I wanted to touch the subject of arma a while back, but now you've got me unprepared and I don't remember where I put the post-apoc mockery screen.
All in all, yeah, it's not what was expected. I mean, I wasn't going "Hoo yeah game of ze year" or anything pre-release, but there seemed to be alot of, heh, "addons" in arma that sounded interesting, and beyond the reach of the community. Partly, the community is the actual problem.
As I recall, playing OFP for the first time was an experience I hardly gave a rats ass about. The game was a buggy lump of shit with some never before seen functions that were badly executed. Well, whoop-de-fucking-doo. Then when the modding machine got rolling, it gradually became the gaming window of opportunity. The fact that some mods touched on graphical improvement isn't exactly uncommon -- in fact most older games get that community make-over, and apart from the Burnovs out there that sort of thing gets a positive reception. In any case, the ofp series ( in my mind ) simply has this complete community reliance. The devs add some crappy features every 3 years and the modders take over from there and pull all their screw ups out and space the content a bit. That's just the whole deal with the series. Maybe it's community rape or whatever, but you couldn't exactly say "Those fucking sell-outs" because, hey, they did it from the start.
That covered, we move on to arma. Yeah, it's
mostly a graphical make over.
-The animations have been straightened out ( remember strafing left-right in ofp? the 2d leg flip-flop? ) which I always found a big ofp fucker-upper; sometimes the awkward animation system ( was it part bone and part sector? ) could screw up a great intensive mp coop just by being so goddamn silly, and then ofcourse there was no separate bone systems or animation loops -- they were all inherent to the core animation, so all custom unit addons had to follow that same animation pattern. No slow zombies, no animals, ( unless you settled for them walking around doing the robot ) and alot of other annoyances. That's cured.
-Clipping issues, walkways, roadways, blocking. That's been
worked on if anything. Running hard against a wall won't provide the same old ofp results as often ( I've never managed to fall through a wall in arma really ) so that's a gas. Maybe with that done, we can actually take them up on that promise of being able to walk around on moving vehicles. None of the standard vehicles seem to support that, but then again that might have been a shitty pr idea or something spewed forth by the rumour mill, but as the collision detection has been improved it might be possible in the future. So hey, that's nice.
Note: I've seen AI running through walls like the jackasses they are. It's even possible for the AI to fall through the floor in some buildings, so obviously they are non reliant on collision geo's -- the point of that eludes me completely.
-Vehicle physics. I don't know if they're real or fake ( I haven't seen shit to point to arma having any form of physics engine reliance ) but vehicles are now handling like you'd expect them to. Up to a point one should say, perhaps. Driving a car in ofp, and later in arma is a different experience, hopefully more positive: instead of that 4mph speed cap you'd usually get, and the inability to control your car at top speed, you find yourself accelerating to decent driving speeds with a reasonable handling ability. While cars in ofp would twitch and behave strangely with wheels in the air, arma cars and vehicles can actually jump through the air ( I did quite the stunt jump running down a fence once ) without going into crazy spin cycles and bonkering up your game. Spinning and rolling and gutting and whatever else you flyboys do is now also possible. Again, this is a good thing, and can likely be improved upon. ( While on the topic of vehicles, driving your car under water is a chillaxed procedure, ending up with you sitting in it as if nothing happened, being able to exit with ease. The only consequence of diving with your car is that it begins to burn and converts textures to "shot to shit" after a short stay under the water. )
-Swimming. The ninjas in ofp made it so, and now arma made it so for everyone. So go and swim you jews.
-Decent boat speeds. ( both on water and :snicker: on land
)
I won't list all the added features, it's getting tiresome. I will add on the topic of a few missing, promised things. Elevators, for instance, ( and with these the ability to animate not around an axis but in simple coordinated chunk animation ) don't seem to be on the menu. WELL LADI-FUCKING-DA. Someone said something about dynamic animal life. THE GODDAMN BIRDS DON'T CUT IT DOC, WE SEEN EM' BEFORE. The vehicles still survive diving off of a mountain, that's no good. What else, what else. Oh yeah, where are all the goddamn modding tools? And what the fuck is that multiplayer game mode supposed to be? That's not capture the island, that's crap. And what was that about full support of old addons? Changed the pbo have we? For no reason at all eh? How futu-fucking-ristic.
In any case, the fans put up a big wiki thing ( if printed, it would go around the sun twice ) with bugs and glitches and bullshit that the devs are held accountable for, and it seems the devs do care and will be revising things on that list in upcoming patches and addons.
So in conclusion, lads, armed assault is simply not a ripe game, just like ofp when that came out. Just stick to other shit for the next few years, and hold your thumbs crossed between your firm buttocks. Then when you find the disc, by chance, in some Wisconsin bargain bin, you might ( after a year of downloading ) be treated to quite the game experience.
