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Wobbly · #1

By Neddle69, a very old friend and member of Game Veteran.

I have decided to write this review because I consider myself something of an authority on Operation Flashpoint / ArmA based CoOp gameplay. I have spent much of the last 4 or 5 years playing little else. So, let’s start with the areas in which ArmA2 betters its predecessors.

Graphics… that’s it. The graphics are superb, especially the lighting. The dappled shadows of leaves are cast lovingly over waving grass and the player’s shoulders as you move through glen and dale. The sunshine flares on your screen and then fades and flares again as you turn 360°. Cows trample buttercups absently as they graze in wonderfully lush valleys. Oil and gas pipelines suspended on scaffolding in the dirty industrial towns help convey the grim squalor of a war-torn eastern bloc country perfectly.

None of this matters however since all this detail does is help conceal the enemy to a level previously not believed possible. Herein lies the problem. You see, even if ArmA2 were to be projected onto an IMAX screen at maximum resolution by a supercomputer, it would still be nigh on impossible to see an enemy concealed behind a little patch of long grass. You could literally walk past them without being any the wiser… or at least you could if they were equally hampered. Unfortunately they are not. The enemy AI has the eyes of an omnipotent hawk. Trees, grass, pipes, rocks and even buildings are no obstacle to their keen, some might say god-like, eyesight. This makes the game impossible. You get out your binoculars and scan the horizon, you check behind every wall using 3rd person view and then you cautiously crawl forward. This usually results in a smacking sound and your avatar rolling over and writhing on the ground like a greased pervert in a knicker factory, with a gaping bullet wound his head. The bullet was fired by a man about 8 yards away who had hitherto been invisible because he stayed perfectly still and watched you through a wall waiting until your face was revealed above his ironsights.

This is another annoyance. Just because I play Co Op mode does not mean I want to play doctors and nurses. Also, if I am shot in the head by a 7.62mm full metal jacket bullet I expect to be dead, not injured, certainly not injured in a way that a bit of bandage and maybe a morphine shot from another soldier could repair. Unless the makers of ArmA2 want their players to drag each other from the fictitious country in Eastern Europe in which it is set, all the way to a Swiss clinic specialising in neurosurgical procedures, they should perhaps have made headshots lethal.

Operation Flashpoint was hard. Really hard. The enemy could drop you from 1000 yards in a heartbeat. And they only had bushes, rocks and rudimentary buildings to hide behind. ArmA was harder, much harder. What ArmA2 does is stack the odds further in their favour. Seldom does a bullet fired at you not hit its mark. Seldom do you get the drop on an unsuspecting enemy.

I could, perhaps live with these difficulties, if it wasn’t for the radio chatter. Again Op Flash and ArmA had dodgy voice acting. I found it charming. However, in those games, the amateur thespians limited themselves to yelling “Enemy BMP 500!” in a silly Texan accent every now and again. Now we have an entire narrative being portrayed by woefully inadequate actors over the net WHILST YOUR IN BATTLE! This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to communicate with my Co Op buddy when all we can hear is some feckless moron explaining the finer political points of the dire Clancyesque plot? I’LL ANSWER THAT! I can’t. If you have a plot to explain do it in cut scenes. Co Op game play is about the relationship between the players, NOT my avatar’s relationship with some virtual idiot called Miles who dies, through no fault of ours, after we are captured, through no fault of ours, and who neither of us HUMANS gave a tiny turd about in the first place.

ArmA2’s CoOp Campaign is a tagged on afterthought.. DO NOT PLAY IT.

And a little vid from my youtube channel.