February 20, 2007

ArmA: Armed Assault

UPDATE: Okay, played the multiplayer demo. It *is* Operation Flashpoint 2 - more precisely, Resistance 2.

The graphics are better but not by a huge margin, and improving textures does not a new game make.

Playability actually seems reduced - menus are a little different from OFP, but so far it’s neither felt intuitive nor improved.

And I think BI Studios have really let themselves down releasing a multipler demo with no single player demo. Online multiplayer games are really hit and miss, so by not having an input on the quality of the gameplay of the demo, BI Studios haven’t really given me any opportunity to be impressed so far.

I enjoyed Operation Flashpoint, but I’m having difficulty seeing what ArmA delivers that’s different - aside from new graphics and new islands. We got those after Oxygen, though, didn’t we?

I could have been really tempted to buy, but so far, I’ve got no incentive. It’s too much like the limp Resistance expansion, rather than a radical regeneration of OFP.

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Before I set up business, I spent a while totally immersed in BI Studios’ Operation Flashpoint.

It was a superb first person military shooter, with an emphasis on working within a squad to achieve objectives in set missions, or else leading missions yourself.

One of the brilliant features of the game was the ability to create your own missions. It was a short learning curve, but once you cracked it, you could create some great gameplay.

Funnily enough, without realising it at the time, I found myself editing code to create my own missions. I even specialised in - and provided tutorials on - setting up cutscenes for inter-mission play.

I also became closely involved with the developer community that expanded the game with a stunning range of mods, not least after Bohemia Interactive released their modelling tools to the gaming community.

When it came to building websites for fun and profit, I found the experience I had developing scenarios and coding cutscenes left me much more confident about editing HTML, CSS, and even PHP as required.

Anyway - Operation Flashpoint has finally been succeeded, 6 years later, by ArmA: Armed Assault - and the screenshots are pretty impressive.

Even better, it looks like they’ve taken some of the models and basic play from Operation Flashpoint and expanded upon them.

That means it has to be a great game.

Anyway, much as I normally ban myself from playing games, I’ve downloaded the ArmA demo, and will treat myself to some plays on evenings.

While on the one hand I’ll treat it as a leisure project, I’ll also approach it with a more serious perspective - draw what I can from the developer community on expanding my experience with coding - and lay out some cut scene development which may or may not one day help with my overall aim of getting more closely involved with IPTV via CGI.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, check out these serious screenshots (click for larger versions):