Arma 2

[Soulyss]

I bought Armed Assault 1 being a big fan of Operation Flashpoint, I had a couple issues with the retail/vanilla version of the game.  I started playing with some of the mods/tweaks I found on this thread

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=71981

and it totally transformed the game and to me made it a lot more enjoyable, I didn't try all of the mods, but picked a handful that I thought would be nice and in almost every case it made what I would consider an improvement, especially the ACE mod.

Can't wait for Armed Assault 2, was planning on buying through Steam.

Quite happy to hear that the campaign is pretty infantry/small unit based, I didn't care for leading a large group of people in either OFP or ARMA.

[thedudee95]

Arma 1 wasn't worth the money.

QFT.

[Wingnutt]

I bought arma 1 onoline via "sprocket"  and every time they released an update, it wouldinvalidate the game, and I would have to e-mail sprocket for another license, then after I did this about 5 times, they quit responding to me, never sent me a new key, I e-mailed them several times over the course of about a week..  I posted on the BIS forums about the problem and was called a pirate and my thread got locked.

$50 I paid, and cant even play the game.

 

Never again will I Buy/download a game (like that).  piss poor.

[Swoop]

I agree, Sprocket sucks.  Steam is mildly better but way too expensive.

[thrila]

I was going to buy arma 2 but i found empire total war on steam for £15.  Steam is usually expensive, i don't think i've ever purchased a new game that wasn't made by valve.  I used to love operation flashpoint, i imagine i will buy this as some stage.

Talking of expensive downloads, I am considering buying the game 'blood bowl' this week (I was a massive gamesworkshop geek as a kid) but is available through digital download via the official website only.  I don't have a problem with that per se but it's £40! Most new releases in the UK can be pre-ordered for £25.

[CraneMan]

Craneman, please do not post about poncey, low realism arcade games in this thread again.

Have you heard of Project Reality?
BF2 & Aces High are the only games I play until something better comes along.

[Swoop]

Have you heard of Project Reality?

Yes I have and it still isn't.

[allaire]

Thrila all I have to say is think about the two words in your post "Games Workshop."  Anything to do with said company has gotten hideously expensive in the last 3+years.

[mechanic]

 The modded version of ArmA 1 i have running is brilliant. The AI search and clear open buildings. SpecOps will sneak up on tanks and lay satchels indepenantly of any mission editing. Just put random troops anywhere on the map with gaurd or the modded 'dismissed' waypoints and you have a dynamic warzone.
 
 The other mods i found include better evironment visuals, forecasted weather, accurate balistic, accurate AI spotting/pathfinding/recognition distances, accurate penetration at range, windage and elevation MOA setting, range cards, more realistic flight modeling, realistic tracer mod, realistic bleeding and wounding, the possibilty to make enemy platoons surrender and lie face down if they are being thrashed. ..the list just goes on. Then there are the hundreds of user created weapons/units/objects/maps which make hours of mission editing fun.

How could anyone not like this game? Its basic in so many areas, that's the beauty for me, rather than these super fast action shooters on the consoles. I will upload a recent MD500 support mission i made to you tube if anyone wants to see how damn good ArmA 1 looks when you set it up right.

[Makarov9]

Big fan of the OFP, ARMA games. Looking forward to this one and some great online action with the Tactical Gamers squad. Just ordered a Q9550 Quad Core CPU to help run this game with higher graphics. Should be out on Steam by Friday.

[Swoop]

I'm finding it pretty stable and quick on my system and it's a couple of years old.

AMD dual core 4200
2Gb RAM
ATI 1950 256mb

I've turned off post process effects cos I just don't like em (bright haze from the sky no matter where the sun is and a blurr effect when you turn your head) but everything else is on and appart from the low detail textures issue introduced with the latest patch it looks (er, looked) good.  No slowdowns under load, unlike Arma 1.

Oh btw, did I mention the campaign is multiplayer?

[Soulyss]

Thanks for posted those spec's I was a little worried about the system requirements, running a dual core 2.18 intel here with the same RAM and vid card. 

Wish there was a handy way some of us here in the AH community could get together and play through the campaign as a coop MP game.

[Makarov9]

Swoop, thanks for the specs and info. I heard some bad things about the sun effect. I'm sure it'll get sorted out in future patches. Initially Bohemia's games have bugs, but they always work hard on fixing things.

Looking forward to the Bigfoot hunts!

[Swoop]

With Arma 1 we got multiplayer "warfare" mode.  A kind of FPS / RTS mix.

With Arma 2 the warfare model makes it into some campaign missions







There's also a new "armoury".  Select something in the armoury like an M16A2 and a random "challenge" will be offered.  So far I've seen the following:

Assassinate enemy officer.
Survive for x minutes while being hunted.
Defend an area.
Go deer hunting.
Skeet shooting.
Drive the off road mobility course (interesting in a cheap eastern european car).
Race another vehicle.
Transport troops on time.

[Makarov9]

HA! Skeet shooting with an AK-74! I need to try that at our local range next time. I'm sure I wouldn't get too many strange looks or call to the cops.