ArmA redfines "realistic" and "hardcore" and is definitely an acquired taste.
In 2001 a game titled Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was created by Bohemia Interactive. It was easily the most realistic first-person shooter of its time. In fact, Operation Flashpoint was so realistic that a more advanced version of the game called Virtual Battlespace ("VBS") was adopted for use as a training tool by Australian and New Zealand armed forces as well as the United States Marine Corps. Now, six years later, Bohemia is back with ArmA: Combat Operations, the spiritual successor to OFP.
This time the action takes place on a fictional island nation called Sahrani. You're part of a US military detachment responsible for training the locals in modern warfare. As expected, all hell breaks loose and you and your buddies will find yourselves caught up in a violent coup. Now you'll have to hold out against superior numbers until the cavalry arrives.
Something Familiar
Anyone who has played OFP will feel right at home when they load up ArmA. In fact, at first glance very little has changed between OFP and ArmA. The controls are virtually identical, as is the interface and the command system. Even the music will sound familiar to OFP players.
This might appeal to OFP die-hards, but to us it was a little disconcerting. Six years have passed since the release of OFP and a lot of advances have been made in first-person shooters since. The result is that the already-clunky controls feel even worse now. To make ArmA as realistic as possible, your mouse movement is tied to your avatar's arms, so as you move your mouse your arms will move your weapon. This means that if you aim at something on the extreme upper-left-hand corner of your screen your own arms will obstruct your view, which quickly gets frustrating.
Not only that, but rather than having the mouselook feature move the camera like in a conventional shooter, there is a small invisible window of movement in the center of your screen where you can move your weapon without actually affecting where the camera is pointed. If you actually want to look in another direction direction you'll have to move your mouse beyond that small window and only then will the view change. This felt clunky in OFP, and it still feels clunky now.
Not all of the traits retained from OFP are bad. Just like the first game, ArmA is unrelenting in its pursuit of realism. For example, the game accurately recreates the supersonic crack of bullets whizzing past your head (hint: when you hear that distinctive snap, it's time to move). An entire arsenal of NATO and Warsaw Pact weaponry is lovingly recreated here with detailed models and gorgeous textures. If you look carefully you'll be able to read the markings on various weapons and even see instructions on some of the more complicated instruments of destruction.
Planes, Tanks, and Automobiles
This same attention to detail also extends to the vehicles. 30 different vehicles are depicted, both civilian and military. Helicopters, tanks, airplanes, cars, and boats are all at your disposal. Each vehicle will behave realistically as well, so don't expect a civie pick-up truck to last long under enemy fire; there's a reason those things are considered "soft targets."
Ideally, you'll want a joystick to fly the choppers and planes, which you'll eventually have to do in the single-player campaign. A-10s and Cobras as well as Blackhawks are all prominently featured. Flying these aircraft takes some getting used to, but when compared to the rest of the game, these portions feature the most relaxed realism. Sections where you take to the skies are a nice change of pace, but ArmA is best when it focuses on infantry combat.
A Shooting War
On the ground it's just you, your squadmates, and your rifle. Most combat takes place at ranges between 100 and 300 yards; any closer and things start to get really hairy. ArmA factors in everything from fatigue to bullet deflection, the sound barrier, and other ballistic characteristics for every shot fired. Hitting a stationary target at 100 yards or less is cake, but that's rarely the case in a firefight.
Anyone who knows anything about shooting will tell you that shooting a moving target is one of the hardest things in the world to do, which is a sentiment ArmA takes to heart. Your enemies will move from cover to cover and can spot you from hundreds of yards away if you're not careful; if you stay out in the open too long they'll zero in on you and put a bullet in your noggin. Next to your squadmates and your weapon, cover and concealment will be your two closest friends. You'll quickly learn that there is no possible way to play ArmA like any other first-person shooter. It doesn't matter if you're a Ghost Recon pro or can beat Rainbow Six: Vegas on "realistic"; ArmA is a completely unforgiving beast, and most of the time you'll die without knowing who or what killed you.
