Customer Reviews

ArmA: Armed Assault - Gold Edition (PC DVD)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This game is the spiritual successor to Operation Flashpoint, just in case anyone doesn't know that. It was made by the same team, using the same engine. The graphics have been tarted up, and the gameplay refined and extended, but it will be very familiar to anyone who has played the original.

Graphically, it is hardly mind blowing. Crysis or even Far Cry are greatly superior. But its not about graphics. The audio is a little messed up, particularly using surround sound. The acting isn't too bad though. But its not about sounds. So what is it about? Gameplay, baby. And this has it in droves. Let me make this much clear: this is not pick up and play. You will die, you will miss, and you will generally suck at this for a little while. Build your skills, play for a while and think like a soldier, then you'll do much better.

This is a big improvement over the old game, with easier to handle vehicles, clearer objectives, and generally more intuitive play. Some of the old bugs remain, however. Enemy A.I. is not so good sometimes. Neither is friendly A.I. for that matter. It sometimes feels like you're the only soldier out there. The realism of combat is most noticeable when the whole thing has been expertly coordinated by a mission writer, but the open ended nature of this game means that the script often falls apart, and the realism goes with it as the A.I. reverts to unscripted actions. When it is real, its a little too real - you simply cannot control a game character like a real person, so you end up very dead, very quick. Many of the missions are made near impossible by this factor. Also, I can't count the number of times I've shown up for a battle to find that its over and all my guys are dead - usually only to receive an order to lead the 'survivors' to assault another camp somewhere. Its also a little buggy - it won't freeze on you AT ALL, but sometimes a mission trigger doesn't go off, and you're left standing with no objective and no way to complete the mission.

That said, just like Operation Flashpoint, this is the closest thing to real that you'll get. Its more like IL-2 Sturmovik, than Ace Combat (if you're into flight sims). More real, less accessible. If you are patient, like military strategy, and don't want to support corporate evil by buying Operation Flashpoint 2, I recommend this. It really should be a 4-star game, but the flaws and bugs and A.I. hold it back.

This game is inevitably going to draw comparison with Operation Flashpoint, since there is a distinct lack of other games which attempt the same level of realism, and offer so few concessions to arcade-style shoot-'em-up-ism. The gameplay is largely the same; some have criticised the complexity of the controls (which I think are actually slightly easier to use in ArmA than OpF), but I think that given a mouse and a keyboard they would be quite hard to simplify. Anyway, you get used to them after a while. ArmA's complexity is a necessary result of its realism. It's a hard game to master: it requires some effort and a bit of patience, but both these are amply rewarded.

The improvements over OpF are, as you would expect, mainly in terms of graphics. Some have knocked ArmA's graphics, but I have to say I was pretty impressed, even given a fairly low-end machine running most of the settings towards minimum. I think graphics is more than just a question of the number of polygons: take the towns for example. In OpF, all the towns looked pretty much the same - a couple of houses placed round a crossroads. In ArmA the topography and variation is far more interesting, you can actually get lost in a town, and the opportunities for hiding, sneaking around and finding good lines of sight is very much increased.

The AI is a bit of a problem, particularly the lack of it for members of your own side, who seem much more adept at getting themselves killed than the enemy. However, many of the problems of tanks going the wrong way etc can be circumvented with a little forethought.

Where ArmA really falls short of OpF is in the campaign. It's too short, for one thing. BI have tried to bring in an element of choice: you can choose to do side missions, and in some missions you can switch between different roles, and back again, part-way through. Both these innovations are mistakes, I think: if a side mission is too hard there is a temptation just to skip it; a compulsory mission would make you work harder, and give more satisfaction on finally completing it. And the character switch detracts from the realism and the empathy one had in OpF with the three or four named characters, one of whom you were always playing.

All in all, the combat environment is more immersive in ArmA than in OpF, simply because of the graphics and the construction of the artificial world, but it's hard really to love the game as a whole. Completing OpF was like seeing an enormous task right through to the end; completing ArmA is like completing all the single missions in OpF.

Within minutes of my chopper landing in the old quarry on my first mission, i`m eating daisies. Shot through the head by a far off sniper and most of my squad are dead or injured.

ArmA: Armed Assault is the spiritual successor to Operation Flashpoint. If your a fan of going Rambo in Call Of Duty or Medal Of Honour then your life in this game will be very short. Tactics and team work are the order of the day in this game from Czech developer Bohemia Interactive.

The gold pack also comes with the `Queen`s Gambit` expansion pack.

FIRST THOUGHTS: This game is damn hard. You spot your enemy in the far off distance but rarely see them at close quarters. Make a wrong move or move without thinking and your dead meat.

