ARMA & ARMA2

[Art Blade]

-You might hate it at first ;)

-Do not forget to patch it to the latest build (1.1 if I remember correctly) unless your retail version is already the latest build.

-If you want my video settings just give me a shout.

-Let us know what you think, ok?

-no, I had been warned  ;)

-ah sh!t. Thanks... Was too busy to get it started, for starters :) Mine is 1.00.57270 or something. Apparently no auto-patch from within the game? Just checking www.arma2.com - downloaded 98MB. Says that I can't use my old savegame. Bootcamp, here we go again...

* sidenote (hello FC2 grmpf) : I checked, multiplayer works (can join, min. ping so far 47)

-my vid setting is everything maxed out 1920x1200 res, smooth.

-I think it looks a little "wooden" compared with FC2, but rich in details. I'm a black marine now lol. The intro or, the first thing you see in the game, is a carrier near a coastline, your cam floats around it, you see some aircraft on deck and a few other ships nearby. Next thing you see is black... oh, night. The carrier has some lights on, and the cam keeps floating.

You start to check all the settings, and realise there are like all 101 keys bound, but double-bound, ie tap a key once and it means something entirely different if you tap it twice.

I was a little peeved at the setup and menus and all that being all German, but was pleasantly surprised (actually made me laugh) when I learned the voices are all American LOL never seen that happen before, usually it's dubbed or you can choose a different language entirely. Now I've got subtitles (can switch them off, I guess).

I then noticed you can change a lot of details regarding difficulty level. It's not just "rookie, veteran" et al, but you have quite a list of clickable features, like aiming help or show enemy ID or something like that, and "super AI enable" LOL - as if it wasn't tough already, remembering what you peeps told me :) Ah, and "unlimited saves". But. That only means you can override your savegame countless times, not create dozens. I am in the mood to scream at that. Boo-hoooOOARGH! RAAaaah!

Alright, getting started. I found you can do several training missions "boot camp", some sort of obstacle course, shooting, driving, first aid. So I enlisted myself bravely for boot camp.

I started to walk and the entire visual impression I got was bobbing left, right, down, up. Ah, my head moves like it was heavy as an anvil and balanced on a toothpick. Checked options to adjust that down to a minimum. So I walked around, managed to enter some barrack and found the washing room, mirrors were already shattered and I couldn't see myself in it.

So I hobbled out again, and didn't know where my drill instructor was. Had to find him and check the map. Found him. Managed to fail the obstacle course during first, and passed the second time. Now I am assigned shooting lessons, grabbed something like a AR-16, found ammo, and am about to shoot my first round. As soon as I have figured out how to put the scope back on and use it.

Fun, actually :) You think you've seen 'em all, like CoD5, but hey, this is different.

The game has 225km² satellite data of real landscape worked into the game, weather and day/night, I read in the manual. AI is supposed to communicate with each other to make your game diffic... ah, no, different. Different each time. No mission like the other and stuff. Sounds interesting. You should have like 120 vehicles (land/water/air) and 40+ modern weapons, and different ammo. I'll let you know. :)

[RedRaven]

i'm so looking forward to it, a friend has ordered it from play.com for me as a gift (early birthday or summer solstice) he got himself hooked on fuel (PS3) still waiting for PC version and CoJ!!!! can you guys send me some screen shots , all magazines and net ones look too-good-to-be-true!!! ;) :-X   cheers

[Art Blade]

heh, nothing spectacular graphicswise yet. Had to do only bootcamp 2 times already: 1st cancelled in between due to savegame patch incompatibility, 2nd... well, I did manage well the obstacle course, shooting range (had to reload because I shot that instructor in the head. A message popped up reading something like "a training accident, if it wasn't bootcamp, you'd be facing a court martial now!" - restart/continue? continue being "reload"), first aid, driving lesson, and was now due for anti-tank training (I drove there myself in I think a kind of a Hummer or Humvee, or however that's spelled).

So my instructor told me to pick up some sort of RPG-7 or the likes, and some ammo. While I was wondering where that bloody crate with that anti-tank rocket launcher was, I heard shots of an automatic weapon in my back and that was that. I thought WTF?! Did my instructor shoot me in the back because I couldn't find that crate withing 10 seconds?!

