friend’s graphics card and the newest drivers didn’t fix this (but doing some stuff mentioned on the A2 forums did eventually).
We tried the ‘bad’ 1.02 patch that was released about a week ago, then reverted back to the 1.01 version that came on the DVD, neither fixed the problems.
Then, finally, we manage to get all the problems sorted after much reading of forums and tweaking of drivers, etc. But not content with letting us play, the game has now decided that whenever we complete a mission on the MP campaign, that it isn’t going to go to the next level. It just keeps repeating the 3rd level over and over again.
Honestly, i was sold on this game in the first couple of day… but all the cr*p i’ve been through to fix it has done my head in. I’ve had it since release day and still not managed to get past the 3rd/4th mission (the one after someone you know is shot, no spoiler) … and not for lack of trying!
TLDR – Game wasn’t buggy, was fun. Then went buggy, still is, can’t play the game as levels keep looping.
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My big question about ARMAII was the Single Player aspect. I’m not gonna sink enough time into it to get anything worthwhile out of MP, but was hoping the campaign would be as epic as it was promised, and it sounds so. I may wait a while for some patches, though.
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I love how you guys slam major games for very minor issues and be very timid on this mess.
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Multiplayer custom missions are absolutely astonishingly good. It’s that much-vaunted ‘emergent’ gameplay thing in full effect. Best-war-movie-in-the-world shit going down on a regular basis.
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This is exactly why I love RPS even tough I’ve only been visiting this place for like two weeks. This is stuff you don’t read anywhere else, so well written, interesting and funny and actually giving and idea of what it is to be playing videogames.
That’s all I wanted to say, because I don’t have a decent enough computer to handle Arma II. Bah :\
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I have recently tried the demo and had a blast. The game performed decently, much better than I thought it would on a year old laptop but still not good enough for me since everything felt very floaty. It’ll be definitely the first game I buy when a get a new rig. Uh, someday.
I guess I’ll install OFP for the time being.
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Asda, perhaps because the so-called “major games” are mediocre, linear, repetetive, unimaginative and bland experiences in comparison with ArmA 2, a game that pushes gaming in graphics, sound, realistic landscape, gritty realism, inmersion, emergent gameplay, teamplay, coop gaming, modding, huge multiplayer battles, numbers of weapons and vehicles, poyivalent AI, scenario templates, and campaign experience.
The degree of comprensible bugs and issues raise as the game is more complex. It’s not the same Gears of Wars or Call of Duty, than Arma or Europa Universalis.
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I do agree with the comments re weapon physics. Realistic or otherwise, there needs to be more oomph to your firepower. Nothing quite has enough bite.
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Finally got to play my first full mission in ARMA 2 this morning (I’m still on the DEMO, fyi) and it was very good fun. It was still a bit of a shambles; watching the “AI” scamper about the hillsides yelling unintelligible and entirely unhelpful things at each other before leaping behind a 6 inch high bush in an attempt to avoid enemy fire (started to realise that, when it goes wrong, the best thing to do is put the time acceleration to 4X and play the Benny Hill theme music. Priceless stuff.
Anyway, this will, one day, be merely a very buggy game, but with some reasonably enjoyable bits. I look forward to that and will keep an eye on the forums for this to happen so I can buy the game then. Right now Bohemia don’t deserve my cash. While I admit that this game is vast in scope, it is only vast in scope when compared to generic FPSs. Simple fact is that most of the bugs should have been ironed out *years* ago but BI are too busy pinning belly and whistles on the donkey to do that. I aim to still be as supportive of BI as I can be as they are the only team left still developing more “sim-like” FPS games (though we will never be able to use “realistic” as a descriptive: another shame) and that is a tragedy. As someone who would list OFP, Ghost Recon (the orignal, not the fucking dire sequels) and the SWAT series amongst his most cherished games it pains me to see that all of the franchises have now been turned into cartoony, console based nonsense.
Unfortunately, as I have said before, as long as BI are going to get pushed around by their publisher on release dates, as long as they are going to let their grasp exceed their reach and as long as the devout fans are still willing to drink the CoolAid, we are not going to see a solid release of this type of game, ever.
As an aside I have finally got, well not *good*, but *better* performance on the demo. I would post about it but [a couple of my posts in which I repeatedly called another man nasty names were deleted (as were the other man's) so I'm convinced I'm being persecuted. Oh, the humanity!]
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Excellent article…. hit the nail on the head for us first-timers.
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@Turin Turambar
-graphics: ARMA 2, is at best reasonably good looking, if anyone can play it flat out. It is pushing no boundaries.
-sound: Nothing good to report here. Nothing bad either I grant but other games do it easily as well (COD springs to mind…)
-realistic landscape: No more so that any ohter game that isn’t corridor based, but I grant open maps are ace =)
-gritty realism: nope. Sorry. Not buying that. The “realism” in this game is considerably down on what was to be found in OFP. Sick and tired of people blowing up trucks with small arms fire.
-immersion: This is where the game fails most as the staggeringa mount of bugs strive to continuously destroy the immersion.
-emergent gameplay: Not really. This term is vastly over used and missunderstood. Achieving an opject in 2 diffeent ways is not -emergent gameplay. Emergent gameplay would be, I dunno, bribing civies to casue a distraction so that you can lure the enemy into a deserted toawn you ahve wired with exploding cars. Can’t agree with you here at all.
