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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@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?
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.
@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…
@lack_26
No, no and no again. Mouse lag is mouse lag; it is nothing to do with floating aim…
@ 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.
@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).
@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.
@ 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.
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.
Oh, nevermind, i just checked your website. You ARE the dude with the beard, haha. :)
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
@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.
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.
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…”
@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.
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.
” 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.
“-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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
@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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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?
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.
@RGS
You can press the “-” (minus) sign on your numpad to widen your FoV, but it´s not permanent.
Santiago: double tap it. ;)
@Santiago
Thanks man.
@KP
Thanks also ;)
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.
@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!
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).
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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!
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.
@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.
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.
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.
@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.