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Operation flashpoint 2, or Arma 2?

deadsmell

By deadsmell
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-fox-

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As much as I want to try it ASAP, I think it's wise to wait for more reports to drop in. There seems to be a lot of viral marketing going on and with the whole OFP vs ARMA-fanboyism it's even harder to tell anything from the handfull of user reviews so far. The German magazine PCGames had to pull their review because ARMA's publisher ordered them to hold it back until release day. It contains lots of criticism about the the game being a very buggy mess so far.

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element1108

element1108

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I'm not sure many of us (i could be wrong) care much for the politics of the game or game environment...I'm more interested in the experience it gives me.

 

I think playing in a real world environment makes that experience MUCH more interesting. Not many opportunities to virtually explore a part of the world I'll probably never get to see in real life with this kind of detail.

 

I'll most likely get both games because they both offer different experiences within the same genre.

 

The one thing I don't like (and this is just me) about ARMA is the controls. I'm actually no longer a fan of mouse and keystroke combinations...although tracker IR is a HUUUUUGe bonus. I just find controls on consoles (specifically xbox) a little more dynamic. Of course that's just me.

 

Anyway I'm glad both these games are coming out because it's the ground equivalent (with some room) of Black Shark.

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TangoRomeo

TangoRomeo

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Do you play with ACE ?

 

Yepp, 1.08. Haven't checked out the latest build yet.

 

 

@ -=fox=-,

 

guess that would be a wise thing to do.

 

Regardless, here's some quick first impressions from a german long-time ofp/arma fan.

 

The good:

The sound is good, as is the athmosphere - not only because of the variety of equipment, weapons and vehicles. Hookers and animal life do their part to make the player feel comfortable. :D

 

Game mechanics:

The new head-bopping is fun, but should be set to minimum. Motion blur while turning is ok, but appears somewhat overdone. Controls are more direct compared to ArmA. Can't tell much about the performance yet, but Arma 2 seems to be heavy on the system.

 

The bad:

Trees flickering

Precaching of high res textures doesn't work properly - either there's a noticeable delay, or high res textures won't load at all.

Stuttering dependend on selected mission quite noticeable, not unlike Arma.

Towns are all small.

 

Initial conclusion:

Arma2 is better than Arma. It's more like OFP, with the old feel. Sadly, many bugs that are known since Arma, also plague Arma2.

 

Some user made videos:


Edited by TangoRomeo
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For those who understand German:

 

http://www.pcgames.de/aid,685486/ArmA-2-PC-Games-testet-die-Militaer-Simulation-Update/PC/News/ (includes a video)

 

http://www.gamestar.de/specials/spiele/1956417/arma_2.html

 

http://www.pcaction.de/ArmA-2-Unser-Review-des-bugverseuchten-Armed-Assault-2/Tests/article/view/1294/

 

All three magazines report of many minor and major bugs in the German retail version of ArmA 2 - despite a hastily applied beta-patch (1.01 is scheduled for next week). The international version is likely to include these fixes already due to the premature release (aka 'enhanced open beta-testing') of some localized versions beforehand.


Edited by -=fox=-
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Feuerfalke

Feuerfalke

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For those who understand German:

 

http://www.pcgames.de/aid,685486/ArmA-2-PC-Games-testet-die-Militaer-Simulation-Update/PC/News/ (includes a video)

 

http://www.gamestar.de/specials/spiele/1956417/arma_2.html

 

http://www.pcaction.de/ArmA-2-Unser-Review-des-bugverseuchten-Armed-Assault-2/Tests/article/view/1294/

 

All three magazines report of many minor and major bugs in German retail version of ARMA 2 - despite a beta-patch. They have announced 1.01 for next week. The international version will likely include all these fixes already due to the premature release (aka 'enhanced open beta-testing') of some localized versions beforehand.

 

 

I was about to post the same links.

 

I waited for May 29th, 00:01 since I heard about the ordered radio silence to not release previews and reports. You can think of it, what you want, but I doubt it's a simple coincidence that the game was inofficially put on the shelves in many stores immediately after the first comments of testers surfaced on pcgames.de.

 

Interesting enough they were forced to remove them, which additionally had a touch of: Only tell them what they buy, after they did. Or as another gaming magazine just wrote: Reine Kundenverarsche (Pure fooling of customers)

 

Apparently the landscape and effects are brilliant (if textures load), but the single-player-campaign was reported in several mags to be unplayable. Not in terms of spoiling fun because of some bugs or the original ArmA1 voices, but because the missions at some stage seem to mess up scripts and prohibit successful completition of necessary tasks.

 

On Multiplayer, they couldn't test it before, as the game crashed when starting a server and there were no internet servers available to test the game on. But they noted something quite sad about the nice moving grass: It simply vanishes at a given distance. So if you have a sniper, just move back until he's lying on the flat green and shoot him.

On the other hand AI seems to engage targets over large distances. Distances at which you can't see the enemy because he's not rendered at that given distance. The AI can see you, however. Even if you are hiding in high grass, the AI can see you, because it is only an eyecandy effect. It has no effect on the game or the AI awareness.