-teamplay: In SP? No Sir. In MP? Well yes, but no more so than any other game.
-coop gaming: This is indeed cool but, as the simngle player campaign is so hobbled, is basically unplayable too.
-modding: Modding is a superb selling point for a game that not only provides an out-of-the-box amazing experience but then also its ensures its long term survival by supplying mod tools so that the community can keep the game alive. ARMA however, while it does provide *excellent* mod tools, does not provice a solid out-of-the-box game. If it was sold as a construction set then fine but as it is…
-huge multiplayer battles: No argument there… bar noting the game breaking crashes again…
-numbers of weapons and vehicles: nope. SOrry. Not that many on offer to be honest. THere are *enough* to be sure, but it is breaking no records.
-poyivalent AI: Seriously? You are going to try and defend this game by referencing its “AI”? Wow. That’s just plain brave…
-scenario templates: not sure what you mean by this.
-campaign experience: Again, no. The SP campaign is, with teh best will in the world, so rough that it feels like early beta.
As I said above I want to be an advocate of this game but it is currently broken on too many fundamental levels. Saying that it not be criticized for its faults because of its scope is just unhelpful.. There are no merits for effort here. Sure, try and deliver a truly breathtaking gaming experience; I’m all for that, but when it comes near to release time and you realise that a huge part of the game is still not working, it is time to cut back, trim features and knuckle down on the basics. If they had only spent more time on core elements such as the AI and cut back on other stuff (the editor maybe) with the intent of releasing those trimmed features later on when they actually had the time, this game would have been staggering. As it is, it just staggers…
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Honestly, I would prefer it if they made a bug-free single-player game, as opposed to a single-player that is apparently the intro to the real game, multiplayer. There’s a good chance I’ll start playing online, though. I usually stick to a few FPS games that I play online, but once in a while another one manages to join the club (Crysis did).
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I haven’t really touched public servers and mostly play custom missions designed for small teams of about 5 or 6 people and it generally works extremely well and it is so easy to create new missions that there is no excuse to get bored.
I’ve had few bugs overall but the SP game really is atrocious because of the AI, but similarly creating AI for this game must have been an astonishing task and along as you keep the AI on the other team it’s perfectly fine really.
I’ve had good games and I’ve had bad games but it’s very much a game where you get out what you put in.
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totally agree on the ui front, once you get to commanding multiple squads the ui seems intent on driving you insane
i’m having a blast though, was playing coop last night in a battle of wits with a BTR which must have been driven by the ai ghost of rommel and and gunned by darth vadar :(
when we finally killed the bastard i swear the sky lightened and birds began to sing once more \o/
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Is anyone else having problems aiming, in comparison to other FPS’s? I mean even with a good frame rate it feels like there’s a weird amount of inertia, lag or general ‘floatiness’ to it?
If so were you able to adjust to it over time?
(see my post above for details)
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@Jim et al.:
ACE2 mod which is inevitable and being worked on currently will fix things like weapon ‘oomph’, whilst fixing and adding hundreds of other things.
Also @Jim: Did you ever try ACE mod for ArmA1?
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Guh, I’m being *that* guy again.
I popped an email to 505 games (Arma 2′s European publisher) to find information about the copy protection. No response.
I do a search on BI Studio’s forums to find any info and it seems they like to close any thread that discusses it. I’m not planning on buying it without the info so post a message asking where I can find out more, and get an infraction (wrong posting location – though I’d dispute that).
Anyhoo, I’m now banned after a slightly heated exchange with their braindead mod and I’ve lost all respect for BI.
I shan’t be buying this game. Consumer revenge – RARRrr!
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@RGS
Yes! The mouse-lag is an ongoing issue. The problem is trying to explain this on the BI forums as all the fanboys just mouth off about us “not understanding realistic, sim FPSs”. Eejits. Properly implemented FPS view and mouse-lag are two different things. This game most definitely has both.
If you have an Nvidia card setting eh Pre-Rendered frames to “0″ can help as can reducing post processing and AA as neither work very well, especially on Nvidia 2XX cards… Does not fix it though. BI will need to do that.
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@Nafe
What is it you want to know about the copy protection?
If you want to know what it is is then, in Europe at least, it is Securerom (the less harsh one) and FADE (LOL. The Windows Firewall of protection…) so no big thing.
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@Howard
I just wanted to know if there were limited installs, online activation or if it’s just a simple disc check. I’ve read message posts on the net about the UK version saying it has limited installs, some saying it’s only a disc check. Given that I thought it’d be nice to have an official response.
After all the closed threads on the BI forums I figured I’d dutifully contact the publisher first only to have absolutely no response. Gave a last ditch attempt at the BI forums and rather than being treated like a potential customer* I was treated like a loyal subject who really should appreciate the fact that I was allowed to grace their forums at all.
*I’m not one of these pompous arseholes who feel they’re owed something, I posted a polite request for information and was given a slap on the wrist. I call bullshit on that one.
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the gradual realisation of the enormity of thing thing
Eh wat?
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@nafe
AFAIK it is just plain old Securerom. Can anyone who owns the European release confirm this?
