ArmA-II Reviewed

[Pendragon]

Jim Rossignol (jim@rockpapershotgun.com) of Rock Paper Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/) has been witting some more on his thoughts of ArmA-II (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06/29/wot-i-think-arma-ii/) having been playing for some weeks.

People ask me what it's like to play ArmA. Thay ask why are you playing a game with such short comings. To be honest I have found it hard to put it into words. Well Jim is a much better wordsmith than me. All I know is that whenever I speak to people that have been in real war, served their country. When they play this game they are amazed and enthralled. Nothing comes closer...

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/09/june/arm1a.jpg

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 gradual realisation of the enormity of thing 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.

[sgTsTuFz]

ok - so is it straight fps all the way thru ? that flash demo showed 3 game modes ...

[Misnomer]

You should really try the demo sgTsTuFz. That way you can see the co-op, the multiplayer deathmatch, the vehicles, the editor, and some of the singleplayer. While this game is too buggy and frustrating to me to really make it worth 50 dollars when the market later this year will be saturated and taking tons of money from me, it is worth a look just to see all the stuff they tried to cram in.....

That being said, it is a 2.5 gig demo so if you don't have bandwidth to spare, read all the comments below that review. It is quite enlightening. You will never find a game with so many apologists (not quite fanboys, more able to find "logic" for all the problems than anything else).

The biggest problem with the entire game, and the review does a nice job of explaining this, is that they have absolutely no sense of helping the user interact with it. The UI is terrible and conveying what is actually going on to people in game is really poorly done. Maybe this is part of the learning curve, but for a game that still has a "crosshair" of sorts on the screen....the realism excuse for crippled user interaction is weak.

For example, in Crysis (not realistic or simulator) you have a little thing in the corner showing you the fire mode you selected. In ArmA 2 you have a massive block on your screen showing you the mode...that apparently also controls getting to grenades. There are like half a million key binds in the game and grenades are tied to fire select? Someone really really didn't think this out.

[Pendragon]

It's one of those things, you get or you don't. Here in Britain we would call it a "Marmite" You love it or you hate it.

If you get it, then all of those things you mention plus loads more that you have not seen melt into the background.

If you don't get it, then it's horrendous mess not worthy of your time or your cash.

Both camps are right, both conflicting sides are have a valid point.

Last night I was chatting with a guy that is a long time ArmA player. What he said was telling. He said that "it was a good thing that the game (ArmA:1) was buggie because it got rid of all of the crappy players, BI and the community fixed it and it became a great game with a fantastic community" He was looking forward to much the same happening with ArmA-II.

I disagree, I would love to see ArmA-II played by the numbers we see playing CoD. I fear in the end he may be right, wait 6 months for the bugs to be fixed and the price to drop. You will have the game we want...


sgTsTuFz: to answer your question, yes it's a shooter. In some game modes you get the positions of commander then it's a bit like BF:2 and you play from the map screen.

I still play the game much the way I did with BF:2. One foot, rifle in hand.

[sgTsTuFz]

thanks, i'll give the demo a shot, the flash demo was a bad arcade shooter. But I "get" the changing interface between fps and playing "pieces" from the map.

[Ghost Dog]

I 've been loving the game ever since I got it. The campaign is intense and the learning curve is huge if you haven't played ARMA, but once you get the hang of it, you 'll love it. So far, I 've played all the missions multiple times before proceding, just to try out different approaches.

The AI sometimes leads to frustration (Huey trans crashing in trees, AI refusing to follow orders) but overall they are very advanced and deadly. They once amazed me when I put them on 'danger' behaviour while moving through a forest... covering eachother and moving from tree to tree, simply awesome.

Don't expect a run and gun game when playing ARMA 2, it 's very slow paced. So far I haven't seen any bugs except some weird AI behaviour.