I’ve been playing some Arma 2 vanilla lately. In the beginning I wasn’t enjoying the game much. I’m not sure that many standalone missions that come with the game are that good, especially the ones with the warfare mode.
But then I downloaded a 2-player coop scenario and played with a friend, and that was awesome. We didn’t even get into that many firefights, but strangely, just navigating at night to the objective with a buddy in a Humvee is pretty cool. I think it’s that great feeling some games like STALKER give you of letting you prepare yourself for a battle before it actually begins.
The actual firefights can be too brutal sometimes, especially when your enemies don’t have NVGs, you do, and it’s a pitch dark night, and they sill kill you with ease. Does the AI have that all-seeing eye problem? I have the impression that sometimes they react too quickly and too precisely (again, this was on a user-made scenario).
Still, it was a lot of fun. In the mission you have to avoid patrols and plant some satchel charges by a road to blow up an important enemy guy riding in a jeep. We managed to do that without firing a single shot, and then we had other objectives to complete.
Before that, however, we had approached the road from some fields and stopped the Humvee by a tree line, before proceeding on foot. On the way back, I couldn’t find the Humvee for a while, and a funny VoIP conversation ensued with my frustrated team mate (“Dude, where’s is my car?”). We did find the Humvee and drove to our next objective. At some point we were on foot again, walking through some fields, and the first actual firefight started. Some enemies spotted us but my team mate very skillfully dispatched them all with his DMR (this was not a case of a firefight being brutal).
Shortly afterwards we saw the headlamps of a vehicle and went prone, hoping not to be seen. Apparently the guys on the jeep thought they saw something, and they kept approaching. At some point, when it was too close, we freaked out and started shouting “SHOOT THEM! SHOOT THEM!”. We fired so many round that not only did the jeep crew die, but the jeep itself went into flames, and alerted a bunch of guys around. We died shortly thereafter.
I had also played some Operation Arrowhead, but so far I find that this game shines when missions are more focused, as opposed to the whole combined warfare thing. Be aware that I haven’t played any big coop scenarios, so I might be completely wrong, and that I’m a newbie at this game and just don’t “get” the epic missions yet. It’s not that the missions should be more linear, on the contrary, the cool thing about Arma is being able to move through a very large environment and approach objectives as you like. But I feel the smaller “spec-ops” type missions hold together better.
And here’s a link to the mission I described.