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@Howard
Either way, it’s not so relevant (to me) any more, I’m quite grumpy about the lousy moderation on the board and the information blackout on SecuROM. The “It’s our publishers that make the choice, don’t blame us” line doesn’t cut it with me so I won’t be buying the game.
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Great article. I rushed to get the demo on Friday, and only after about three hours of flailing about (and several more of tweaking my graphics) did it finally “click.” I never enjoyed the original ArmA, but I can tell I will get a lot of enjoyment out of this one. Will definitely purchase on Steam soon.
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@Howard
‘Properly implemented FPS view and mouse-lag are two different things’ – Yes totally agree.
I wish they’d fix this as it’s really ruining my experience. Though I’m sure they won’t as they didn’t with the first one.
Also a gradual transition into the run anim (where the weapon jumps off the screen from the tiniest nudge of movement unless holding walk would be nice.
I’m all for realism, love the options to look independently from shooting etc – BUT this doesn’t feel more realistic, it feels broken.
I also love the complexity of the game, which I’d love to fully explore, but this lag is a killer for me.
Tks for the tip s btw, will give that a shot later.
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A very well written review, especially for such a difficult subject, not exactly mainstream game ARMA2, but you hit all the nails of its appeal on the head, while keeping its flaws in honest perspective. One of the best reviewing styles I have read in many years of being in the game industry. And no, I don’t work for BIS ;)
Keep it Up
Iconoclast
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Jim: What I thought was a bit odd was that some of the weapons are quite good. The basic M16 and AK are quite nice and so is a few of the LMGs and launchers. Put them on fullauto and they fall over a bit, feels too… clinical? The camo LMG one of razor gets is rubbish and so are miniguns.
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I’m most concerned about the physics. For a simulator it’s got physics as bad as HL1. Seriously. It’s meant to be realistic but they are totally rubbish.
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Have not touched the SP campaign yet, am just creating increasingly more unlikely scenerios in the editor and seeing what happens, this is worth £25 alone!
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I keep playing the demo, quitting out of frustration with the performance and UI, then go back to it a few hours later because it’s just too cool :(
I need to upgrade my CPU. 4200+ X2 hasn’t cut it for almost a year now.
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Flappybat, get hit in a helo, and you start to lose lift after about 1/3rd damage, get hit in the tail, and you DO lose the rotor. I agree with the other points, but be sure to confirm your statements please, it takes away the credibility of what you’re saying. This is, currently at least, primiarily a soldier (infantry) game, the vehicles are to support that gameplay. (until the awesome mods come out that is ;) )
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@RGS – What I found really helped my mouse lagginess was the following:
Go into the Control Panel (this is in XP, I don’t really touch Vista except for Left4Dead) and double click on the mouse. Under the Pointer Options tab, there should be a check box labeled “Pointer Precision” which you want to remove the check from. It’s great for work, but not so much gaming since it’s funky acceleration. I disabled this (new build of my OS, I usually leave it off, just hadn’t gotten around to it yet) and bumped precision in game a bit and it controls MUCH better for me in game now. I have a 800DPI optical mouse on my gaming box and on anything over about 150DPI, I aim better better with it off. It takes some getting used to, but I prefer having it off for my FPSes. On another note, I run my pre-rendered frames at 1, since 0 seemed to cause slight hiccups. I hope this helps! :)
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Do want
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Unfortunately, as I have said before, as long as BI are going to get pushed around by their publisher on release dates, as long as they are going to let their grasp exceed their reach and as long as the devout fans are still willing to drink the CoolAid, we are not going to see a solid release of this type of game, ever.
One problem with this scenario: It’ll never get made if they run out of money, which they are always running a thin line with. :(
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(Sorry the above is the quote of Howard, and my response below)
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Jim are you playing with TrackIR? I don’t see any mention of it in your postings so I’m guessing not.
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Nope. I’ve used it in the past, but I don’t have one.
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My guess is that they’re not going to attract many (if any) new adopters and this game was primarily released for the fanatic fanbois who have put up with Arma1 over the years.
@ dsmart, I think you’re wrong about that, actually. I am one of apparently many cases (read the BIS forums) of people who never played OpF and avoided ArmA but are definitely buying this one.
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Mouse lag is a VERY big issue (at least for me) not only can’t I hit more than 15 targets in the training area, I also can’t control the VTOL. Also, where are the enemies?! They just shoot me, and I have no idea where they are, the visual/colour acuity is almost 0.
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Isn’t this the project where all the devs live together and sleep and breathe this game?
This is a stunning achievement.
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for a hardcore sim there are a fair few concessions made, it seems to be possible to flying choppers now using keyboarda nd mouse, and unit direction is eaiser now you can use the map RTS style. I got the first arma but ahd to drop it after i found the tutroials far too complicated
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I like the warfare real time strategy mode. In the warfare scenario that comes with the demo, I let the AI take the role of the commander and try to influence the course of the war as a sniper, the leader/member of a rifle squad, or a tank team.
It’s like DotA/Demigod, but instead of a being some invincible beast, I’m just a tiny soldier in a huge battle, and my only superpower is that my intelligence is not artificial.
