Arma 3 [official site] has jetted off on its summer hols with the launch of its Apex expansion today. Apex sends those surly soldiers to the sunny South Pacific to adventure on the tropical archipelago of Tanoa. Naturally, they’ve snuck a few fun toys into their luggage – one can hardly hit the beach without a thermal-masking uniform. A big update launched aside Apex too, with changes for all Arma 3.
Arma 3 will jet off on its summer hols to the sunny South Pacific on July 11th, developers Bohemia announced during E3 this week. The military sim’s Apex expansion [official site] introduces the archipelago of Tanoa with 100 km² of sun, sea, shanty towns, sugar cane fields, and submachine guns. Along with a new area, it adds new vehicles, men, weapons and whatnot. Observe the customary E3 moving pictures:
Maybe you think you’ll like shooting things, but you’re not sure what flavour of shooting. Are you the type who likes tense, simulated military manshoots you can play with dozens of friends in wide open areas, with missions you make yourself and vehicles you can pilot and drive? Good news! Arma 3 is free on Steam this weekend.
Or are you the type who likes slightly-silly, rapid paced, run-and-gunning against chums and zombies? Good news! Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 multiplayer is free on Steam this weekend.
One big milestone DayZ [official site] has headed for on its hike through the boglands of Early Access has been a new renderer [the bit of a game engine which turns numbers into pictures -‘Technical’ ed.]. Developers Bohemia Interactive have been working on a new DirectX 11 renderer which should bring far better performance to the open-world survival game, and maybe tart it up a little too. This has, of course, taken far longer than they’d planned (and said), but it is coming along. Check out this new video showing off the DX11 renderer and some dangerously heavy rain.
“You can imagine the editor as a military-themed Mario Maker on PC,” says one Bohemian in a video showing off the new editor coming to Arma 3 [official site] later this month. It certainly looks a lot friendlier than Arma editors of yore. Sure, folks have already managed to turn Arma into everything from a zombie apocalypses to a job simulator, but more approachable tools mean even more people making stuff. I am always in favour of more people making things. The more readme files the merrier, I always say. Missions and mods too, I suppose. Here, have a look at the new editor:
Cast your mind back to the hazy summer of 2012, when the world first went wild for DayZ [official site]. ITV sent Ross Kemp in to interview DayZ’s most notorious player-killing gangs, an entire edition of The Observer’s New Review supplement reported on arts and culture in Chernarus (with a fascinating piece on puppet theatre!), and MasterChef’s Invention Test round gave contestants scavenged ingredients – trail mix, tinned sardines, a can of Mountain Green, etc. My, how the survive ’em up took off!
So you may have a DayZ forums account, in which case you should know that they were hacked recently and you should do that whole password-changing dance.
Historically, the go-to feature for adding a splash of scary to games has been zombies. Hordes of ’em, coz the undead are terrifying, yeah? So what do you do when your game began life as a zombified mod for another game, like DayZ [official site] to the open-world military sim Arma II? You introduce predatory animals to the relative safety of the world’s expansive plains. In DayZ, that’s the plan and this here work-in-progress video is proof:
