ArmA-II Reviewed

Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun has been witting some more on his thoughts of ArmA-II having been playing for some weeks.

People ask me what it's like to play ArmA. Thay ask why are you playing a game with such short comings. To be honest I have found it hard to put it into words. Well Jim is a much better wordsmith than me. All I know is that whenever I speak to people that have been in real war, served their country. When they play this game they are amazed and enthralled. Nothing comes closer...

with a frustrating or difficult game it’s a single experience that makes it click, and makes me know why I like it, or why I hate it and must castigate it unto destruction. But not so with Arma II. Instead it was a gradual, sedimentary build up of smaller happenings that vindicated the entire thing. During the campaign this included the introduction of support elements and the escalation of the war, the gradual realisation of the enormity of thing thing, winning a battle against a much smaller force with just Razor team, seeing my first tank battle, watching attack helicopters in action, seeing the strategic elements build into the game and take advantage of them, delivering an artillery strike correctly, using targeting toys for friendly aircraft, and so on, and on.

While there seems to be something slightly too washed out and shaky about Arma II’s engine, it nevertheless bags the feel, the overall sense-data of being in a warzone, better than anything else out there. The crackle and crump of nearby battles seems exactly right, and the sudden confusion and violence of coming under fire is about as harsh as it could be. Struggling towards an injured member of Razor team, dragging him into cover and patching him up: that’s a desperate kind of drama that you don’t get in many other games.