I really don’t want to buy any game for $70. I’m still fighting. But unfortunately I saw no bugs in this splendid demo that really ruin the experience for me, and my E6300 1.86GHz / 9800GT / 2GB machine runs the game just fine.
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In regards to what Dsmart said and following on from that designing APB article in the sunday papers.
I think a lot more games should take the route of ‘soft openings’.
Instead of releasing a buggy game early to much fanfare and preceding disappointment; slow burn games like Arma 2 [or any community reliant game] should be released below radar, work out the kinks and /then/, six months later, have a grand opening / publicity blitz.
I know it sounds like I’m talking about opening a Casino in Vegas but we used to do this a lot, with great success, for web projects back in the 90′s.
I think with ambitious projects like Arma a straight up beta [using the existing community] isn’t enough.
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Someone somewhere suggested setting pre-rendered frames at 8, so that’s what I did. It’s given me a good solid 30 FPS and the motion blur makes it look like a movie. :)
It’s a great game, but the AI needs some serious tweaking… especially your singleplayer squad’s. They’re a bunch of well trained cold blooded killers, so why am I trying to leave them at base and bring my guerrilla conscripts to the fight instead? At one point the damn sniper started ordering my troops about when I was trying to get them all in a truck to attack a town. “1: GREEN TEAM, GET IN THAT TRUCK” “2: 5,6,7..9, REGROUP” “1: ALL, REGROUP” “2: 1, CEASE FIRE GODDAMMIT”
I can’t wait for some more patches.
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The last I checked only one or maybe two lived on-site.
It sounds like the AI needs a complete overhaul. One of the thrilling parts of OFP was AI wrangling. The AI knows no master, and often a 95% solution is the best you can hope for. In a complex mission, that means something will break. I’ll wager most bugs are Ai-related.
Oh, and I still don’t get the references to OFP’s “scripty” mission editor. Most missions in OFP had little or no scripts. But scripts were the direction fanatical OFP designers went, until you got monstrosities with scripted 30 fps video sequences, thousands of lines of code linked to addons with tens of thousands. ahhh those were the days.
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I want to buy this now. So many memories of the original Operation flashpoint flooding back.
Delicious, painful memories.
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Jim – while I agree that the coop side of these games is great, I would not discount the sort of depth you can get from adversarial gametypes. Combining the game’s voice-over-net features with a good playerbase can result in countless interesting scenarios that you would not see if faced only against AI.
For example, in my group’s ArmA1 gaming on Saturday, a situation developed where I had managed to shoot a great many of the enemy team (humans) in the back from a concealed position, ended up feeling guilty about it (I had shot their leaders, medics, and many of their players – it was like fish in a barrel), dropped my weapons in my hiding spot, came out of my hiding spot while announcing that I was unarmed, then went over and helped heal those I had shot (without them realizing who I was). After that, I talked my way into them letting me go free, walked away, snuck back into my hiding spot when nobody was looking, grabbed my rifle/pistol and ammo, and communicated to my teammates (elsewhere in defensive positions) the exact force composition of the remaining enemy (who I had just been talking with while healing – oh, and I ‘may’ have accidentally let their medic bleed out while I was tending to other people) and what direction they were coming from. It ended up being the deciding factor as to our team winning the mission – the intel that I was able to deliver after ‘mingling with the enemy’. It was incredibly unique and obviously not something you could get from just playing against AI.
Someone got a video of it, too – available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXZlhQxU71M&hd=1
(the voices are partially people dead in TS, in a ‘spectator’ channel, and partially those of us still alive in-game. some time-accel is used in parts of the vid, too)
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I’m not sure what everyone is talking about with ”Mouse Lag”?
Do you mean how you move you gun view somewhere and it seems to float there kind of like a balloon? lol
If so, it feels the same to me as in OFP and ArmA 1… i’ve been playing these games for about 7-8 years and it’s always been the same to me. It would be nice i guess if the cursor followed your mouse movements precisely, but i guess that’s not how they envision a person moving in the real world.
I don’t think it’s down to a bug or anything, i think it’s all done on purpose. Or am i missing the issue you’re talking about completely? Feels normal to me.
Also, i got perfect scores on the majority of the shooting range tests, aside from that bloody grenade launcher one.
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Haha Dslyecxi… that’s what i’m talking about!
Are you in a squad? I have to admit, i’ve rarely strayed away from playing with my own group of friends, but was considering looking into joining one of these clan/guild type efforts.
I think it’d be the way to go in ArmA 2, i hear too much about hacking in public servers at the moment. Plus i keep hearing awesome stories like yours. Do want.
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@fat
No that is precisely NOT what we are talking about. The mouse-lag is a bug that was present in ARMA 1 but was eventually sorted. It is NOTHING TO DO with how ARMA handles body and gun movement in the game. It does not affect everyone so that may be why you have no idea what we are talking about =)
Anyone who played Crysis at launch on Vista 64 will know what we are talking about…
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@Fat – I run Shack Tactical; the guide linked in the article ( http://ttp2.dslyecxi.com ) is our group’s tactical manual. :)
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@Dslyecxi (or anyone else): Any tips on whether/how I would go about finding a good online game of ArmA 1? I.e. what mods to have or not to have, what servers to look for (I’m located in western Europe)? When it comes to online games, I’m pretty much a newbie, but I am fairly well behaved and know not to play the game as if it was Doom.
