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.]
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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.
I love how you guys slam major games for very minor issues and be very timid on this mess.
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.
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 :\
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.
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.
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.
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!]
Excellent article…. hit the nail on the head for us first-timers.
@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…
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).
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.
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/
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)
@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?
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!
@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.
@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.
@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.
the gradual realisation of the enormity of thing thing
Eh wat?
@nafe
AFAIK it is just plain old Securerom. Can anyone who owns the European release confirm this?
@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.
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.
@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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 ;) )
@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! :)
Do want
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. :(
(Sorry the above is the quote of Howard, and my response below)
Jim are you playing with TrackIR? I don’t see any mention of it in your postings so I’m guessing not.
Nope. I’ve used it in the past, but I don’t have one.
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.
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.
Isn’t this the project where all the devs live together and sleep and breathe this game?
This is a stunning achievement.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I want to buy this now. So many memories of the original Operation flashpoint flooding back.
Delicious, painful memories.
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)
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.
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.
@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…
@Fat – I run Shack Tactical; the guide linked in the article ( http://ttp2.dslyecxi.com ) is our group’s tactical manual. :)