Thankfully there's a save-game system in place. OFP featured a checkpoint system, which is still in place here, but you also have one save-game slot which you can use anytime, and it is a lifesaver. By limiting it to just one slot, the tension of combat remains in place, but makes the game much more approachable. There's also a time compression feature, which is handy considering that some of the missions will have you traveling very long distances. (ArmA features 250 square miles of land to explore.)
War Isn't Pretty
Graphically, ArmA in some ways could be compared to the city of Los Angeles. It's pretty when you're far away, but once you get closer you realize that everything has a synthetic, fake look to it. Once we were on top of a mountain overlooking a valley that leads to the ocean and a fellow editor glanced over and said, "Wow! What game is that?" Another time we were crawling through the grass while under fire and a passerby said, "Dang, that is one ugly game."
The engine that powers ArmA can be cranked up to show incredible draw distances and extremely high-resolution textures, but doing so will bring just about any system to its knees. Even on the "recommended" detail settings we were never really satisfied with the framerate; if you're serious about playing ArmA, you'll need a fair amount of horsepower.
Where ArmA really hits its stride is in its mission design. There are some spectacular scenarios here. Sure, there are the usual defend or search-and-destroy missions, but they're threaded together to feel like a real battle. In one mission you'll lay demo charges on a bridge and blow it after an armored column crosses it. You'll then use anti-tank weapons to harrass the column, fall back to a more secure location, and fight off a counter-attack.
These are sweeping actions that make you feel like you're in a real military campaign with real military objectives, as opposed to a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. The fact that there's nothing "Hollywood" about ArmA is its greatest strength; the controls are clunky, the realism is challenging, and the game is unforgiving, but if you're into this kind of stuff you'll find yourself loving every moment of it.
This level of enjoyment is multiplied when you take ArmA online. The first thing you'll notice when going online is that there are a lot of co-op servers. Servers can support more than 60 players at a time. The potential for a euphoric gaming experience is here, but it depends on your players. When you find a good game you'll have people in choppers providing air cover, drivers in humvees transporting soldiers to hotspots where the action is, and tanks providing added punch where needed. Sadly, finding a game where everyone knows what they're doing is rare, but hopefully that'll change with time.
Be All You Can Be
For the hardcore military buff, ArmA's attention to real-world detail is unmatched; comparing it to something like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is like comparing IL-2 Sturmovik to Combat. If this concept scares you, then run away: ArmA will eat you up and spit you out before you can figure out how to aim your M-16. But if you're currently waiting to see if your application to the U.S. Army Ranger School went through and have the patience to deal with clunky controls and sudden deaths, you might do well to check it out.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Bohemia Interactive's follow up to Operation Flashpoint is just as realistic, just as massive and just as difficult.
Nearly ten years ago, games like SWAT, Delta Force and Rainbow Six began to shift the shooter genre towards greater levels of realism and accuracy. While the core concept of realistic military shooters has grown into some very interesting directions since then, few games have tried to capture the massive scale, limitless freedom and ever-present danger of the modern battlefield. One of the most promising efforts in that direction was 2001's Operation Flashpoint. Though it captured the key qualities of a battlefield simulator, a confusing control scheme, lackluster graphics engine and unforgiving difficulty frustrated many gamers' attempts to enjoy the things the game got right.
Here we are six years later with ArmA: Combat Operations, a game that is Operation Flashpoint's sequel in all but name. (And if they were going to change the name, couldn't they have come up with something better than ArmA?) The new game benefits from exactly the same strengths and suffers from exactly the same weaknesses as the original game, which is all the more distressing given the time that's passed since Operation Flashpoint was first released. Naturally, there will be players who can look past the performance and the graphics issues to revel in the merciless combat model and open design, but gamers used to the more cinematic, linear approach of games like Call of Duty or even Ghost Recon will likely find the whole experience more frustrating than fun.