Fortunately I had the one and only savegame just at that point when he asked me to go fetch the weap. So I reloaded, checked again, and again heard shots in my back, time to turn around and see some "MG-Shooter" with a nice red glow around his body (ah, so that's what enemies look like?) walking around a bush, shooting at my instructor.

Reload, retry, and the same. I don't FUCKING know what kind of business a blasting enemy MG-shooter has on a bloody training ground! Please excuse my french  ;) You know, those tanks are a few wooden planks hammered to the shape of a tank. Not even a makeshift armoured vehicle, just wood. And my instructor, never having used nor carried any weapons, gets shot dead, laying on the ground grinning instead of shooting, that ape!

Alright, I think maybe I have to fire faster, better, closer... always the same. And I can't even kill that enemy with a rocket that is supposed to take tanks out. I shot it right at his feet, the entire area a blazing mess, lumps of mud and chunks of soil and smoke and flames, but hey! the little enemy MG soldier soldiers on and kills my instructor again! Sometimes did me in, too.

So much for a first glitch, after having patched my game. Ok, no harm done, I get fitter playing the tutorial bootcamp over and over again. Can't get enough training, can we  ;D

Alright, on I go again.  :)

[Art Blade]

can you guys send me some screen shots , all magazines and net ones look too-good-to-be-true!!! ;) :-X   cheers

here you go. But so far it looks a little sparse in game... like loads of terrain but only a handful of items.

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[PZ]

Great report Art,
I really appreciate your level of detail; very few additional questions to ask based on your position in the game.  The only question that I actually have is this: is Arma2 something that you'd leave FC2 for?  The reason I ask is that in spite of other games that I have, I typically return to FC2 for the scenery, music, setting, etc.

[Art Blade]

The only question that I actually have is this: is Arma2 something that you'd leave FC2 for?

No. As you, I love FC2. In general I'd say: I never actually read the manual for FC2. And it is dense in landscape, items, environment. For ArmA2 you keep looking which key actually does what, and keep forgetting it because there are so many functions. And that at the very beginning. As the package of ArmA2 states, it's a simulation which means you really have to w@&k your way in and out. FC2 is just fun with a lot of agressive mercs and the operability is like "steering + one (magic) key" :)

[PZ]

Interestingly and coincidentally, yesterday I read in the Prima guide a sentence in which the author described FC2 as an "African simulation".  I thought about it for a bit and concur somewhat; it seems that each week someone reports something new and different that I have never seen reported before.

[Art Blade]

I agree with that point of view. I think FC2 feels different. It feels a game, a good one on top, yet ArmA... you realise you have to start with boot camp and weapons training?  ;D I haven't finished that by far I realise, there is as much as parachute jumping, planes etc still to cover before the real "game" starts.

[gvse]

Hey, I have a very different approach to this game: didn't bother much with bootcamp (apart from managing squad: that's essential in my opinion) and tried to get as much fun as possible from the word go. I figure if I manage to get to like this game on a very basic level I will want to get down to the nitty gritty of all of its aspects later on. Some single missions ("scenarios," they are called, I think) w@&k as tutorials too and they are much more fun than bootcamp. At the end of the day it is still only a game, and I believe that games should be fun, not a chore.
For the time being I stick to the FPS aspect and leave managing large units and piloting aircraft for much later. I take existing missions, change time of the day, drop ammo crates to decide what loadout I feel like trying out and away I go, ehm, crawl ;)
As for the setting, it does not really get spectacular, like e.g. FC2 or Crysis; it's more like Stalker, which of course it should be as it is a fictional Eastern European sate.
FC2 delivers more instant thrills and fun, it's easier and more intuitive when it comes to controlling the avatar, but then you have MUCH more control in A2. If you blow your cover in FC2 you can usually get out of the sticky situation with guns blazing whereas in A2 I think it's impossible: you must have some advantage over the enemy.
Art, which do you prefer, 3rd or 1st person? I tend to switch to 3rd when I need more situational awareness (which is almost always ;))

[Art Blade]

I like to play 1st mostly, but when it comes to climbing and ducking, 3rd comes in handy as you see more of your environment, especially sides and back.

