I wanted to play ArmA II ever since nerd3 showed his 13 ways to die of that game. The C-130J’s at the end is what sold me. Fortunately there’s a demo for that, and it lets you do nearly the same things as the paid version, except you only get two maps and no missions. It even has the editor that nerd3 showed off, and the aircraft carrier.
Getting the demo, I went through hell. I tried downloading it through Fileplanet (they have changed. Alot. Yet I’m still paying my monthly fee for prem speed) through Firefox, not expecting any issues. When I finally got it an hour later, Firefox decided it was OK to lock up on me, though I didn’t think as well. Coming back, I tried the executable, and it claims it doesn’t know what OS I’m using, and can’t install. So I just wasted an hour for a broken download. How nice.
The second time, I tried downloading through Chrome. Same hosting site. This time when it got done, Chrome didn’t lock up and I was able to get the installer past that point. Then when it tries to install, I get a missing file error and it can’t install…
And the 3rd time’s the charm time, after checking around I found out I could of downloaded it through Steam all of this time (“facepalm.jpg”). So I did that, and finally was able to play it.
So anyway, I went straight to the Boot Camp to learn what to do. And even as I type this, I only know 1/4 of the controls. Once I finally had basic movement down it was time to use my gun. Playing FPS’ before, this would be easy. And I managed to pass that part. First Aid wasn’t so easy, especially when you pick the guy up and suddenly you can’t move. You can only turn. And then when you put the guy down, you’re in a posture of looking like you’re going to shit on the guy (I would link a picture, but for some reason Puush doesn’t work with this game).
Flying… this was the “fun” part. First it started with helicopters. First time I took off, about, oh, 10 seconds I was heading for the ground because I pitched the nose too far down. When I finally figured out how to do basic movement controls for a helicopter (it has an Auto Hover option. Very handy), I had to land the damn thing in a precise location to pick up troops. An LZ (Landing Zone) if you will, though they didn’t call it that.
This ended up going nose first into the ground, landing onto a tree, landing onto a fence, missing the LZ by several miles.., and when I finally got the hunk of metal as close as I could to the LZ, “our guys” weren’t even running over to me to be picked up.
Now we go to ArmA II: Flight Simulator 2012. Flying planes! I got to fly in a plane they call a VTOL, that looks nothing like a true VTOL, or even a Harrier jet. Anyway, I never completed that one because my flight instructor wanted me to land the plane. And I’m all “fuck you, I’ll fly around!” while trying desperately to not crash at the same time.
So let’s talk about the flaws I’ve seen that I feel getting this demo and not paying $19.99 was the right move. Note that some of these might of been fixed in the beta patch that I still don’t know how to acquire at the time of this post;
– When I told my existing plane squad to take down the final enemy plane infront of me, they did nothing except fly around, and I was out of ammo for all my weapons.
– “All. kill. enemy. MAN. infront. of. US.”, “Medic. heal. that. MAN?”, and “All. move. 50 meters. to our. front”. lol.. bad command sounds are bad, yet funny at the same time. It sounds like I’m listening to sound clips in a Youtube video. What kills me is in the Basic Training mission, their voices are perfect.
– Trying to get the Waypoint controls to work in the editor is hard. Sometimes it doesn’t even work. That’s not really selling the product to me.
– Too many damn controls! They bounded zoom in with the look through scope key!
– No screenshot button. Not really a bad thing, but forcing you to use an external program to do it, sucks.
– Incompatible with Puush.
– Some of the controls for the editor are complicated. And there’s no tutorials ingame of the editor.
– Flight/Vehicle Movement controls are too sensitive. Way too sensitive. It seems if you want to fly a plane perfectly without crashing, it’s recommended you use a joystick.
– Some of the Boot Camp tutorials don’t teach you everything, like how to get into a plane/helicopter.
The editor still makes the game fun, though. I’m just very glad it was included in the demo. Which leads me to believe nerd3 was using said demo when he was doing his videos.
Having several C-130J’s set via waypoint to fly over to me, go around in a circle and having 2-3 of them still in the air is always fun. Still, you can’t help but think “Just Cause 2 is more fun than this.” And that may be true. Especially in nerd3’s hilarious multiplayer video. With JC2, planes respawn and the grapple is always a laugh (when you manage to flip a fucking 737 upside down on its back during takeoff. I nearly blew chunks laughing too hard). In ArmA II, you have to create your fun via the editor.
Both games are fun, but you seem to be able to do more in JC2. But JC2, you can’t have an airshow of C-130J’s flying in formation.