ArmA II— Possibly the Worst Game I Have Ever Played

Author: ted

body by satan!

This game made me angry because it sucked so bad.

The thing that doesn’t make sense to me is that the screenshots look awesome, videos on youtube look extreme… but the game is terrible.

I’m not gonna lie, I would rather play an emulator of Excitebike than waste my time on this game.

IGN describes the game in a very accurate fashion:

…the sheer number of systems and behaviors that must be modeled to make it all work are at best frustratingly complicated and at worst totally unreliable. ArmA II excels in [being awesome and horrible at the same time], delivering a battlefield experience that’s as thorough and comprehensive as we’ve ever seen, while crushing the player’s enthusiasm with a cumbersome interface and inconsistent scripting system.

ArmA 2 is executed so poorly that it left me wanting to rip out my arteries. Here’s some details by the numbers on different aspects of the game.

Graphics: 5.0

I’m giving this a 5 because the graphics look impressive in the screenshots and on Youtube, but they looked horrible on my setup. I’m running an AMD X2 5000+ at 2.6 ghz, 4gb 800mhz G.Skill RAM, and a Radeon 4870 with 512mb DDR5. My graphics were sub-par. I get way better graphics and performance in any given Source game (Counter-Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead, Garry’s Mod, etc.), and even in Farcry 2. I determined that it was not my setup causing the problem, but this game is just very demanding and unoptimized. I can’t even set materials above “normal,” which isn’t even normal, it looks like I’m staring at a fence through a sheet of wax paper. I don’t consider my setup a problem; I threw down fat stacks for my video card, and this is the first game that has been unplayable in terms of graphics. I’m assuming that my processor is bottlenecking my video card, but I’m not going to spend $800 on an i7 just so I can play this and like three other games. DirectX 10 was not in the options menu. I was running at native resolution.

Besides bad textures and video issues, the mapping was basic at best, and sections of ground under certain props (ammo crates etc) would shift when I walked on them. Running animations look like little girls running to school.

Scripting/AI: 4.0

I’ve seen birds more clever than the AI in ArmA 2. On the very first mission, your teammates lag behind and do stupid shit along the way like pausing at trees and walking ten feet around them. I ran across a street, under a streetlight, to save a hostage, and apparently there was an insurgent guarding the hostage, which I saw when I got there. I ran back across the street and didn’t get noticed. I took out the insurgent and ran across to the hostage. I walked right past three insurgents and nothing happened. I went right to their faces and nothing happened. I killed two of them, and then one started shooting at me (HOW DID HE SEE ME OH MY GOD) and then I killed him.

I haven’t seen it much worse than this.

Additionally the scripted voice system is HORRIBLE. Your teammates use radio chatter nonstop; seems like a failed attempt at realism on the developer’s part. Each enemy is called by each member of your stupid platoon like five times, then orders are given to take him out, again by each of your teammates like five times. But here’s where it gets horrible: each enemy is given a multi-digit refence code (ex: enemy 024184)  and radio chatter is generated on the fly by each digit. They also do this for directions, apparently they were too lazy to record all the word combinations.  That probably didn’t make sense at all, so I made this video for you:

Sound: 5.0

Not too much here– gun sounds were great, but a bit muffled. I believe the entire game was sabotaged by the atrocious voice acting and the horrid, ear-searing AI chatter system. Also your character is a big black guy with the voice of a suburban white kid.

Innovation: 1.0

I don’t remember anything original from this game. There were virtually no signatures of invention or nonconformity. I feel it was played out in the sense that all of it had been done before. The inventory system looks like a quick copy from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. made worse by a terrible item selection and action system, and the slow gameplay reminds me of Ghost Recon or SOCOM (both equally terrible games.) I’ll give them the benefit of knowing that this review is biased in the sense that we only love games that change concepts of gaming and genres, but I don’t think anyone can associate a specific point or style with this game.

Gameplay: 3.0

The controls, movement, animations, and firefights in general are clunky as shit. First off, Enter is action for some obscure reason. REACHING ACROSS KEYBOARD BRO BRB. Additionally they put that stupid “lean” shit in the game as Q and E. All it really does is let you see around a corner without walking; I find it pointless because you only look like two centimeters in either direction. Triggers on certain levels are horrible. Running animations look like little girls running to school. Driving is out of control– not as in super crazy offroading; as in you barely have control over your vehicle. I didn’t spend the time to beat this game because I had fun games to play. One thing I do like about this game is that you can switch from third person to first person by hitting enter on the numpad. But that brings me to the numpad– half the controls are on the numpad. I don’t even know why. In addition to clunky gameplay, the menus and selection system get in the way of you doing anything. You can be looking for something and then get shot in the head in a second. There isn’t really a quick way to get anything. And for some reason, when looking through ironsights, you can hit – or + on the numpad to zoom in or out. This is next to impossible when trying to line up a shot that is at midrange. Also if you spend 40 minutes trying to quietly infiltrate a base and then you die, you have to play that entire part over again. Cool game bro.

Other

This game sports very hefty DRM called Securom. It can detect drive emulation software such as MagicISO, Daemon Tools Pro, etc. However this means that if you would like to store the game on your computer and forget about the disk, you’re out of luck. I thought this was a joke– using Securom for such a horrible game is like depositing a hairy sock in a bank vault. Like what the hell are you doing bros. It’s still very easy to get past the DRM. I hear if you download the most popular version of the torrent and use the version 1.01 patch (non-beta) from here (click the floppy disk), it works without hassle. Though I highly recommend not wasting your time.

Summary

Graphics: Unstreamlined and unoptimized. 5.0

Scripting/A.I.: Terrible, inconsistent, nubby. 2.0

Sound: Good gun sounds, shameful voice command system. 5.0

Innovation: Little to none. 1.0

Gameplay: Shitty. 3.0

Other: Heavy DRM, hairy sock, etc.

Overall: 3.0 — GTFO

This game sucks.