Stendac

Oh, you said it, man. I stopped playing the campaign because it was no fun. Things have somehow gotten worse since OFP. Teamswitch? I didn't like it at first either, but like most people, i just accepted it grudgingly. However, it shouldn't never have been used to make up for a shoddy campaign that was way difficult for all the wrong reasons.

It seems that too often Arma is a game that looks good from a certain angle or from far away. Get up close though, and the player quickly realizes that: Many buildings can't be entered (and don't look good up close). Those that are enterable aren't particularly interesting. Trying to move around the close quarters of the inside of a building is frustrating. (it makes the already loose controls even more noticeable.) The view distance in Arma was fine. For Arma2, instead of increasing the view distance, I hope that BI is working on the details of the game. Nice looking buildings and soldiers with better facial expressions. At the very least, I hope the controls will be better in the next game. I loved OFP and I was gonna buy Arma no matter what the reviewers said. But after Arma... I'll just wait and see how Arma2 turns out.

Aloha! I'm from Hawai'i. HAHAHAHAHA! ... Actually, I'm in Washington right now though.

How colorful.

I think we have a winner...

I wouldn't base my opinion on the AI on this one video. It's only one example and what bothers me is that we can't really see what the AI soldiers are fighting and where their opposition is located. More testing needed.

Check out the 1.07 feedback threads. No shortage of 8800 users there.

Neat trick there, Chief. How'd you do that?

Huh... For a 3/5 score that review was surprisingly positive.

Woohoo! Have a happy US ArmA Release Day!

It might be too soon to worry about that. We haven't seen much new information on Game 2 and everyone's probably sceptical that it will actually come out in 2008. They originally said that Armed Assault would have a release date in July 2006 or something like that. Well, I live in the US and it still hasn't been released here (although it's only a matter of days until May comes around). In fact, since ArmA's release was delayed, it would be prudent to push Game 2's release date back as well to allow an appropriate interval between the games because BIS doesn't want people skipping over ArmA for Game 2 either. Game 2 sounded very ambitious. If anything, I'd expect it to experience even longer delays than Armed Assault did. And I'm sure that BIS is happy to let us all have plenty of time to chow down on ArmA so that they will have more time to quietly work on Game 2.

Out of curiosity, can anyone identify the weapon that the soldier on the left is holding in the Operation Flashpoint 2 picture? It looks a bit short. A carbine of some sort? But more importantly, how likely is it to see a soldier with one of those on the battlefield? I'm assuming the soldiers are American, even though we can't see their patches.

Wow. Â Reading this makes my head hurt. What is BIS's financial motivation? It's because they're advertising their game as the "ultimate realistic combat simulation experience". Â Jeez, it's dumb that I even have to say it. And can you provide a link or something to show us where these security/arms laws draw the line on what's too accurate? Â Â Yes, BIS definitely has time and resource constraints. Â But don't try to attribute armor damage oddities to a fear of being sent to jail. Â Please note that nobody is asking for 100% accuracy here. Â But it would be nice if things were a bit more believable; nothing that would even approach a breach of national security.

Hey Dslyecxi, I saw your trailer appear on the front page of gametrailers.com. I think Atari and BIS owe you a Thank You card.

Yeah, it is of the utmost importance that you create and flesh out an interesting story that you're happy with before beginning to make your video. I'm no video maker, but it's similar to if you're writing a short story. Sometimes writers fail to fully think through their story and they end up giving lengthy, detailed descriptions for settings in plots that don't go anywhere. Don't assume that things will fall into place while you are putting together the actual video. It's much easier to make changes during the planning process. Anyway, this is something that I had to keep in mind when I was writing a story for my English class. Story-driven videos sound pretty tough to make in ArmA. A good story is going to need some good characters. This is pretty tricky since it will probably require some good voice acting. Also the character models in ArmA don't convey emotions very well and it doesn't look totally natural when they talk.

I think I had a greater respect for the fighting ability of the American soldiers after reading the book. Â I didn't necessarily feel more pro-American. Why? Â I think the book was able to grimly describe how our supposedly goodwill mission to Somalia degenerated into violence. Â In this sense, it isn't really gung-ho pro-US Militarism. Â One Somali man described how the helicopters buzzing by close overhead would frighten people. Â Another man talked about an incident when a US helicopter fired some rockets into the building he was in. Â Some men he knew were killed. Â The soldiers themselves describe firing grenades into windows indiscriminately because a fighter might suddenly poke his head out from any one of them and light up the convoy. Â I think one soldier even said that he's sure that he accidentally shot a child in the chaos. Â How pro-America is that? At any rate, it never really stuck me as US propaganda. Â I think one of the important lessons that a reader could take away from the book is this: The military is a broadsword. Â As powerful as it is, it's not necessarily good at winning hearts and minds or for bringing order to a country. Â Sometimes, its presence only results in more violence.

