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ArmA II Hands-on
We take Bohemia Interactive's upcoming military game for a quick spin.
by Jason Ocampo
US, April 20, 2009 - To talk about ArmA IIit's probably best first to explain the history of the franchise, asit's a bit convoluted. In 2001, Codemasters published OperationFlashpoint: Cold War Rising, a remarkably innovative and semi-realisticmilitary action game developed by Czech-developer Bohemia InteractiveStudio. Operation Flashpoint became a hit, but Codemasters and Bohemiaeventually parted ways. The only thing is, Codemasters retained theOperation Flashpoint name (and its currently developing its own sequel,Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising) while Bohemia moved on to ArmA:Combat Operations.
ArmA came out in the US in 2007, and it felt very much like asequel to the original Operation Flashpoint to the point that thegraphics and the gameplay felt dated. So Bohemia went back to thedrawing board and now have ArmA II coming out later this year. ArmA IIwill introduce vastly upgraded visuals as well as some new features. Atthe same time, we've been able to play around with ArmA II a bit, andthe upgraded graphics are a nice touch. More importantly, this feelslike an ArmA game (which basically means it feels like OperationFlashpoint), and that's good news to those who liked the immersive feelof those games.
You might think of ArmA II as being a huge, single-player version ofBattlefield 2. Unlike linear shooters, where you travel along a narrow,predetermined path and encounter heavily scripted events, ArmA II dropsyou in a virtual world and gives you some goals, but how you get thosegoals done is up to you. For example, your elite US Marine Corps squadmight get helicoptered behind enemy lines with a task to infiltrate anenemy-held village and destroy a key enemy asset. This is actually thefirst mission of the game's campaign. You drop in at night and usenight vision as you navigate the terrain. When you come upon thevillage, it's entirely up to you what approach to take. You can gostraight toward it, or move around to approach from any other directionto take advantage of cover.
The thing that surprised us is that there appears to be branchingelements within these missions. For instance, as we got into anobservation point in the village, we saw enemy soldiers abusing a boundprisoner. That information got radioed to the squad leader, who thengave us a choice to try and save the prisoner. We decided to go for it,resulting in a quick and silent burst of fire from our silenced rifles.The prisoner turned out to be a local doctor who gave us someinformation and required escorting to a safe location outside of town.With that task done, we had to return to the destruction of the enemyasset. Here again, the game surprised us. The original mission planrequired us to laser designate the target for an airstrike, but upondiscovering the target's location in the middle of the village, we wereagain given an option. We could stick with the plan with the airstrike,or ditch the plan and take out the target ourselves with a satchelcharge in order to reduce collateral damage. Figuring a firefight ismore fun than just lasing a target, we went with the latter option,which resulted in a firefight sweep of the village, in the dark, withnight vision goggles on.
Thenight-vision firefight through the village is a perfect example of whatmakes ArmA II so engaging, no pun intended. Because it's an open world,it feels like you're really clearing a village rather than simplyrunning through a linear level. The artificial intelligence seems tobehave in a realistic manner; enemy soldiers dive to the ground whenshot at or they seek nearby cover. They also don't sit still and shootat you, but rather they'll maneuver around.
At the same time, this isn't a game for those who like to run, gun,and then find cover to autoheal or slap on a magic health pack thatbrings them back to 100-percent. If you get shot, you're in big troublein ArmA II, even if the bullet doesn't kill you. Most of the time, itwill, which means having to reload at the previous checkpoint orrestarting the missions. That's an improvement over the originalOperation Flashpoint, which only let you save once per mission. Keep inmind, some missions could last over an hour, so that forced you to playmore realistically and conservatively, as if your life were really onthe line. ArmA II's checkpoint saves are fairly spread out, sohopefully that reduces frustration, but it will still force you toreign in the temptation to play ArmA II just like any otherconventional shooter.
The graphics engine is a lot better than before, but ArmA II stillwouldn't be classified as a cutting-edge game. The art lacks the sheenof a high-end game. Still, where are excels is at creating huge,believable environments. There's nothing quite like staring across avalley floor and seeing a village in front of you, and cows herding inthe fields around it. There are also some great effects, particularlywith an extensive use of motion blur and the way your eyes adjust tolight after putting on or taking off night vision goggles. Rough edgesdo exist, though. For example, there's a definite "uncanny valley"effect with the people in the game, as they have dead eyes and stiffmovements. Unfortunately, the animations still feel rigid and thestilted way that people talk (they sound just like a computer ispiecing together different recorded words to create a sentence) ispretty much unchanged since the original game. Still, there's a goodsense of a realistic world here. And the good news is that it ran wellat very high detail settings with an 8800GTX, which is practically amid-range graphics card now.
Asidefrom the single-player campaign, ArmA II has a multiplayer mode (whichwe didn't have a chance to check out), as well the ability to playpre-made and custom made scenarios. The custom-made scenarios areinteresting because you can design scenarios for the BLUFOR (the goodguys), the OPFOR (the bad guys), and the Independent militias. Thesescenarios are based on various templates, such as destroy a particulartarget or defend a base. Then there's a full-blown editor that givesyou a lot more power and control to create full-fledged missions.
There's a lot more to ArmA II to explore, but it does feel like anice advance for the series. We haven't even had a chance to talk aboutvehicles yet; you can jump in and control pretty much anything in thegame, from wheeled vehicles to helicopters to jets. Still, between ArmAII and the upcoming Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, it feels likethose looking for more realistic, real-world military games have a lotto look forward to.
内容摘要：
- 依然能够沉浸在闪点行动的感受之中
- 在 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 显卡环境下 Very High 画质能够运行的很好（Alex.XP：耶，那我的HD4850岂不是也可以运行的很好？）
- 任务分支效果——比如营救人质或者选择前往目的地所要走的道路——贯穿任务并影响任务的发展。
- 依然有笨重不流畅的感觉（Alex.XP：我靠，我最担心的就是这个……）
- 更聪明的AI能够寻找掩护或者小心翼翼的避开危险，而不是傻站在那里
- 人物角色有“仿真人”一样的外表（Alex.XP：uncanny valley 大家去Wikipedia搜一下就知道意思，这里是说游戏中人物角色依然是……傻不愣蹬……）
- Checkpoints（检查点）相当分散
- 动作依然僵硬（Alex.XP：干……）
- 语音依然机械（在官方论坛上Maruk已确认演示版中的语音与正式版中的语音效果将会不一样）
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发表于 2009-4-21 14:08:08
发表于 2009-4-21 14:53:40
楼主
发表于 2009-4-23 01:53:46