Or am I too late, because everyone’s moving on to ArmA 2?
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I’ve had no mouse lag, I think they mean floating aim, where you can move you gun some what independently of your view.
If you don’t like it you can turn it down in options, I love it so have it fairly high.
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@Fat
Agreed it feels the same as OFP and ArmA1 – Which is why I couldn’t get into them. I can get top scores on the range too, but it’s an effort and it ‘feels’ bad, it’s not natural or an added challenge to master, rather a fighting of the controls, which feel broken. When up against live opponents it just feels really imprecise and frustrating. I’m constantly checking my frame rate as the lag makes it feel low, but am surprised to see it’s high. It might be ‘by design’ but I don’t think it’s realistic, and I love realism in games.
I will continue persevering…
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@lack_26
No, no and no again. Mouse lag is mouse lag; it is nothing to do with floating aim…
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@ Howard – Oh, OK then, that’s why i asked. I play on Vista 64 and played Crysis at launch on it and didn’t have it either. So yup, i’m still stumped. But hey, i have about about 5 bugs to worry about in A2 anyway. :’(
@ Dslyecxi – Nice. I really need to look into the squad stuff in ArmA 2, i’m missing out on a lot of cool stuff like that. Hopefully the bugs will be gone soon, i can’t really be bothered playing it much until then.
@ Thirith – People still play Op Flashpoint so i’m sure some will stick to ArmA 1, what with all the bugs in ArmA 2, higher system req’s needed, mods and stuff already out for A1, etc etc. You will still have plenty of games around. As for finding them, i’m not sure myself either. The only thing i really played aside from co-op was this weird cops vs robbers game. Fun, when the admin was around to kick the TK’s.
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@Lack_26
Nope, not taking about the mouse dead zone that you can set in the options.
(Actually I think that ArmA2 is the first in the series where the default value for this is 0, off).
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@Thirith
I think you may be too late at this point. It seems like many of the more popular communities are in the process of shifting or have shifted to ArmA2. At the very least, many of the players are playing A2 instead of A1, thus leaving otherwise populated servers empty. Might still be able to find some good games around, but I wouldn’t know where to point you exactly. As far as mods go, though – ACE is the one you should probably be looking for.
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@ RGS – Yes, i can relate to that. Takes a long time to get used to the feel of it and if i had a choice i’d rather have an instant targetting system/feel like other FPS’s. It sometimes feels like the game is trying to disable you, specially when you have to make a quick snapshot cause an enemy has spotted you 20m away.
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Ohhh, Dslylexi… i was looking at that guide the other day, i just realised when i looked at the Basic Rifleman section. Told my buddies about it but i didn’t realise it had more than just that one section to it, sweet. :)
I thought it had been made by the dude with the beard who does the TrackIR youtube vids, since i saw that mentioned somewhere by the author.
Nice work.
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Oh, nevermind, i just checked your website. You ARE the dude with the beard, haha. :)
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Thanks for the info, Dslyecxi. Looks like I might have to use ArmA as offline practice and then make the jump to ArmA 2. If there only wasn’t my resolve to be a bit more sensible with my spendings… :-D
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@Fat
Quick-ish snapshots (with accuracy) seem pretty impossible, yes.
Will keep going though, might try with trackIR (which I have for flight sims). See how that shakes things up as at least then it’ll feel very different, rather than just broken.
Cheers.
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There has to be an appropriate pay-off for your patience with all the crap this title expects you to put up with, in terms of outright bugs and hardware issues but also just the amazingly hideous GUI. I’m glad some people are finding that reward in a timely enough manner that the frustration didn’t get the best of them. It means there hopefully will be a myriad of fixes, patches and perhaps even player mods that address it.
I couldn’t get past it though – it was too much and I will not purchase it. Other games, the STALKER series for example, were also famously fraught with horrible bugs and issues when they were released, however, the reward for your patience came much quicker, and I think allowed a majority of people who tried them to get past the faults and enjoy the game.
Not so Arma II.
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ps: just curious, is there often ever a disconnect between a journalistic reviewer who is somewhat obligated to plow through faults in order to spend an appropriate amount of time with a title in order to merit a “holistic” review vs. the average consumer who will hit that brick wall from the start and just say “fuck it” since they’re under no obligation to continue?
Part of me feels bad for not having the patience to get past it, and another part of me suggests “why should I be expected to…”
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@DigitalSignalX: Games like the ones you’re writing about succeed or fail on the following – once you’ve put enough of an effort in it, do you get something that is unique and compelling and that required the steep learning curve, or do you get something that could have been achieved just as well without putting up as much of a hurdle to the player? I’m not saying that there aren’t ways in which Bohemia Interactive could have improved the game without dumbing it down – but my experience with their earlier games is that the reward for putting up with their idiosyncrasies and occasionally downright absurd decisions is an absolutely unique experience.
I admit that this may be a weird variation on Stockholm Syndrome, mind you.
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Yeah, ArmA II is at its best in co-op multiplayer. When it works, it works so well, and when it doesn’t work, it’s usually your fault it went tits-up. Compare and contrast Sekrit forum’s combined arms assaults:
a) Charging head-first into a fiery death with a tank and a LAV
b) Using the tank carefully to cover an assault as the infantry move forward, take out anti-tank infantry and spot for the heavy guns.
