The overview:
ARMA 2, which does not stand for armed assault 2, is a military simulator made for the gamer who seeks shooting, driving, flying, and gunning that is more realistic and less cod4-like. It can be played in either first or third person, with on-the-fly switching.
Note: the word 'real' and its variants will be used extensively throughout this review, because that is what this game was intended to do: simulate military situations realistically.
Environment/Setting:
ARMA 2 is set in the fictional country of Chernarus, it's inhabitants being Chernarussian. This world however is actuaully contructed using orbital scans of a small section of the Czech Republic. Don't get me wrong though, this small section is absolutely massive for many games standards, and the fact that most of the time you'll be on foot or in a vehicle makes the world seem huge, even if you only take it in bite-sized chunks. The scenery is pretty good considering the ammount of vegetation they have to put in to make it look like the Czech countryside, and the world is open, not linear. You can drive vehicles through the forests if you'd like. However, this vast, rendered world does require massively strong computers to run smoothly.
Story:
Well, there are a few plot twists but overall its fairly straightforward. Its not spectacular, but it's also not complete garbage. Oh, and your actions do impact the story sometimes.
Characters:
Though they do speak, they are not exactly well-developed with a long backstory. Mostly you'll just use them as faceless allies and there are no real points in the story where one character becomes particularity important in an emotional sense. I guess you could say they're kinda dry, and live only to do their job - which is killing and soaking up bullets. they do the second part rather poorly, unfortunately.
Gunplay:
The gunplay is fairly solid for this shooter. There are stances, lean capabilities, even the prone rolling maneuver. Your character(s) can do pretty much anything a normal human can do, save for the ability to make a vertical jump. However most of the time being crouched or prone is best when in combat. And speaking of combat that is also another point to take note of. It is quite realistic. Bullets have gently arcing trajectories, and they do not move at the speed of light unlike 99% of the shooters on the market. Moving fast also exhausts you, which lowers your ability to aim for a time. To hit a moving target you'll have to lead your shot. The guns also have realistically bad accuracy, which can end up wasting you a lot of bullets when the combat, realistically plays out a comparatively long ranges (the average range for an assault rifle battle is longer than a long sniper range in cod4) that can be from 10 meters to half a kilometer. Most guns will kill opponents in one to two hits depending on the type of enemy you are shooting at, for example, spec.ops guys take more bullets before dying than an insurgent farmer. Likewise, your character is also pretty bad at soaking up bullets, and once injured your aim sucks worse than a kid with a sugar high. With no regenerating health, you usually need a medic around to patch you up afer you're shot. However one thing that isn't exactly realistic is that while first aid leaves you as a capable, but weak and shaky-handed soldier, if a medic administers the healing, you become as good as new, as if you never were shot, all in less that 2 minutes. This game features iron-sight aiming, which of course is for realism but in many cases is necessary to hit that far-away target.AT and AA infantry weapons are also present in this game, each with firing arcs and small aiming randoms. As far as equipment and gear in this game, it features over 80 weapons, though it is much less if you dont include variants as weapons (eg. ak-74 and ak-74+gp25 grenade launcher). Your gear is stored in an rpg-esqe inventory with slots for your primary, secondary, and AT/AA launcher if you aren't using a machine gun. There are also smaller backpack slots for magazines, grenades, and the rather large and bulky AT/AA rockets that can take up up to half your inventory. Another thing to note: pistols, are practically worthless since they are not really necessary when 1 bullet kills almost anything AND unlike in many FPS games weapon switching is slow, up to 2 seconds for a switch. The infantry controls for switching weapons is a bit difficult, and not exactly fast, but i guess the slowness of it mimics real life. Oh, and reload animations suck.
Vehicle play:
It is pretty good, but the game kinda assumes that you have a bunch of peripherals to use with the vehicles. I only have a keyboard and mouse which made driving a bit difficult, but I ended up driving a lot, because it is far safer and faster than walking. The fastest land vehicles go about 90 km/h which is about 50 mph, which is slow, but ok I guess. If you are short of military vehicles, your guys can just comandeer civilian vehicles as if the whole of the coutry's populace just left their keys in the car all the time. I had some fun just driving around in various vehicles such as tractors, sedans, busses, bicycles, motorbikes, etc. but these are really only for transport, as they have big glass windows and thin metal plates which are not bulletproof. The Humvee (HMMWV) is also only semi-bulletproof. There were many-a-time where I was shot through the glass while driving the thing, so usually your best bet is to jump out as soon as you see enemies, and use the car as cover. Basic cars feature health and gas meters which necessitates the need for gas stations, which conveniently fuel your vehicle rather quickly even if there is nobody at the pump itself. More heavily armored vehicles that feature turrets have multiple health bars, representing the various sides and armor panels of the vehicle and is displayed in a simple yet effective manner, and if the treads on one side of your tank are dead, you might as well abandon it. vehicles also do not feature infinite ammo cnounts which adds yet another degree of realism. It also takes a crew of 3-4 to man most armored vehicles, not 1 man who does it all. Now the one downside of this game's relatively good vehicle play is its physics. your car can mow down trees if its going above 30 or so km/h but each impact will drop your speed down to zero. and strangely for all but the heavy tanks, simple wood fences and concrete walls act the same way as the trees in terms of physics. even if you ram a wooden garden fence at 90 km/h you still stall to 0, and interestingly enough your car as well as yourself take no damage when you ram anything. There is also a problem with flip physics. I guess the designers did not think about flipping vehicles in this game because when I accidentally flipped a humvee, it ended up bouncing and flopping on its side like a fish, which was kind of hilarious but at the same time kinda depressing because I had to call a heli to pick me and the squad up. There is no 'press x to flip warthog' option, to my dismay. I'd think that a team of 4 well-trained marines would be able to right a car laying on its side. The exact same thing can also happen to tanks for some reason desite the fact that they are very flat, so they look kinda like bouncing walls. But the vehicular combat mechanics work great other than those bugs. Oh, it is possible to put a flipped vehicle back on it's wheels if you have a tank and a ramp (or a substitute).
Air play:
I haven't really tried the jets yet except for the F35 VTOL traning, which gave me the impression that to do good with the flight controls that you'd need a flight stick. Helicopters are somewhat easier to use although you'll find that without a flight stick, they can be difficult nonetheless. I haven't really found many bugs at the moment for flying, but there was one case in which the F35 semi-crash landed without the landing gear down and it slid through the forest, slowly taking damage when you'd think that by now it should have exploded.
Campaign:
even though the world is free and open, the campaign only is part of the time. Some missions are strictly linear, not that there is anything wrong with linear military missions, which is how they usually are in reality anyways. Occasionally you get a mission that involves completing multiple objectives which is very similar to questing in an rpg -- which is the non-linear part. The campaign is also way too scripted. Some objectives must be completed in a very precise way and that way only. For example, one mission has you try to escape from Cherarus because you are late for the leave time. Time is not on your side and the Russians are hunting you and you have to go about 8.5 kilometers to a port where you can subsequently be rescued. However the story dictates that you take 1 of 2 very scripted paths that do not invove getting out of Chernarus manually. I spent about 45 minutes driving a humvee through the forested mountains at about 15 km/h, avoiding the usual places that armies would go through (highways, towns and cities) and at a cetain point i just kept dying. By either missile (if in a car) or a random bullet if on foot. I went online and read up that apparently the game devs. put an instant death zone around the objective, therefore making the mission impossible to complete manually, and forcing you to take 1 of the two pre-set paths. That was a major letdown. So much for realism.
Bugs:
This game has tons of bugs, it shouldn't even be released in the state it is currently in, seeing as one mission is not completable, the graphics engine sometimes has problems rendering when you've traveled a long distance and just jumped out of your car. Characters and objects around you will also appear to be rendered (poorly) as if they are kilometers away until the rendering catches up with your current location. sometimes enemies are invisible and can only be killed by the AI. Sometimes your allies will not shoot at enemies in plain sight. The game hasn't ever crashed during missions but has while I was using the editor.
All in all:
Its a good simulator for those who seek the kind of realism that would end up frustrating the standard action fps player but at its current state even after two patches the game is still not fully playable and therefore can not be given a recommendation.
oh, and there are so many damned controls that you'll go crazy, either from the prospect of having that precise of controls, or of the frustration that will ensue when you try to learn them all.
EDIT: fixed spelling and some grammatical errors. I didn't expect you guys to be so critical.
ARMA 2, which does not stand for armed assault 2, is a military simulator made for the gamer who seeks shooting, driving, flying, and gunning that is more realistic and less cod4-like. It can be played in either first or third person, with on-the-fly switching.
Note: the word 'real' and its variants will be used extensively throughout this review, because that is what this game was intended to do: simulate military situations realistically.
Environment/Setting:
ARMA 2 is set in the fictional country of Chernarus, it's inhabitants being Chernarussian. This world however is actuaully contructed using orbital scans of a small section of the Czech Republic. Don't get me wrong though, this small section is absolutely massive for many games standards, and the fact that most of the time you'll be on foot or in a vehicle makes the world seem huge, even if you only take it in bite-sized chunks. The scenery is pretty good considering the ammount of vegetation they have to put in to make it look like the Czech countryside, and the world is open, not linear. You can drive vehicles through the forests if you'd like. However, this vast, rendered world does require massively strong computers to run smoothly.
Story:
Well, there are a few plot twists but overall its fairly straightforward. Its not spectacular, but it's also not complete garbage. Oh, and your actions do impact the story sometimes.
Characters:
Though they do speak, they are not exactly well-developed with a long backstory. Mostly you'll just use them as faceless allies and there are no real points in the story where one character becomes particularity important in an emotional sense. I guess you could say they're kinda dry, and live only to do their job - which is killing and soaking up bullets. they do the second part rather poorly, unfortunately.
Gunplay:
The gunplay is fairly solid for this shooter. There are stances, lean capabilities, even the prone rolling maneuver. Your character(s) can do pretty much anything a normal human can do, save for the ability to make a vertical jump. However most of the time being crouched or prone is best when in combat. And speaking of combat that is also another point to take note of. It is quite realistic. Bullets have gently arcing trajectories, and they do not move at the speed of light unlike 99% of the shooters on the market. Moving fast also exhausts you, which lowers your ability to aim for a time. To hit a moving target you'll have to lead your shot. The guns also have realistically bad accuracy, which can end up wasting you a lot of bullets when the combat, realistically plays out a comparatively long ranges (the average range for an assault rifle battle is longer than a long sniper range in cod4) that can be from 10 meters to half a kilometer. Most guns will kill opponents in one to two hits depending on the type of enemy you are shooting at, for example, spec.ops guys take more bullets before dying than an insurgent farmer. Likewise, your character is also pretty bad at soaking up bullets, and once injured your aim sucks worse than a kid with a sugar high. With no regenerating health, you usually need a medic around to patch you up afer you're shot. However one thing that isn't exactly realistic is that while first aid leaves you as a capable, but weak and shaky-handed soldier, if a medic administers the healing, you become as good as new, as if you never were shot, all in less that 2 minutes. This game features iron-sight aiming, which of course is for realism but in many cases is necessary to hit that far-away target.AT and AA infantry weapons are also present in this game, each with firing arcs and small aiming randoms. As far as equipment and gear in this game, it features over 80 weapons, though it is much less if you dont include variants as weapons (eg. ak-74 and ak-74+gp25 grenade launcher). Your gear is stored in an rpg-esqe inventory with slots for your primary, secondary, and AT/AA launcher if you aren't using a machine gun. There are also smaller backpack slots for magazines, grenades, and the rather large and bulky AT/AA rockets that can take up up to half your inventory. Another thing to note: pistols, are practically worthless since they are not really necessary when 1 bullet kills almost anything AND unlike in many FPS games weapon switching is slow, up to 2 seconds for a switch. The infantry controls for switching weapons is a bit difficult, and not exactly fast, but i guess the slowness of it mimics real life. Oh, and reload animations suck.