Thanks for your input, I think I'm going to give it a suicidal go myself now, just enter the war and try to have fun.

I just watched a German review of ArmA2 using Patch 1.01 - although it's all in German, you might want to watch it as it shows almost every aspect of the game. The overall sentiment is "too buggy, AI overstrained, missions lock up randomly, let's hope and wait for the already promised next patches". Ah, they mention side missions such as car races and heli-taxi  ;D

http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=1568&pk=12369

[gvse]

Thanks, I just had a look though I did not understand much.
As I mentioned earlier, I didn't think much of the campaign and abandoned it early, right after the team leader gets it. Single missions, man, single missions! And the editor :)

[PZ]

Looking forward to you guys sharing in-game screen caps  :-X

[gvse]

Looking forward to you guys sharing in-game screen caps  :-X

here ya go. Night mission (failed, naturally).
1. The team

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Burning jeep: our first victim

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The depot: target 2
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Truck in the depot.
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Patching up a mate
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Creeping up to a hangar with a plane to destroy
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I fail soon. They got me in the hangar, but it was cool as I set up two men (1 sniper) far away from the hangar and told them to observe this area: they took out a number of soldiers and made my approach a bit easier.
You can see that I am losing some teammates along the way but that couldn't be helped.
I used the Anti Aircraft mission I have found on Armaholic, but modified the loadout of all soldiers assigning guns with silencers. The final goal (which I never reached) was the eponymous AA installation, but I chose to attack goals which seemed worthy of being destroyed :)

[Art Blade]

nice read, reminds me of my first trial-and-error attempt of actually doing something else but boot camp:

I skip the one you see in my last screenshot, that was "house of death" where red and blue body-shaped cardboard targets popped up, red=enemy blue=civilian. I failed because I missed there was a certain order in which to walk around the buildings, so time was up, early.

Now the first halfways real mission. Fiddling with the menus I found there was something like a weapons collection button, so I clicked it. It then showed a menu devided in three categories or columns. I could instantly see the right column showed a lot of red items with a closed lock symbol next to them. So aha, that's where you get to pick unlocked items, and play with them. There were categories like animals and characters and vehicles and weapons, if I remember correctly.

I ended up accidently choosing a M65G I think, a hand-held machine gun that sports both single shots as well as bursts, and has mags of 100 shots (the one you see in the last screenie). Not bad but a little clumsy. Next thing I remember I was next to some sort of runway and heard a truck working hard in the distance (reminded me of Datsun Dummies from FC2). So I had to eliminate one person, and was asked to shoot none more. Not forbidden, apparently. I read those instructions on screen.

I like indicators that help you find your way in a solid and convincing nowhereness. If you can identify the indicators. If you have any goals, you see them as a thin sort of arrow on the sides of the screen, if you look at gvse's pics you'll see some on the left hand side of some screenies, only his are olive, mine orange. Only I can see his, but can't find mine, at least in plain daylight I can hardly see any of those indicators. Because a high res 1920*1200 doesn't help it much. And orange on sand or olive on grass is just great to make your eyes stand out of your face trying to find the indicators while you notice a "flupp!" accompanied by some red mist and your avatar going "urrrrgh!" -- someone is shooting and hitting you. Nice. Don't even know where that came from.

So I open the map and see in a zoomed-out view there is a giant semi-opaque red circle, my search area, the size of australia. And right in the centre, my designated target. I try to match my facing direction so I can trudge on and close the map. No, the other way round. I can't do both at a time, only get shot while studying the map. The next thing I notice is I can't step towards my loving target because there is a wire-mesh fence a few hundred miles long without a gate blocking my way. I check the map and think wow, can't even see it properly on the map... perhaps that microscopically thin line there... ah right.

I stumble onwards, shoot the ba$t@rd who got me first, and notice someone behind the fence, right on the other side. This is real virtual life, so I don't shoot him because he doesn't shoot me. I train my sights on him, though. That way an information shows up in the crosshair, he's a medic, only the medic is written in red, as in enemy-red. Hmm. Or as in red-cross. I crouch and close up to the fence, he mirrors my movements. I then see an option to talk to him (choose from a scroll-down menu) and the only option is "hello" so I say hello, and he says "I'm busy."

