By Jim Rossignol on July 14th, 2010 at 8:34 pm.
And Bohemia Interactive have released a video which shows off some of the stuff that means Arma 2 – and its Operation Arrowhead expansion which arrived on the 28th, last month (sorry, I missed that entirely) – definitely isn’t just a first-person shooter. This High Command tutorial (which is below, and spotted via Mr Blue) shows off all the means by which the game allows you to direct a battle, rather than just fighting it yourself. Reminds me that we need to have a crack at doing a bit more Arma 2 coverage on RPS, and get some multiplayer going. Yep.
14/07/2010 at 20:38 Sweedums says:
i think Operation Arrowhead can already be bought on Steam… or maybe thats just the US, i haven’t tried…
14/07/2010 at 20:42 DrGonzo says:
It’s EU as well. It was available on Steam in the UK from the 29th of June it says on Steam.
14/07/2010 at 20:41 Heliocentric says:
No interest in arrowhead but arma 2 is a beautiful game.
14/07/2010 at 20:50 myros says:
I enjoyed arma II and it also had a tutorial for ‘high command’ and base building etc but it’s kinda pointless as it’s not actualy part of any campaign. I even searched among the excellent player made scenarios and campaigns and found none that highlight these aspects of arma II.
14/07/2010 at 21:11 robrob says:
I spent a long time making a mission which let you use all the strategic level command stuff but it is a lot of work to make a mission including all those features.
14/07/2010 at 21:02 Unaco says:
Reminds me that I perhaps have to get round to playing this some time. I loved OFP… with Resistance it was a fantastic game. Me and my friends would spend days at a time playing and refining custom missions, or trying to beat the Campaigns on Veteran difficulty, or playing small maps over LAN. ArmA was a bit of letdown for me though, as the Single player was terrible… Multi player, however, was one of the most fun gaming experiences I’ve had, and most of the time I wasn’t even shooting anyone (Little Bird pilot, or Spec-Ops behind enemy lines lasing Shilkas). Will add it to the long, long list of games I should consider picking up.
14/07/2010 at 21:04 airtekh says:
I can’t remember if it was Operation Flashpoint that coined the phrase ‘Military Sim’ or not.
Anyway, Arma’s definitely more of that vein rather than a pure FPS. Gotta love those driveable tanks and choppers.
14/07/2010 at 21:20 Malleus says:
I call it “Tactical Combat Simulation”. It’s way beyond the FPS genre…
15/07/2010 at 11:47 Bluebreaker says:
I call it “kick in the balls” game
14/07/2010 at 21:17 fabamatic says:
While playing Arma II after fiddling for too long trying to put a explosive in a mission objective, I got the feeling that this game was the Dwarf Fortress of the FPS genre.
14/07/2010 at 21:23 rebb says:
I wish they had done more to the graphics / netcode / interface(!!!) with this as compared to the base-game. But i guess these changes will be something to push Arma3 with..
I’m currently in a bit of a hate-love relationship with the game, uninstalled it twice, reinstalling it again right now. Sigh.
14/07/2010 at 21:32 El_MUERkO says:
i like Arrowhead but the command interface hurts my brain
14/07/2010 at 21:36 Gap Gen says:
I really like the idea of having a command tree and playing only one part of that tree. It works really well in Scourge of War: Gettysburg, and I think it solves a lot of the problems (assuming competent AI) that plague games that either require too much attention in too many places at once (say, Supreme Commander) or that give you too much control (e.g. Empire).
14/07/2010 at 22:27 mlaskus says:
I bought it on Steam but I can’t play it. It’s lagging horribly on lowest settings and bugs prevented me from completing even the first tutorial. :/
14/07/2010 at 22:36 Mik says:
Man, if RPS wants to play some Arma 2 MP count me in for sure, for sure. Set up a voice chat channel thingy, host a ‘Domination’ server and I’ll be in there, holding my line.
14/07/2010 at 22:50 Turin Turambar says:
My last Arma 2 OA experience: a coop mission with around 15 people, having to drive a convoy (2 Bradleys, repair truck, ammo truck, 3 humvees, and some other car) from Airport A to Airport B.
