Rock, Paper, Shotgun

While we’re all getting busy with Arma II, some exciting stuff is still happening with the original Operation Flashpoint, including the latest release of this remarkable-looking Warhammer 40k mod. The images certainly look impressive, and the modelling is high quality. Digging around in my game collection I’ve discovered that I no longer have a copy of the game, so I can’t drop into this to try it out. Any other OpFlash owners fancy trying it and reporting back in the comments? Let me know what it’s like. Direct download link, 458mb.

[Flashpoint has the dual appeal of being simultaneously one of the most realistic takes on the Soldier game the medium has ever seen and the only one where you can engage in the sport of Tractor hunting in an attack chopper. I've interviewed Marek and his brother a few times over the years, and they're one of the more gloriously eccentric and constantly enthusiastic developers I've met. Last time I was over there, talking about Armed Assault we had a lengthy discussion about how they were programming Butterflies. They develop incredibly militaristic games and they obsess over butterflies. It's hard not to love them.]

Before Bohemia released their classic Soldier-Sim, I had a chance to chat to director Marek Spanel about his life growing up as a games devotee in the Czech Republic. He described sneaking their first computer into the country after a trip to Switzerland. And then, realising there was no way to load or save data, jury-rigging cables to perform the task with their tape recorders. And then learning to program games so, finally, they could achieve their objective of playing a game.

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RPS friend and Creative Assembly minion James Carey has spent the past few years being obsessed with PC soldier sims – first Operation Flashpoint and then its direct sequel (as opposed to indirect sequel, Operation Flashpoint 2. which was recently announced by Codemasters but won’t be developed by Bohemia) Armed Assault. Over the last few months Carey has been teased a bit by me and others as he creates war scenarios, mods parachutes and “goes on maneuvers” with his weekend war chums.

Carey was therefore pleased to be able to demonstrate that his own obsession with the super-accurate war games were as nothing compared to some of his militarist colleagues. Below is a picture of one Arma fan’s setup. Click the image for full size.

Insane? Or actually what most gamers want? I already own three PCs, two screens and a laptop. Something like this is the logical conclusion. Right? (I tell you, when I win the lottery there’s going to be a picture of my neon-and-Leopard skin penthouse games cinema plastered across the entire internet.)

Okay, so how about instead of that you have the capacity to be able to fire live rounds at the screen. I’m not kidding. (11mb .wmv). Hot jazz too…

And here’s the reason behind this entire post: a video of those four giant screens in action. Holy shit.

Screw decadent wastes of resources: that is a happy man.