 

I'm a great fan of OFP and I played that in a large group on LANs and on the internet. But with ArmA1, the not really flawless engine really became a bugfest. The recent patches IMHO made it the game it should have been on release. So I'm not surprised about the state ArmA2 is in at the release. I guess I'll check in a year or so.


Edited by Feuerfalke

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Feuerfalke

Feuerfalke

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under par beta team .

 

sure with fixes it will get better though.

 

Rather a rushed release, because the publisher wanted it out before OFP2 at any price. IMHO skipping the QA was definitely a too high price.

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TangoRomeo

TangoRomeo

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Marek Spanel : "Also, what is quite unusual is that some things happen completely differently every time I try a mission. I think the bugs do not kill the open nature of the game and that sheer scope, amount of content or beautiful country of Chernarus will more than compensate for these issues."

Plain english - Even if the game is broken, you still have some nice graphics to look at. (Provided you have a state of the Art computer)

 

Sad to say this, but they lost even more fans than they did with the release of Arma. Back then it was already too little, too late, too sloppy. If it wasn't for the community, and mods like ACE, Arma would have dissapeared from our radars rather quickly.

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SUBS17

SUBS17

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Absolutely not I'd still use it without those mods I've only just decided to download ACE today. Most missions I use don't require mods anyway. I think some of the best MP missions though are Warfare and Evo:thumbup:. When I get a new PC I'll definately get A2 it looks 100s of times better than Arma and their support and patches are quite good compared to other games in the past and they are quite quick at getting the show stoppers sorted.

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their support and patches are quite good compared to other games in the past and they are quite quick at getting the show stoppers sorted.

 

"Getting the show stoppers sorted" has nothing to do with support, it's the bare minimum that must be adressed if they don't want to get sued for not delivering a working commercial product. The need for an over the top-amount of fixes shouldn't count as achievement. Sure, games of this scope and with an open world approach are extremely hard to beta test and there will always be some bugs but this is quite unacceptable - especially since they knew about the unfinished state of their product before it hit the sstore and yet they haven't delayed it. It's quite likely the publisher who's to blame for it but that doesn't really matter to the customers who paid 50$ for this mess.


Edited by -=fox=-
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Here's a good review from tacticalgamer.com:

 

http://www.tacticalgamer.com/armed-assault-armed-assault-2-discussion/139436-tacticalgamer-review-arma2.html

 

As far as the buggy German release, they've done that since OFP. It's like getting people to buy to beta test. Kinda cheap, but I guess their logic is that once a person buys it, they'll be more apt to find the problems. Then you fix them before a world-wide release.


Edited by Total
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There's a new episode of GameStar TV dedicated to ArmA 2 (in German again): http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=10&pk=12297

Sounds really bad. They constantly curse at the AI, the bugs, the interface, the voice acting, the physics and missing animations for NPCs and weapons.

 

I don't fully trust them when it comes to top-ratings for the hype of the month but when all three major German magazines write that it's a full blown desaster, I tend to believe it.


Edited by -=fox=-
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Like I said in an earlier post, releasing it for bug finding in Europe has been the way it's been since the orignal OFP. Just back in those days, people had more patience and dealt with the bugs in favor of the game's potential (aka, far less whining and complaining).

 

ArmA was already at v1.05 at the US release and there was the 1.08 patch that was released almost simultaneously.

 

I don't agree with their system of making people buy the game to get it widely beta tested uner all the different architectures, but I also don't expect a bug free game on release anymore. The corporate machine dictates when things go out the door, not the quality department.

 

As for the AI, alot of the people complaining have dual core machines. The micro AI in ArmA2, and this was posted by BI more than once, relies on one core of a Quad Core machine. Without a QUad core, a player will not get the full experience.

 

That being said, there's still going to be problems with the AI until they get the micro AI process smoothed out across all OS variants and architecture combinations.....and that's a huge number of possbile combinations too.

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Feuerfalke

Feuerfalke

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Absolutely not I'd still use it without those mods I've only just decided to download ACE today. Most missions I use don't require mods anyway. I think some of the best MP missions though are Warfare and Evo:thumbup:. When I get a new PC I'll definately get A2 it looks 100s of times better than Arma and their support and patches are quite good compared to other games in the past and they are quite quick at getting the show stoppers sorted.

 

You are mistaken. The mods not only made the free downloadable mods but also fixed a lot of the bugs for the devs. So if you say you don't need mods to play, you are indicating that you play vanilla ArmA1 and I honestly doubt you'd write so positive about it, if you did.

 

 

I'm not sure if I can confirm the patch will be included in the 505-version. The interview statement linked in this thread an the official statements in the feedback states 2 different facts.

1. The interview says when the 505-version is released, a patch second patch will be available.

2. The statement in the feedback says, that the DVDs for all releases in Western countries are identical and that it is an entirely logistic and distributor-contract question when releases take place. It's not held back because the DVDs will include a patch.

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Actually only two (!) of the currently 15 customer reviews on amazon.de have been written after May 28th - one rated it 2 stars and the other guy rated it 1 star.

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