AFTER A WEEK OF PLAY: I`m addicted. I love the way that your success or failure in a mission had a direct effect on the war. For example if you send on a mission to destroy some enemy tanks and failure to do so then in future missions the other side will be better armed in the future.

One thing I dislike is aiming your weapon is difficult, its always recoiling all over the place.

Negative Points: Steep learning curve..
Positive Points: Love the banter between Squad members. A large variety of vehicles to drive around or fly.

Despite it having a sequel that appears to be attracting intense amounts of hype compared to previous iterations, ArmA is still one of the strongest, funnest and most intense war simulators out there.

The graphics are not overly dated yet and there is still a lot of life in this product, the community may be slowly moving away from ArmA 1 but they have created so much content for the game that you can effectively fix anything the devs missed out: wounded soldiers, prisoners, better AI and thousands of new units, vehicles and weapons.

For anyone who is new to the series:
* ArmA is the spiritual sequel to the original game Operation Flashpoint
* The game is renowned for it's intense realisation of modern combat (a single bullet will put you down, realistic bullet ballistics)
* The game contains an incredibly powerful mission editor that allows you to place units, set objectives etc.

The Latter of these three features is an extremely extensive tool that the community has used brilliantly in ArmA's glory days and these missions can still be found among most other mods for the game on the website: ArmAholic.

ArmA is a truly amazing game and I would especially recommend this to people who don't have a good enough computer to run ArmA 2 or it's expansion(s).

Other reviews give a good coverage on what this game has to offer. I do not need to go over the same ground. The ambitious attempt at recreating the realism of combat is unmatched (albiet with the human aspect missing - e.g: I have never been able take prisoners or seen the enemy runaway). I just wanted to make this very important point: Bohemia Interactive have always delivered something special and unique - but riddled with bugs. However, this ARMA GOLD edition includes all of the important patches (all the way up to 1.08) and I haven't spotted any bugs at all. I have found this version very stable.

This game took me awhile to get into as i was totally blown away, evrything from flying to driving to walking and getting involved in the likes of mission and map editing was some thing i never done but with time nad patience i paided off. if you love flight simulations the response from the helicopters and planes is just to easy to manage, heck even arma 2 flying is really easy. for those that are more FPS then you will struggle to manage it. Down to basics this game will bring you to the world of arma and is a good trainning simulation to get involved and get you geared for arma 2 if you do decide to buy it. This game i have had my eye on it for a long while not but it has been only since june 2009 that i bought it and have not regretted it. Even this game beats the likes of other games that have come before it and to be quite honest even though it doesn't require to much power from your graphics card like what arma 2 does, you still get alot of fun grabbing it by the horns.

Played on Windows Vista 64bit.

I was looking forward to this game, since having played the origonal Operation Flashpoint that this game is based on, and the people working on that origianl OFP split up to make this. However I was left a little dissapointed overall. The game looked like Op flash & was very fun, but there were allot of bugs in the game, and it felt way too short in lifespan, compared to its origonal OFP. I know ARMA 2 is scheduled, but I think I gave them a chance and they didnt deliver for me, so I will hedge my future money on Operation Flashpoint:Dragon Rising which is out this Summer instead.

Arma is a great infantry combat simulation game (the vehicles could do with some work though) i barely play the real game though because the map editor is just so much fun and really lets you create your own unique and fun singleplayer and multiplayer maps. Theres also a few great mods out for it too, (zombie mod FTW!!).
All in all, if your P.C will handle it and you're fed up with the run and gun of BF2 style games, give Arma a try!!

When I purchased this game long ago it was received quickly and undamaged not really played the game so can not comment on that

This is quite simply operation flashpoint with improved graphics, new islands and less bugs. Being that flashpoint is an ancient game you'd think this was a bad thing, however flashpoint is one of the most interesting games ever made and is based on a NATO battlefield simulator.

The long and short of it is that the single player missions are absolutely awful, they are so incredibly frustrating as they have super narrow victory conditions, far far too many opposition (so you have to replay 15-25 times to win) and the worst dialogue I've seen in a game. The multi player games are sheer brilliance however! The old flashpoint capture the island user generated mod has been recreated by the designers in the for of 'warfare'. You can happily play warfare with some friends for 7 hours straight. Its somewhere between capture the flag fps and command an conquer. As an example, we have a sniper team deploy with a laser target designator and one of us will use a harrier to drop laser guided munitions onto enemypositions! It looks really nice on modern computers, not dated as you would expect. ArmA 2 might be better, i've not played it, but if you are worried about specs then it may be worth sticking with this as its still very good. Don't touch opflash 2, it is a travesty, a truly hatefull game that missed the point of opflash.

One last note is that the final mod release (many years after release I might add- impeccable product support) sorted out compatibility with win7 x64. Thanks, BI studios, you rock!