Armed Assault 2

Armed Assault 2



Here it is – more than a week before it’s official release, we are giving you a thorough review of the up coming Armed Assault 2 – ONLY at videogamereign.com! The game is set to release on June 26th, so if you are a fan of the series or the genre, be sure to pick it up!


Fast-paced, Rambo-esque shooters may satisfy a large portion of the gaming population, but there is another healthy niche within the PC gaming market – one that enjoys highly technical, realistic games that emphasize realism over visceral action. 2001’s Operation Flashpoint was one such game, as was its 2006 spiritual successor, Armed Assault (ArmA).

Barely two years after ArmA made its rather inconspicuous debut, receiving mixed reviews – a sequel, ArmA II – has followed suit, with an official release in Germany and the Czech Republic. The first major patch (1.01) has been released. So how does everything come together? Does it even come together at all?

The quick answer is that ArmA II is a step above its predecessor, but not a leap. The design ideas behind the game are solid, and there are a few new elements that might make people say “that’s neat.” However, the game, as it stands, is still rife with bugs, making the main campaign impossible for most gamers to complete, and, because of its technical demands, many people may not be able to play the game at all.

ArmA II, though a military simulator at heart, does have a plot behind it. It also makes a sincere effort to be more cinematic than the original ArmA or even the Operation Flashpoint games, which were developed by the same people but with a different publisher. The story is set in Chernarus, a fictional Eastern European country with some uncanny parallels to the real-world country of Georgia. Players assume the role of Sergeant Cooper, a US marine recon operative deployed there to help quell an insurgent uprising. Things go terribly wrong, leaving him in command of his squad, Razor Team, behind enemy lines and caught between countless warring factions, including the Russian army.

The story is actually somewhat interesting – and the campaign has some pretty cool moments. It seems at times that it strives to be Call of Duty 4 – which it isn’t. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. There are a lot of open-ended, free-roaming missions here with plenty of objectives to complete. Gameplay is still the same as before; one shot can kill Cooper or anyone else. If the player is wounded, there is a medic on the team who can heal him – but if he or anyone else in the squad is killed, the mission ends. While this might not sound like a deal breaker, it can be. ArmA II’s campaign, more than anything else, is difficult. The second half involves missions that can take hours or even days to complete. Cooper alone will probably end up killing hundreds of enemies during the course of the campaign. Even though the AI has improved since ArmA and is at times borderline convincing, teammates die far too often, even on the lowest difficulty setting, which is where most people will have to start due to the unlimited savegame ability there that prevents total frustration. It’s often best to leave the team behind and have Cooper handle things himself, which, while possible, involves a lot of trial and error.

As stated earlier, the campaign, even with the current patch, is largely unplayable. Bugs are everywhere – from non-existent object collision to glitchy animations, menu/objective issues and bizarre camera problems (all of which get worse as the campaign progresses), there are enough to suggest that most players avoid the campaign until it’s functional. This is really a shame, as some of the later missions are quite interesting. One in particular showcases the game’s new conquest-style mode (an idea likely borrowed from the ArmA modding community), where the goal is to wage an all-out war to control Chernarus. Cooper can use the new command interface to send dozens of units all across the map, fighting to control strategically important cities and produce better units. It has a very unique, sandbox-like feel to it that will probably win over a lot of gamers, but again, it simply isn’t finished yet.

With the campaign as buggy as it is, what remains are a handful of decent single player missions that can be finished in a few hours, a functional but not particularly exciting armory mode, and the game’s main draws: the editor and multiplayer. The editor lets players create pretty much any scenario they desire, which, in many cases, is more entertaining than the campaign. The online community is already going strong, and the multiplayer feels improved and less laggy than ArmA’s did. The working components of a simulation – the weapons, aircraft, tanks and even the boats – all work more or less as they should. However, most of these have been around since ArmA or even earlier. It’s the mission system and similar elements that feel incomplete.

While the gameplay might lack polish, ArmA II’s audio and visuals don’t. The voicework is an improvement over ArmA’s, though it’s far from Oscar material. There are a few bizarre quirks, such as characters speaking in voices that don’t suit them, but that’s the only major complaint. Explosions, sound effects and gunshots are terrific. Even the music isn’t half bad.

ArmA sported graphics that elicited mixed responses. ArmA II is built on the same technology, but this time around, it looks noticeably better. The terrain has realistic grass and foliage, as well as flora and even animals that create a convincing Eastern European environment. Character and object details are above average, and some considerable effort has gone into making animations look more believable. Another nice touch is the motion blur effect (seen when playing in first person mode), which will annoy some gamers, but will make others feel closer to the action. The downside to all of these graphical perks, of course, is the performance demand. ArmA II is simply not designed for low-end machines. Even reasonably high-end systems will struggle with it, and mid-range machines will have to play it with most of the eye candy disabled. For those lucky few that can handle it, however, it looks fantastic.

ArmA II is a testament to the kind of experience that is offered up when a game developer caters to a niche market and tries to give them what they want. Like its predecessor, ArmA has tremendous potential for those who enjoy open-ended military simulators. Unfortunately, its ambitions were more than the developers could fulfill with the time and resources allocated to them, and so, like the first ArmA, it will probably take months or years of comprehensive patches to get the game where it should have been at release.

Still, for gamers who are fans of the series and who enjoy the specific kind of gameplay that ArmA II offers, it will be worth it in the long run. Whether or not they’re better off buying the game now and putting up with the bugs or waiting for another big patch or two is something that they’ll have to decide for themselves.

System Requirements

Minimal PC System Requirements

* Dual Core CPU
* 1 GB RAM
* GPU with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB RAM
* Windows XP or Windows Vista
* Dual-layer compatible DVD drive, 10 GB free space on the hard drive


Optimal PC System Requirements

* Quad Core CPU
* 2 GB RAM
* Fast GPU (Geforce 8800GT/Radeon 4850 or equivalent) with Shader Model 3 and 512 or more MB RAM
* Windows XP or Windows Vista

Quoted from: videogamereign gamers-lab