Result: Success, but with needed an epic time of 2 hours, 40 minutes, Oh yeah, we finished with just 1 humvee and the extra cars.
The experience of having every driver, every gunner, and every passanger being a human (speaking with Teamspeak), everyone having to coordinate between all the vehicles, was totally unique.
15/07/2010 at 08:47 Jim says:
What mission is that? Sounds awesome. =D
15/07/2010 at 09:21 Turin Turambar says:
Mmm it was in Kellys Heroes server. Search co18_convoyhell_v1-4-100.Takistan
14/07/2010 at 23:35 GC says:
In the last mission of ArmA2 you can chose to be in command of the whole army to conquer the whole map. Sadly it crashed a lot so I never completed that last mission.
Operation Arrowhead had a lot of crashes before the patch too.
14/07/2010 at 23:39 KeenanW says:
The game is more than strategic… It’s THIS!
14/07/2010 at 23:52 JB says:
Of all the boat skydiving I’ve ever seen, that was pretty extreme.
15/07/2010 at 09:06 Heliocentric says:
That video was actually 100% authentic. The navy seals used HARIBI (high altitude rigid inflatible boat insertions) in Iraq.
15/07/2010 at 12:17 Jhoosier says:
“That video was actually 100% authentic. The navy seals used HARIBI (high altitude rigid inflatible boat insertions) in Iraq.”
Did they bounce, too?
15/07/2010 at 13:35 TeeJay says:
photos: http://www.specialoperations.com/Navy/RIB/RHIB_Drop/
15/07/2010 at 00:55 Zetetic says:
EXCITING MUSIC EXCITING MUSIC
Men walking.
EXCITING MUSIC EXCITING MUSIC
THIS IS GOING TO BE REALLY EXCITING
EXCITING MUSIC EXCITING MUSIC
Men waiting to walk.
EXCITING MUSIC EXCITING MUSIC
Men walking.
15/07/2010 at 09:22 Jim says:
ArmA is as much about the calm before the storm as it is the storm itself. :P
15/07/2010 at 10:08 Gap Gen says:
Awesome.
16/07/2010 at 08:38 Corrupt_Tiki says:
I’m with Jim; It has happened so many times, walking, walking, walking, machine gun fire, shit yourself, half tyour eam is dead, and you don’t know where the MG is.
15/07/2010 at 02:16 Adam Whitehead says:
Cow-mounted machine guns. The way all wars will be fought with in the future.
http://youtu.be/KP1SZA4SXSU
15/07/2010 at 10:28 EBass says:
Been playing a lot of Arma2 recently I’d definatly be up for some actual pre made objective based co-op, rather than the more procedureal stuff most servers play.
15/07/2010 at 11:50 Sol says:
I picked up Arma 2 in the steam sales, by the sounds of it some coop multiplayer is the way to go with this, might have to get a handle on the controls and jump in.
Any excuse to use the flightstick too…
15/07/2010 at 15:36 HybridHalo says:
The High Command and Base Building stuff is all used in the Capture The Island based Multiplayer modes. Campaign is really 10% of Arma2/AO.
15/07/2010 at 15:56 Item! says:
I bought it, tried it and got sick of it being both totally bug-broken and alternately crashing and running like choppy rubbish on my quad-cored, 8Gb RAM, GTX285 rig.
It may well have been great, but nothing about it encouraged me to dig for it’s greatness.
15/07/2010 at 16:18 Ozzie says:
Reminds me that I have to finish the campaign of Jagged Alliance 2. I’m not sure though how much the two games have in common.
15/07/2010 at 17:42 Hellfire257 says:
Hey RPS,
If your after playing some multiplayer our clan would be more than happy to host you for a game or two. We play Coops on Sunday and usually play some PvP on a Friday night.
http://www.havoc-company.com
Thanks,
Hellfire.
16/07/2010 at 00:18 WTF says:
Would love to play ARMA 2 in MP – if only someone could tell me HOW to actually run the damned thing at a reasonable frame rate.
Such a shame as there is clearly a very interesting game underneath the terrible engine coding…
16/07/2010 at 08:46 Corrupt_Tiki says:
not terrible, just complicated IMO.