Also includes a Generation Kill-style moment where we charge through an enemy-held town until someone shouts “Hold up, guys!” and we find ourselves static in a hostile street.
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” but also just the amazingly hideous GUI. I’m glad some people are finding that reward in a timely enough manner that the frustration didn’t get the best of them”
It’s a fair point, and definitely no excuse, but I think many people are used to that pretty terrible GUI (and also, to the bugs) since Operation: Flashpoint.
Although I’ve never played the games that extensively, ArmA 2 was pretty much pick up and play due to the past experience with the predecessors.
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“-emergent gameplay: Not really. This term is vastly over used and missunderstood. Achieving an opject in 2 diffeent ways is not -emergent gameplay.”
As I understand it, emergent gameplay is where the player solves in-game situations in a manner in which the designer did not intend. So technically any game could have it and, by definition, designers can’t design a game with it.
However, I think it would be generally accepted that certain games encourage emergent gameplay (such as Deus Ex) and would be at the opposite end of the spectrum to games based on set-piece oriented gameplay (such as the Half-Life series). Oh, and it may also require vents. :-)
As such, while I’ve not yet played ArmA II (although I’ve played/own OpFor and own/not-played ArmA), I would think it definitely tends toward the ‘emergent gameplay’ end of that spectrum due to the simulation-y nature of the game. (Not sure whether there are any vents though!)
For me, this is one of the prime attractions of this type of game over things like Half-Life. I don’t have to worry about how the designer intended me to complete a puzzle but can do things my own way.
Incidentally, being able to complete a gameplay puzzle in multiple ways would be non-linear gameplay. While different from emergent gameplay, they do feed into each other. There is the trade off though that it is much harder (nay impossible?) to polish a non-linear game to the level of a more linear game like Half-Life 2.
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I just find it outstanding that they’ve barely touched the atrocious interface since 2001. It’s mentioned in basically every review I’ve ever read regarding all of the games, yet they’ve never really looked into finding a new alternative.
I spent about 20 minutes just trying to sort out two fire teams inside a couple of hummer online earlier. Sure, once you get used to the interface it’s fine – but I have been playing for a good 30-40 hours now (maybe) and I’m still accidentally giving completely the wrong orders with disastrous (if hilarious sometimes) results.
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Mouse lag is killing me at the moment as well. Rather a shame, as I’ve been looking forward to this quite a bit.
Have explosives always been so weak? I’m wondering because it seems like with the LAV-25′s gun there’s basically no area of effect at all. And yes, that’s with HE rounds. Then again, vehicle modeling has always been pretty poor in the series. Infantry’s where it’s at.
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Just tried the demo again, and I have to say that I don’t think the game is for me. I REALLY dig the realistic, slow paced, quick killing of the game, but I dread the thought of running or driving several miles, through deserted alpine wasteland just to get to the front lines, particularly when I can’t seem to find a single game filled with humans who have brains.
I’m also dreadfully confused as to why the truck drivers will stop dead or begin driving off-road, then stop if you get into their truck (cpu controlled players, that is), but seem to do just fine when you aren’t in the truck. The AI is awful.
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Agreed on the point about vehicle physics blug. I don’t get much enjoyment out of using the vehicles, so I tend to focus on infantry control.
Though a hummer with a grenade launcher or an LAV in support is always useful.
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Brilliant article Jim. I thought Alec had got all my interest-points with his Morrowind diary. This sounds just incredible though. I need to clear some room on my HD for the demo… (call me a sadist, but I like the drawn out process of getting broken games working as well).
Is anyone willing to stick their neck on the line and say whether they think Op Flashpoint 2 will this open and non-linear?
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I do disagree with the review. Where did you see that arma2 is about war ? Arma2 is the world first shepherd sim : you have 5 sheep with you an you have to take care of them. “Oh, please do not stay here”, “please, hide”, “please, stop screaming in the middle of the road”, “let’s move my babies”.
The first shepherd sim. Besides, i don’t see the point with this game.
Ok. Let’s be serious about it for a minute. I suppose that we’d all like to like this game. It’s a wonderful promise. The open world, the emergent situations… But it’s a failure. Ok, all games fail when it’s about open environment, and the player has to help the game going avoiding catastrophic reactions from the ai. But with arma 2, what a failure. And you have the right to say this game is a failure even if it looks so promising.
You are selling us junk in this paper : the solo fails, but maybe there will be good scenarios, maybe the multiplayer will be good… Maybe.
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@phat_chopps I don’t think OFP2 will be as in depth but I think it will be more fun, somewhere between ArmA and a standard FPS. A2, although an improvement over A1, still falls short of OFP in terms of enjoyment. The clunky movement is what kills it for me.
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Agreed on the clunkiness Stem.
Funny really. It gets so much very right, yet all the niggling issues build up to the point where I repeatedly throw it down in disgust.
I can’t help but wish BIS would just sit down and hammer out ways to make the game a more fluid, accessible experience. I refuse to believe doing so would detract from the realism agenda.
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I’m still playing the demo and I find the Map Editor to be infuriating. Vehicles seem to hate following waypoints, I can’t find any tutorials on how to use the damned thing, and did I mention units really suck at following waypoints?