Ouch. That's a heavy accusation against Mark Bowden there. Can you be more specific? I did a little search and found some websites that criticize Mark Bowden for being too pro-military and making unfair statements in other writings, but so far I haven't found anything about Black Hawk Down specifically. I read the book myself years ago and I liked it a lot. Bowden interviewed some Somalis about their experiences and you can begin to understand why many of them began to resent the presence of the Americans. This perspective wasn't really there in the movie. Sure, Bowden has his own opinion about mission and the eventual troop pullout, but does he actually lie in his book?

Yeah, I just watched the review for STALKER on gametrailers.com and they also said they were impressed by the AI. It was one of the game's noticeable strengths despite its flaws in other areas. I guess it couldn't hurt ArmA to give the AI a swift kick in the ass.

Yeah, pathfinding doesn't come easy to AI. But other games don't even try. Just look at Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. The developers didn't even bother to give the AI vehicles any pathfinding skills. They just move down a fixed track. If a soldier is standing in the way they'll just stop there and won't go around. Anyway, that's what the review said.

Wow, that is one of the best ArmA videos I've seen. It's too bad it wasn't done on a more powerful comp. Man, I wish I had the game now. Oh, and that was a cool Sahrani Virus Trailer. Good job.

I saw that one a long time ago. What I found most interesting was that the first segment, where they guy is firing at the blackhawks, looked very life-like. The low video quality gave it that look and for a second it actually seemed like real life. Then I saw the guy with the rifle and I thought, "Oh, I guess it really is Armed Assault." Still, there aren't many games that can confuse you in that way, even for the shortest of periods. One of the others that I can think of was Ace Combat 4 for the PS2. At certain times it did look almost real. My grandfather actually glanced at the TV when I was playing it and asked me if it was real life or from a game. I hope games will continue to produce more and more of those "woah" moments.

Should we still expect to see this thing out in retail in the US?

I've just fired the marketing department. Good riddance.

Well, I'd give it a shot. By the way guys, did you notice that there is a bullet ricochet effect in Battlefield 2142? I noticed it when I was in one of those battle walkers and I was firing into the ground. I'm going to see if all of the guns in the game do this and what surfaces produce the ricochet. Does anyone know if this happens in Battlefield 2 as well?

Well, I've never played ArmA yet, so I don't know exactly why CTF players are upset by it. But I have played some OFP CTF in gamespy. I prefer other game types like Campaign Everon, C&H, and Coops. But, unfortunately it can be pretty hard to find servers to play on in gamespy and often I've had to settle for some CTF. And at first I really, really sucked at it. It was pretty bad. Why, I could go an entire game with only a single kill. But, I stuck with it for a while and I gradually got a little better. I learned to camp out instead of running blindly ahead and to try and anticipate where the opposition would try to peek out for their shots. I still wasn't very good, but at least I would get many more kills than I used too. Sometimes, I was a little proud of myself. That said, I still don't understand why CTF players love OFP so much. One of the main draws of OFP was having a huge island to wage war on, but most of the CTF games cordoned of a tiny plot of land for the arena. OFP wasn't specialized for the close range urban fighting that this created and it makes the rest of the island seem like such a waste. Most of the games didn't bother with the M16, instead arming players with the G36, which was incredibly accurate and lethal. It wasn't unusual for games to end it with 0-0 scores. Players ran forward, camped, shot emerging enemy, ran forward, camped again, etc. until they were killed and respawned to begin the process again. And you couldn't try to sneak around to the flag from the backside either. Many maps were in a rectangular shape with the two flags on either side. There would be houses for cover or different alleys you could proceed down, but your enemy knew that you were always approaching from the same general direction. This is not to say that CTF is a worthless game mode. It's kind of fun when teammates cover each other as they move forwards and take positions to protect the flag carrier. But the gameplay was tedious and repetitive. OFP's CTF felt like it really belonged in some other computer game. The fact that many matches began with a hip-hop song like "Never Scared" only further turned me off it. I guess I just began to resent CTF because there weren't enough servers with other game modes open. But at least I'm honest about it right?