ArmA: Armed Assault Hands-on (ign.com)

- ign.com -

UK, November 21, 2006 - Bohemia Interactive, the development team behind Armed Assault, describes its latest conception as the spiritual successor to Operation Flashpoint. There's nothing spiritual about it - at its heart it's pretty much exactly the same game, but with a cosmetic overhaul provided by advancements in technology over the last five years. It looks sharper and the scale of the battlefield is even more sprawling, but beneath that glossy façade is still the same ultra-realistic shooter that was bombarded with critical acclaim half a decade ago.

Whether the similarities are a good or bad thing depends on your opinion of Operation Flashpoint. Many couldn't get to grips with its unforgiving gameplay and the way you'd spend 20 minutes crawling on your belly to get around the back of the enemy, only to blow your surprise attack by edging out from cover too far and dying from a single slug to the head. On the other hand if, like us, you loved Flashpoint, you'll lap up Armed Assault, because the enemy is just as cunning and it's just as tortuous to play, and we wouldn't want it any other way.

EA's Battlefield series has moved the multiplayer FPS genre on a lot in the past few years, but while Armed Assault bears many superficial resemblances to Battlefield 2 - with its modern day theatre of operations, authentic arsenal and the addition of tanks and helicopter gunships - the two couldn't be more different to play. Run straight at the enemy and your squad will be cut down in a matter of seconds. Take a bullet in the leg and you'll drop to your knees and will have to drag yourself along the ground until you're patched up by a medic. Likewise, enemy soldiers can be dropped with a single shot and a heavy machine gunner can rip through an entire squad of troops if they're holed up in the right position.

But Flashpoint's coup de grace was the freedom it gave to players: there were objectives to achieve but how you complete them was entirely up to you. That's still the case with Armed Assault, only more so. The main campaign is set across a vast, living, breathing island populated with villages and towns joined by a network of roads and dirt tracks. There are grass plains that stretch across the horizon, arid deserts which prove hard going underfoot and dense forests that provide much-needed cover. You'll need to use the environment to complete your goals, whether it's to ambush a convoy or seize control of a nearby town, it's completely up to you because you're literally free to go wherever you want.

As an example, one of the earlier missions we encountered required us to eliminate all enemy resistance in a local village. Using the map as a guide we closed in on the target, popped our head over the brow of a hill to recce the situation before legging it to the nearest building when the coast was clear. Except the coast wasn't clear and halfway across an enemy patrol unexpectedly marched into view and opened fire before we could reach the safety of the houses. Strike one.

Having learned from our mistakes we waited in the tree line the second time round and sniped the patrol from a distance. But while this strategy eliminated the initial threat, the aftermath was far more ferocious, as an armoured car - dispatched to deal with the attack - trundled directly towards our squad and obliterated the tree line with vicious cannon fire. Strike two.

The third time attempt was more successful. Crawling slowly up to the edge of the forest to avoid detection, we laid in wait until the sun began to set over the horizon. Then, under the cover of darkness, our squad scuttled across to the buildings and, using night-vision, picked off enemy troops one by one. However, it wasn't long before the enemy worked out where shots were being fired from and closed in our position, outflanking our team by laying down covering fire from the front while another team sneaked around the back. And we thought we were being clever waiting for it to get dark.

This adaptive AI means every mission you play really is different from the last, even if you're tackling the same objectives. There is no definitive way to complete a mission and even with the best strategy in the world you'll still have to think on your feet because the enemy's reactions change every time. Admittedly individual AI isn't all that great sometimes - occasionally enemy troops stand motionless even though the guy next to them has just had his head blown off - and computer-controlled team mates can screw up a well thought-out plan by firing too early unless you keep a tight grip over them. But overall it's a marked improvement over Flashpoint and will challenge even the most strategically minded player.

In addition to the new campaign game and vehicles - and yes, the helicopter is a bitch to fly, but master it and you'll feel like a king - Armed Assault boasts a fleshed out multiplayer game that includes a welcome return of Flashpoint's meaty co-op mode. Played out as individual missions rather than a story-driven campaign, a handful of human players can team up to tackle the AI enemy, working together as a team to bring down the terrorist threat. Like Flashpoint it's important to balance out the weapons payload in your squad, ensuring there's at least one anti-tank grunt and one heavy gunner in its line up. And while it's certainly not ethical you can also steal equipment from fallen enemies and team mates, meaning it's by no means the end of the game if the guy carrying the rocket launcher kicks the bucket and the enemy is trundling around in a tank.

Visually Armed Assault is a considerable improvement over Flashpoint, but then it should be because it's five years later. It lacks the polish of Battlefield with many of the landscapes looking more sparse than we'd like, even with the detail cranked up to maximum. The version we played was pretty buggy too, with textures popping in and out and the animation of the solider looking clunky. Having said that, Armed Assault's ball-gripping gameplay more than makes up for these cosmetic shortfalls and we cannot wait to take it online nearer the game's launch next February.