Customer
Reviews
Sandbox in it's new and
Literal Form
Armed Assault, the franchise
with a pretty standard love/hate relationship factor. You'll love the
free-form, gigantic sandbox that it has to offer, but you'll hate it at
the same time for it's (unavoidable) bugs and complications.
Combined
Operations is simply a package-deal with the latest "Operation
Arrowhead" (Takistan, Zargabad, Desert environments) standalone
expansion, as well as the original ARMA II (Chernarus) in the same box.
The value is great, as you're basically buying the keys to a massive
mil-sim amusement park, free to do whatever you please with not too many
constraints. There isn't a good method in describing what kind of game
this is if you haven't played it before. If you're used to Call of Duty
and similar shooters, then you're in for a surprise if you play this
game. It's a lot like the original Operation Flashpoint, except on a
much grander scale, with more flexibility. I could spend a couple hours
writing up an essay on what this game is, or I could just give a quick
rundown on what one should expect.
PROS:
- Flexibility in
doing what you want. Create your own missions, scenarios, dynamic
environments, etc.
- Striking visuals with the proper hardware.
(Proper, as in: Very nice rig, $2,000+) A lot of things going on at
once, leads to amazing scenes.
- Community and it's modding
counterpart is amazing. First thing one should do after buying this
game, is visit [...] or the [...] forums.
- Extremely *massive*
environments, with land-air-sea mobility. Jets, tanks, helicopters,
armored humvees, the works.
CONS:
- Can be ridiculously
complicated for first-time users, even for PC game veterans. Patience is
a virtue.
- Quite a system hog, especially when the action is at
it's finest.
- Large, open-world, sandbox environment = plenty of
bugs that one has to come to accept with such an undertaking.
Overall,
this is a game for PC gamer veterans and enthusiasts. This is not
something you just jump into all the while expecting a simulation to be
handed to you on a silver platter. Time and patience has to be put in to
be able to get a great experience. Is that really a problem, or is it
more of a quality? When typical gamers spend a large chunk of their
lives dying-and-respawning in Call of Duty, with no change in pace and
with little rewards... I would say it's a quality with it's own rewards.
This is the kind of game you purchase as an investment, one that you
will keep coming back to when you feel like trying something different.
Making a new scenario, having a tactical battle online with others, etc.
Complex but rewarding military operations simulator
ARMA2 is a realistic military
simulator, probably the most realistic on the market. It's not just
infantry combat, although you can play it that way. ARMA2 also has cars,
trucks, tanks, helicopters, planes, and more. It even models ballistics
and bullet drop, if someone fires at you from 200 meters away you even
hear the bullet hit the ground before you hear the rifle. It's a big
sandbox, which is good and bad.
The game ships with 2 islands, a
large and a small. Both have forests, hills, roads, towns, fields,
mountains, etc. I'd say you would spend a good 15 minutes driving from
one side of the island to the other. If you can see it you can go there,
there are NO invisible walls. The game locations are fictional,
although they are based on real-life topography. ARMA2 is set in Eastern
Europe, Operation Arrowhead is set in the Middle East. The
possibilities on the huge playing areas are almost endless. You can also
download user-created islands, some of which are impressive in both
scope and detail.
A mission designer is included to make your own
missions, along with sophisticated scripting capabilities. In addition,
there are hundreds of user-created mods and missions, everything from a
simple "destroy the enemy" mission to new weapons, vehicles, sounds,
etc, to new game modes like "capture the island" and a GTA clone.
In
a way there are almost too many possibilities between official and
user-made content, and the quality varies. The official missions have
some neat tricks, although they don't expose you to everything the game
has to offer. Some things work well, others don't. You'll have to find a
way to manage missions/mods and all your time gathering, installing,
and playing all the different things. A launcher like "ARMA II Launcher"
helps you manage what mods you want to use. There is plenty of help on
the official Bohemia Interactive forums, although they are picky about
posting in the appropriate forums.
Although the visuals and
presentation are quite good, ARMA2 is quirky and not without bugs and
oddities. Just mapping the controls is an adventure, what's the
difference between "Prone" and "Go Prone?" You'll use practically every
key on the keyboard, although remember you can map something like
Control-G for landing gear or Control-E to eject. With a large playing
area and so much going on, performance is also an issue, ARMA2 benefits
from tweaking and downloading mods to do things like get rid of motion
blur and tame the tall grass a bit.
There is plenty to do in this
game for both single player and multiplayer. Setting up local, LAN, or
Internet games is smooth and easy. It even remembers the last IP address
you manually typed in (I'm looking at you OFP Dragon Rising!) Co-op
missions, deathmatch, capture the flag, and more are all there, and with
mission designers being able to do scripting plenty of different game
modes are out there. There are "Warfare" or "capture the island"
missions that add strategic and real-time-strategy elements as you build
your base, build units and vehicles, and try to take over towns while
searching for the enemy base. You can choose to be a soldier and take
orders, command a squad, or be in high command mode and command all the
units. The learning curve on Warfare modes is moderately high and
documentation is scarce, but they are very unique and rewarding.
If
you have the time and patience and like realistic military combat
simulators, ARMA2 will delight and amaze you. If you're a run-and-gun
sort of player with a short attention span, this probably isn't your
game. It also helps to be somewhat computer knowledgeable and have good
hardware. I have a 2.4 GHz dual core AMD, 4GB of RAM, Windows XP, and a
GTX 250 video card. With tweaking it runs acceptably on my system, but I
wouldn't want to play with much less. I'm saving my dollars for a solid
state drive (SSD), from what I read ARMA2 does a lot of small file
reads and greatly benefits from the almost 0 access time of SSDs.
Arma II
If you are a soloist, a
Rambo, a loner, this is probably not the game for you. The majority of
people playing video games now days, are multiplayers. They play online
for that extra challenge. This game involves not only multiplayer but
teamwork on a high level. That high level is set by the players. Once
you immerse into the land of Arma II, you will find yourself talking as
if you have been in the military for years. This is a military
simulation, not the average arcade game. You will not hear people
talking about face rolling, and total pwnage and all that crap. You will
only hear the calls for close air support, transport and long ranged
artillery. If you are that role playing, military game guru, you will
love the multiplayer associated with this game. However if you are into
points and worrying about your kill to death ratio, find a server with
Player Vs. Player. Some snipers pride themselves on taking out those
loners. The Delta Force will work together on special operations
missions, the pilots will be in their own group, and don't be surprised
to see a Shooter and a Spotter acting as one Sniper. This is an
incredible game, if you play it the way it was intended to be played.
If
you are considering picking up the game. Check out the guys at 7th Cav,
they always keep a populated server, and they really use that teamwork
you are looking for.
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