I walk crouched along the fence, moaning occasionally due to the wounds inflicted by the first enemy, hoping to find a fricking entrance to enter that area so the medic may patch me up, and finally manage to get around the end of the fence. I can't recall if I got shot dead, time was up or I cancelled the mission. I then took on another mission called "hit the sack" and slept a couple of hours in my secure real-life bed.

Now I'm on for some more  ;D

[Art Blade]

http://www.arma2.com/support/updates

update: patch 1.02 online (120MB)

- Run the patch setup executable, the patch is then applied automatically.
- It will install the entire contents of the patch to a folder within your ArmA 2 installation (default is C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2 or Bohemia Interactive\ArmA2).
- Please note that it is NOT possible to rollback to a previous version after the installation of this patch, only a full reinstall of the game is possible.
- It is not recommended to use any savegames created in versions 1.00 or 1.01.

- Improved AI driving skills
- Lowered enemy AI skills for regular and recruit difficulty levels
- Improved Micro AI tactics, attack in pairs, path limiting to avoid passing through walls
- Fixed multiplayer session NAT negotiation
- Improved game stability (various crash opportunities fixed)
- Multiple save slots supported
- Improved terrain shape beyond map borders
- Various campaign and localization fixes and improvements
- Modules (F7) support added in the Mission Editor
- Added option to disable various post-process effects (bloom, blur etc.)

[Art Blade]

That means, ANOTHER FUNNY BOOT CAMP  ;D

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[PZ]

Great information you two - the night images are cool - I kind of like sneaking around at night.  It sounds like this is quite the simulation, and to fully master it will take lots of time - more time than I've spent on FC2!  ;)

[Art Blade]

Sir, PZ, sir, this is private Art Blade, no, wait, Sgt. Cooper, from USMC Team Razor, reporting bootcamp goes as smoothly as a well-oiled assault rifle, sir! No enemies at the anti-tank range this time! Must've scared the sweet Jebus out of 'em!  ;D

Had to fire three types of rocket launchers, the last one being a Javelin and blew up a tank so far away I could only see it using the scope.

I think the patch has helped a little, driving the Humvee didn't feel like balancing on an inflated egg any more.

Now going to do some Häuserkampf, erm... urban warfare that is  :)

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[Art Blade]

As for cheats: actually I use a script to get a truck full of ALL weapons, so I can pick and choose whatever I want.

I couldn't find a single cheat on the net, let alone scripts. Would you be so nice as of telling us the wheres and the hows? :)

[PZ]

Cool!... a map!  :-X

[Art Blade]

yeah, despite of having zoomed out to the max, it doesn't fit entirely. You can zoom in quite a bit... same position, zoomed in at max.

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[PZ]

I wonder if someone will find a way to extract map data, like D_B did for the FC2 maps.

[Art Blade]

would be cool, but man... FC2 had two maps, in total 50km². This is one map, 225km². You'd probably get a 100mb picture :) I reckon the map is vector-graphics, so probably no graphical data.

[Art Blade]

This is what that car I'm driving around in looks like
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[Art Blade]

Well, if you're playing the tutorial, after driving to the anti-tank range, the next thing is urban assault. I first drove there and saw "team mates of another team that play enemy - tutorial is over if they or you're dead" Nice game! Kill other marines just for practice! So I drove there to have a little chat and perhaps a cup of tea with MSgt Smith to brief me in, and was wondering why there were red-glowing peeps running up and down the street. In my confusion I hit a lamp pole with the car, and the pole fell over (nice). Then I heard shots, the screen went red and I was dead (not nice). I noticed that even if I had managed to get outside the car in time, I wouldn't have had more than 4 rounds in my AR16 kind of gun and my pistol was similarly empty. I doubt that spitting at them would have turned the battle in my favour.

So I reloaded and searched the place...

... and this is what my car looks like after I found some weapons in a camo tent nearby, one of the rifles has a grenade launcher under the barrel. One, two, three grenades later I managed to sink my ride! Now I'll have to walk over to the next fight.

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