Google up some tutorials, I know I found a good one for getting it to run stable, also unless you have a nuclear supercomputer I recommend keeping the view distance to about 3000meters, I have mine at 5000m.
16/07/2010 at 09:31 WTF says:
Sorry, but I;m sticking with “terrible”. My PC is no longer bleeding edge but it is pretty good;’ capable of running every other game out there at max details and resolution at a perfectly acceptable (good even) framrate.
With ARMA 2 though, no matter what settings I choose, I get appaling FPS – low teens. I have tried every single thing there is to try from changing OS to changing hardware settings to changing drivers to changing hardware – no luck. At 1920×1080 at max details I get about 13-19 FPS
at 800×600 all lowest details I get about 13-19 FPS.
The engine is just utter crap. Really annoying as I have had ARMA 2 sat on my Steam account for a long while now and I am still yet to play it. I’m a huge fan of Op Flashpoint and the first ARMA (as horribly buggy as it was) but no amount of rose-tinted viewpoint can hide the issues with ARMA 2
16/07/2010 at 09:39 Dominic White says:
So, my mid-range PC (which hasn’t been upgraded in years) that can run Operation Arrowhead at 25-30 pretty solidly at high detail… I’m just imagining it, right? It doesn’t exist? I’m a deluded fanboy with rose-tinted glasses?
Ha. Yeaaaaaah..
NO.
16/07/2010 at 09:58 WTF says:
@Domonic
Okay – the fact that you have just charged in here all puffed up and enraged and decided to take my comment about my own levels of nostalgia for Bohemia games as a personal attack DOES show that you are a fan boy. (Not necessarily a bad thing – but your unwillingness to even HEAR criticism really is)
As to it running well on your machine: I have no doubt that it does. Problem is I would bet good money (judging by your own description of your hardware) that I , like a great, great many people who still post on the ARMA boards, have a much better PC than you and yet I cannot get it to run properly. My experience does not invalidate yours and vice versa. The issue is that it SHOULD run very well on my machine but does not and no amount of tweaking can fix it and an engine that is that susceptible to hardware/OS combinations/foibles is clearly flawed – BADLY flawed. When we have dozens and dozens of people with bleeding edge rigs (Quad core 4 gig CPUs and 1/2/3 of the most powerful GPUs available) who are reporting catastrophically low FPS, then there is clearly something broken in the code and Bohemia appear to have no interest whatsoever in even attempting to fix these issues
16/07/2010 at 10:56 Corrupt_Tiki says:
@ WTF
That is a bit strange but, my rig, not the greatest by far, but I think ok still runs it Medium – High with AA off at 1024reso (My pov monitor doesn’t support higher =’( ) and I get pretty decent framerate.
Maybe an issue with certain configurations/later hardware as you said.
I think however it is a bit unreasonable that you assume that bohema have no interest in fixing the compatability issues. In my experience with Bohema they seem to be very dedicated to what they do and proud of the games they make, So I think it’s just a little premature is all.
I must say I was disappointed when I couldn’t just crank everything on high, but It still looks beautiful, and I rather have simple shadows than a pretty slideshow.
(rig; Core 2 Duo-2.1ghz. 2gb Ram, 2x Radeon HD5770
16/07/2010 at 00:45 RedFred says:
Man I wish I had bought this in the steam sale. I was trying to find a good price even before the sale then some how convinced myself not to buy it during the sale.
16/07/2010 at 08:49 Corrupt_Tiki says:
worth 100$ easy. Even if only to support a dev who is making a game more complex, instead of the norm of simplifying it so ‘everyone age 4-60′ can play
16/07/2010 at 09:10 Heliocentric says:
Arma2 has been €5 on direct2drive bundled in with arma1+expansion as a point of what to expect from future sales.
I only have one with arma2 which is how vehicles handle (especially helicopters) and mods sort that. Soon a public release of the project reality mod will come out, its certainly worth what they ask for it.
16/07/2010 at 13:51 Antlia says:
If RPS is gonna play Arma 2, please play the original because not everyone wants to buy OA.
16/07/2010 at 13:57 Dejoh says:
If you have had any enjoyment with Arma in the first place, you will not believe the improvments and excellent graphics in Operation Arrowhead. A plus is that it adds many new vehicles and weapons..