PS: How the hell do I tell the editor to spawn units inside of a vehicle instead of ordering them to get in? It makes helicopter assaults from out at see rather difficult to achieve if they all spawn in the ocean and die.
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@LQB: Here is the documentation of the mission editor for the first Arma. I found this very helpful when playing with the A2 editor in the Demo.
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Anyone know if it’s possible to change the field of view, seems pretty ‘zoomed in’ in first person, would be nice to open it up a bit for better peripheral vision.
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on backorder from CDWO. oh well I have heaps of things I need to be doing in my spare time while I am waiting for it to arrive regardless.
I wonder how FADE is treating people? Or if it is just an elaborate farce to vaguely cover up bugs?
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My roommate and I have been attempting to go through the campaign in co-op. I would really enjoy it if every other time we died we didn’t have to start the entire mission over, unless we manage to get to another save point. The game seems to delete your save after you reload it.
We probably would have been okay after the first reload if the AI hadn’t taken over before we spawned and sprinted into the enemy tank we had been watching from a distance and gotten killed.
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@RGS
You can press the “-” (minus) sign on your numpad to widen your FoV, but it´s not permanent.
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Santiago: double tap it. ;)
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@Santiago
Thanks man.
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@KP
Thanks also ;)
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Surely it have it shortcomings now, but I see this game community being just on beginning in the development in time to create some massive game in somewhere future when all the fails will be solved. Ive enjoyed the product what ever the problems there have been from the beginning and will keep on it support far till future.
Though half part of community surely would play VBS if it would be priced under 100£ and I guess it will get massive budget behind it making it super product to its customers in time (2020 ? real physics, whole world as terrain, AI would be as good as real humans) and all the gamers with enought cash.
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@KP
Ah! see? coherence on the UI. Very elegant.
Thanks!
BTW, just bought the thing. Never before played anything similar, so heck, this thing attracts newcomers- it´s incredible!
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Emergent gameplay has always been a nebulous term.
I like to say that every strategy is emergent to different degrees, depending on how many verbs are invoked in creating it. Jumping straight up is an emergent strategy to the degree 0. Rocket jumping is emergent to the degree of about 7 (jumping, air control/movement, creating rockets, contact/collision/touching, splash damage/kick, gravity).
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Having missed the boat on OFP and the whole realism scene, I was a little bit wary about purchasing this, so I thought I’d get the old demo off of Steam and give it lookee.
I was sold when halfway through the Boot camp training learning how to misuse an RPG, myself and the instructor suddenly come under fire from the insurgents in the nearby village. A reload or two later and I was in full Hudson from Aliens mode handing out retribution ‘You want some muddafunster?’ Boom, Boom ‘You want some as well?’ Double tap, etc AWESOME. One credit card instantly spanked (shakes fist at Jim).
Game is def buggy (invisible gun syndrome seem a regular occurance..), but atmosphere is great. The first mission, we start to advance on the village and our squad leader face plants as soon as we are near the outskirts, not even wounded, but straight to dead. I was like ‘Holy shit!!!’ hit the deck and get crawling time AWESOME
This is combat for masochists. The greater the pain, the more the gain AWESOME ;)
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Kadayi, just to make sure- the invisible gun isn’t just because you are jogging or sprinting, is it? Press alt and move mouse to look down when the gun disappears and you should see it below you, in the same animation as you see in the third person view.
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No I found that when I was going to the RPG training I swapped out my M4 for a funky silenced one with the underslung grenade launcher in one of the crates near the captain, however the gun model wasn’t there, just my hands in mid air, though I could zoom in ok. I’ll play around with the alt and mouse a bit and see if that solves the problem next time though.
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Oh no it is a bug, then. It’s just lots of people I know are so used to having the gun on-screen at all times, they thought it disappeared when they jogged, haha.
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Appreciate the heads up anyhows. I’ve wisely printed off the control schemes today so I can familiarise myself with them. It was all a bit over the shop yesterday.
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Arma2′s single player campaign is in no way the equal of the original OFP’s. It has some lovely ideas, but is let down by A) the execution and B) The final 1/3 (although the amount of time it takes to complete the warfare missions its more like the final half)
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Missing weapons apparently occur only in the demo because they’ve chopped out plenty in order to reduce its size – they chopped out a little too much!
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The game has it’s fair share of annoying bugs, but to say it’s littered with them to the point of being unplayable would be incredibly unfair. The very same thing used to be true for Operation Flashpoint 1. Now, we could be overly critical about this, but the game still is lots of lots of fun despite this. Especially the multiplayer.
@EBass: I doubt you’re being objective here, as it’s more or less exactly the same thing, but with a slightly different story obviously. But that’s probably why you’re unimpressed by it.
It’s also the one thing I really feel disappointed about. The game still feels like Operation Flashpoint 1, instead of Operation Flashpoint 3 (as Arma 1 was a re-issue / sequel as well, don’t forget that).
It definitely looks good and runs great on my machine, but to be honest… it’s sort of a let down to the extent of not doing anything really new.
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@Dobro#6
You are indeed correct on that front sir. I bought the game last night and found when I redid the training mission again, that the bug didn’t replicate. Have to say the game is pretty smooth overall. I can’t say I’ve experienced any major bugs so far.