Vehicle play:
It is pretty good, but the game kinda assumes that you have a bunch of peripherals to use with the vehicles. I only have a keyboard and mouse which made driving a bit difficult, but I ended up driving a lot, because it is far safer and faster than walking. The fastest land vehicles go about 90 km/h which is about 50 mph, which is slow, but ok I guess. If you are short of military vehicles, your guys can just comandeer civilian vehicles as if the whole of the coutry's populace just left their keys in the car all the time. I had some fun just driving around in various vehicles such as tractors, sedans, busses, bicycles, motorbikes, etc. but these are really only for transport, as they have big glass windows and thin metal plates which are not bulletproof. The Humvee (HMMWV) is also only semi-bulletproof. There were many-a-time where I was shot through the glass while driving the thing, so usually your best bet is to jump out as soon as you see enemies, and use the car as cover. Basic cars feature health and gas meters which necessitates the need for gas stations, which conveniently fuel your vehicle rather quickly even if there is nobody at the pump itself. More heavily armored vehicles that feature turrets have multiple health bars, representing the various sides and armor panels of the vehicle and is displayed in a simple yet effective manner, and if the treads on one side of your tank are dead, you might as well abandon it. vehicles also do not feature infinite ammo cnounts which adds yet another degree of realism. It also takes a crew of 3-4 to man most armored vehicles, not 1 man who does it all. Now the one downside of this game's relatively good vehicle play is its physics. your car can mow down trees if its going above 30 or so km/h but each impact will drop your speed down to zero. and strangely for all but the heavy tanks, simple wood fences and concrete walls act the same way as the trees in terms of physics. even if you ram a wooden garden fence at 90 km/h you still stall to 0, and interestingly enough your car as well as yourself take no damage when you ram anything. There is also a problem with flip physics. I guess the designers did not think about flipping vehicles in this game because when I accidentally flipped a humvee, it ended up bouncing and flopping on its side like a fish, which was kind of hilarious but at the same time kinda depressing because I had to call a heli to pick me and the squad up. There is no 'press x to flip warthog' option, to my dismay. I'd think that a team of 4 well-trained marines would be able to right a car laying on its side. The exact same thing can also happen to tanks for some reason desite the fact that they are very flat, so they look kinda like bouncing walls. But the vehicular combat mechanics work great other than those bugs. Oh, it is possible to put a flipped vehicle back on it's wheels if you have a tank and a ramp (or a substitute).
Air play:
I haven't really tried the jets yet except for the F35 VTOL traning, which gave me the impression that to do good with the flight controls that you'd need a flight stick. Helicopters are somewhat easier to use although you'll find that without a flight stick, they can be difficult nonetheless. I haven't really found many bugs at the moment for flying, but there was one case in which the F35 semi-crash landed without the landing gear down and it slid through the forest, slowly taking damage when you'd think that by now it should have exploded.
Campaign:
even though the world is free and open, the campaign only is part of the time. Some missions are strictly linear, not that there is anything wrong with linear military missions, which is how they usually are in reality anyways. Occasionally you get a mission that involves completing multiple objectives which is very similar to questing in an rpg -- which is the non-linear part. The campaign is also way too scripted. Some objectives must be completed in a very precise way and that way only. For example, one mission has you try to escape from Cherarus because you are late for the leave time. Time is not on your side and the Russians are hunting you and you have to go about 8.5 kilometers to a port where you can subsequently be rescued. However the story dictates that you take 1 of 2 very scripted paths that do not invove getting out of Chernarus manually. I spent about 45 minutes driving a humvee through the forested mountains at about 15 km/h, avoiding the usual places that armies would go through (highways, towns and cities) and at a cetain point i just kept dying. By either missile (if in a car) or a random bullet if on foot. I went online and read up that apparently the game devs. put an instant death zone around the objective, therefore making the mission impossible to complete manually, and forcing you to take 1 of the two pre-set paths. That was a major letdown. So much for realism.
Bugs:
This game has tons of bugs, it shouldn't even be released in the state it is currently in, seeing as one mission is not completable, the graphics engine sometimes has problems rendering when you've traveled a long distance and just jumped out of your car. Characters and objects around you will also appear to be rendered (poorly) as if they are kilometers away until the rendering catches up with your current location. sometimes enemies are invisible and can only be killed by the AI. Sometimes your allies will not shoot at enemies in plain sight. The game hasn't ever crashed during missions but has while I was using the editor.
All in all:
Its a good simulator for those who seek the kind of realism that would end up frustrating the standard action fps player but at its current state even after two patches the game is still not fully playable and therefore can not be given a recommendation.
oh, and there are so many damned controls that you'll go crazy, either from the prospect of having that precise of controls, or of the frustration that will ensue when you try to learn them all.
EDIT: fixed spelling and some grammatical errors. I didn't expect you guys to be so critical.
out. Most of the paragraphs started with a good introduction sentence which explained the content of the paragraph and made the subheading unneeded.