Arma 2 / Operation Arrowhead

The Game Room
1

Has anybody picked this game up?

For the uninitiated, it’s the most diamond-hard military FPS I’ve ever played. Its big features are an enormous map (400 square km), a huge array of vehicles and weapons (pilot a helicopter!), and a quite well-developed system for giving commands to NPC subordinates.

Some people call it Really Slow Battlefield, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I got all the way up to the helicopter mission on OA, and I’m currently struggling my way through the first free-roaming mission in vanilla.

If you want a game that is seriously, no-fooling the most difficult thing ever, give it a shot. The tutorial takes about 2-and-a-half hours to get through.

2

It is a pretty decent First Person Stroller. A shooter, not so much.

3

It’s a military sim, it’s not a linear, action movie shooter. It’s realistic, it’s deliberate.

And it’s no fun unless you have a crew with you that knows what they’re doing, at which point the game becomes ten times better than any CoD.

4

Is it less terribly bugged than it was at release? I seem to recall the Drill Instructor who was supposed to teach me heavy weapons being randomly and absurdly sniped by an invisible enemy who wasn’t supposed to be there. (Or was that the first ARMA?)

5

On the latest releases, I find the bugs to be much diminished, though in the complicated missions they can still be a problem.

6

I recall giving this game a reply but giving up in frustration because it wouldn’t let me remap the keys the way I always do.

I use the right-mouse button for forward movement and the W key for the right-buttons standard function (usually zoom).

Unorthodox but it works for me and the fact you can’t swap it in Arma made the game unplayable for me. :confused:

7

I’ve had a ton of fun with it in the past. I haven’t played much in the last 6 months or so.

It’s a huge game with huge potential and huge bugs.

8

I still enjoy having to do an emergency landing in a UH-60 for some reason, after watching the sky fill up with rpgs.

9

This thread has really made me interested in Arma 2. I really miss the old, original Ghost Recon, where you could direct different squads and the maps seemed much more open and larger and non-linear than later games.

I played the Operation Arrowhead demo and enjoyed what I played, but there wasn’t a lot of content present in the demo. Does the full game come with enough scenarios and campaign stuff to keep one busy in single player?

It’s $20 on Steam right now; does it go on sale from time to time?

10

Check out Armaholic.com for tons of content including missions and campaigns.

The squad command is clunky but workable. Works better with real players. Of course mods can improve things.

I don’t see a lot of sales on Arma2.

11

It’s very easy to create your own scenarios, and as control-z said, there’s an astounding amount of content (including scenarios, new units, new maps, etc.) on Armaholic. I never even played all the way through the single player campaigns, preferred making my own with a lot of extra stuff from Armaholic. I think it it is in a league of its own in terms of replayability and custom content.

12

Think of it more as a sandbox rather than a planned experience such as Call of Duty.

13

I got the combo pack of Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead; it was still downloading by bedtime but I’m excited to give it a workout. Thanks, folks.

14

I haven’t played in a long while. Anyone up for a co-op mission or two this weekend?

15

I’m east coast, I tend to play 8pm+, but have some flexibility.

16

East Coast too.

I can play at any time of day or night. The wife is working over the weekend so I am a free man! And being the good husband that I am, it’s multi-player gaming for me over strip bars and beer!