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I have never liked a “realistic” shooter. The closest I’ve gotten is Day of Defeat, which is like TF2 next to ArmA. Somehow, though, I have found myself enamored of this game despite its bugs and its quirks.
I built an escape mission and played it last night with eleven other guys. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to play–and during that time none of us fired a single round. I have never experienced anything like that in another game. Lying there in the field as the patrols I had scripted passed, I felt suspense and tension I haven’t experienced in a game in a long time.
At another point, one of the patrols slowed down near our position. After it had passed, one of my teammates said, “Why did it slow down like that?”
Another said: “To make me [poo] myself.”
Good times.
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The tale of the soldier following the helicopter in a car made me laugh so much – a whole post on hilarious bugs would be great.
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@PHeMoX
Are you being serious? Its nothing like the same thing. The first Operation Flashpoint’s campaign was a far more linear (with a couple of small deviations) more tightly scripted experience. Mostly focusing on set-piece battles and events (though these set pieces you could approach in your own way). OFP2′s campaign is far more open ended, and includes RTS base building, gain money from kills elements torn from the warfare multiplayer mode.
The argument between tightly scripted well written linear games (Half Life) vs more open ended but less charater/story/event driven games (STALKER) has been going on for a while, and I don’t think anyone has been so arrogant to claim that one approach is flat out “better” than the other. However, two things A) Your point is that they are the same, they are not. B) Open ended games generally are more buggy etc than linear ones for obvious reasons. However the broken scripting in some missions (Project Manhatten being the most obvious example) borders on making it flat out unplayable.
In addition the original OFP campaign was fought out over 3 islands. As opposed to the 1 map of the Arma2 campaign. Not that that’s definatly a bad thing, as the world of Chernarus is more diverse and well realised than any of OFP’s islands. That being said, we’re talking about the campaign here, and the campaign’s short length really doesen’t deal with a large proportion of the island in any real detail, whereas you fought all over Malden and Everon (less so Kolguchev)
In another addition, OFP had sections as a grunt, a special forces soldier, a chopper pilot and a tank commander. Arma2 always has you as the same guy. Again not neccerily a bad thing, I always enjoyed the infantry part of the game the best, but again your point that its the same is conclusively wrong.
Indeed, the only time you’ll get near a tank or chopper is in the “Warfare” missions. Which ironically enough is where the campaign fell apart.
I didn’t like the totally broken scripting in Razor Two or Project Manhattan, but I coulden’t feel angry with BiS about it because at least they were TRYING something new and different in an industry increasingly dominated by the safe and secure.
What I DID feel angry about was them shoehorning in two missions that I could port straight from any online warfare map. Making them part of the single player campaign was a horrendous idea, not only was it a woeful lack of effort, but seeing “bases” pop up out of nowhere and summoning troops from money you get when you kill bad guys? SERIOUSLY immertion breaking.
Not to mention that making them over such a large area of map was a very very cheap was to increase the size of the campaign. Not to mention they AI they built is thoroughly incapable of playing warfare and just spams jeeps.
Phemox I really don’t know how you can say its more of the same. If you can justify that comment in any way I’d love to hear from you.
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Ive had a blast playing this in multiplayer….capture the flag is awesome and the coop is good when you dont have morons playing on the same server TKing you……
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‘Arma2 is the world first shepherd sim : you have 5 sheep with you an you have to take care of them. “Oh, please do not stay here”, “please, hide”, “please, stop screaming in the middle of the road”, “let’s move my babies”.”
Hello, and welcome to every squad-based shooter in the last ten years.
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Best review of the game i have seen, fantastic writing. I’ve never heard of this site before, but I’ll be returning to follow your reviews Jim.
I have similar fond memories of opflash the original, visionary and uncompromising, and from the vids I have seen it looks like the have been constantly working on everything that was good about the first game. I admire that kind of dedication and the courage not to compromise to the 10 year old gamer.
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Thanks for the review, Jim.
It seems it is mostly the same as ArmA 1: generally buggy, convoluted UI, ridiculous AI, still lots of fun.
Why are BI not learning already. What’s the point of releasing it before OFP2 and MW2, if it’s (once again) a handicapped release? don’t they realize this will harm them?
This feels like a beta release. I’ll wait 6 months for their “gold” version, where at least some of the bugs are addressed, and another SP campaign added.
OFP has been the only one of the bunch that I’ve played in multi-player, and then, only with one other player. And even then, it’s been multiple times better than single-player. I really hope I get the chance to play ArmA2 with a big group. It’s very unlikely, thanks to where I live.
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Funny how this review starts out with “here’s wot I think” and then turns out to be a well-written review. Interesting read.
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Stumbled upon this website today and i will keep coming back. Great reviews Jim. Keep them coming. Cant wait for what you have to say about ofp2.
I installed the Arma2 Demo yesterday myself and, after surprisingly finding out I had to manually upgrade my DirextX9.dll file, was really very disappointed by what I experienced the 1st hour into the singleplayer assignments. The controls, the voice acting, the general performance.. Your review spurts me to give it another try tonight though and perhaps even go and buy it, just to experience the multiplayer part for myself. Thank you.
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