The conflict in this case is a fairly predictable East vs. West affair. The player is one a number of US soldiers on the Atlantic island of Sahrani. They're currently pulling out of Sahrani after providing military instruction to the Southern Sahranis. Just as the last of the US forces are preparing to leave, South Sahrani comes under attack from her aggressive, Warsaw-equipped Northern neighbors. Now it's up to the player, and the other US forces, to hold off the invasion until reinforcements arrive and the counter-attack begins.
The main campaign covers the story from start to finish across a few dozen missions. They range from the platoon-sized defense of friendly towns to lone wolf sabotage missions behind enemy lines. Each core mission in the campaign includes a few secondary missions that you can take beforehand to gain a slight edge by denying the enemy key reinforcements when you undertake the core mission. Stupidly, most of the secondary missions are solo affairs where you're tasked with taking on a much larger force all by yourself. It's often less aggravating and less challenging just to take on the core mission right away.
This scale and sense of life is a definite high point in the game's favor. The same can't be said of the AI. Civilians run each other over in the streets and then get out of their car and walk off into the desert. Some inhabitants of the island (and indeed some of your own squadmates) will find themselves unable to negotiate even simple obstacles. Though the civilians steer clear of the more noisome military operations, shooting one of them doesn't seem to matter much to the other pedestrians. (We couldn't resist.)
Beyond the basic single player campaign, there are a number of one-off missions that you can jump into any time you like. Multiplayer and a rather extensive and convenient editor extend the life of the game considerably. Of particular interest is the potential to have dozens of players cooperating together online to undertake a specific mission.
Driving itself isn't too bad (although the collision model is very basic). Where the game really needs some help is in the helicopters and airplanes. It's great to have a joystick to help out when driving these vehicles, but even so, there are so many controls that you won't feel really effective until you've been at it a few hours. This is a consequence of trying to model controls for infantry combat, land vehicles, boats, helicopters, and airplanes all on one keyboard.
Eventually you'll also have to make use of a number of squad commands to direct the actions of your teammates. Your fellow soldiers are usually smart enough to act appropriately under the circumstances, but you'll have to make sure to assign them specific targets, formations, movement and rules of engagement to make the most of them. Unfortunately, the game is too sophisticated to make use of the simple context-sensitive point and click method found in games like Rainbow Six or Brothers in Arms. Having to spend a few extra seconds to get a move or fire order across can really spell the difference between success and failure in some of the hairier firefights.
One nice concession to the game's insane difficulty is the inclusion of checkpoints. If you die, you'll only need to go back to the last checkpoint to begin again. These typically occur after a major objective is completed and they can be a real time saver. Still, given the vast distances you'll have to cover between most objectives, reloading a checkpoint usually means a few extra minutes of walking or driving to get to the action. One welcome new feature is the addition of a save system that allows players to have one active save point throughout the mission. You can overwrite the save as often as you like, which is a very nice touch.
Strangely, the graphics really don't seem to have changed much since the original Operation Flashpoint. Some elements still stand out as quite good, but they're still inconsistent. Some character or vehicle models, for instance, look great, while others are muddy and blocky. There are specific animations for climbing ladders or crawling on the ground, but no animations at all for getting into and out of vehicles. Vehicles explode with a satisfying bloom of fire and smoke, but there aren't any in between damage states for vehicles; they're either showroom new or charred hulks.
Performance seems to be a big issue as well, particularly on Vista. We've struggled to find the right balance between the quality of the visuals and a consistent framerate. We're beginning to think that it doesn't exist. This is particularly distressing given the fact that the game doesn't look that much better than the original Operation Flashpoint.
The effects are sometimes a bit thin but they're put to excellent use regardless. Hearing bullets whiz by your head and impact the ground behind you really brings the experience to life. What's even better is that the sounds you hear reflect the battle situation around you. Many times we marveled as the positional audio gave us an awareness of things we couldn't see. Crouching behind a wall and hearing enemy troops patrolling on the other side, or racing to set up an ambush just as a church bell rings out to announce the arrival of the convoy, or wondering how your allies are faring as shots ring out a few blocks away -- all these moments reflect the excellent way that the audio is used in the game.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved