Arma 2 - A Military Simulator

For the Fan Presents:

Arma 2 - Military Simulator

Publisher: Bohemia Interactive

Platform: PC

Arma 2 - A shooter game like no other

When you think of a shooting game, usually what pops into peoples heads are games like Battlefield, Call of Duty, Ghost Recon. All these games have something in common, they are all arcade shooters, meaning they are all very unrealistic in their mechanics. The soldiers in the games are usually portrayed as super soldiers, taking down waves of enemies single-handed. They are usually very easy and every fps are all exactly the same. 

One game that breaks this connection is Arma 2, it is not classified as an arcade shooter, but as an actual military simulator. The US military has actually used Arma 2 to train soldiers, and allows them to simulate action on the battlefield. An example would be, in most fps games like call of duty, you cant see your feet or your body when you look down, which i always found weird. In Arma 2, none of that weird stuff. You can look around and see your whole 3d modeled body, which just makes it that more of an immersive simulator.

Arma 2 has another amazing feat, it has one of the biggest maps in videogame history. The map is chernarus, its a woodland land mirroring the Czech republic. It stretches from left to right, about 15 km. That is crazy huge, not to mention the islands the huge country has around it. The game has multiple single player scenarios, and an actual campaign. The single-player is not that great, and your squad is pretty stupid, while the enemy AI is usually much smarter. So, moving on to multiplayer.

The multiplayer is what makes Arma 2. To have a squad of your best buddies and go into a mission using call signs and military talk is an amazingly immersive experience. They also have a mode called domination where a huge group of squads moves into enemy towns and try to liberate them from insurgents. One of the best modes in my opinion would be domination on the Arma 2 Operation Arrowhead map Takistan. The map is a desert, and it reminds me so much of an Afghanistan type feel, with the insurgents running around its just wonderful.

I just started playing Arma 2, and i love it, but it does have its flaws. The game is obviously badly optimized on the developers part. An example would be the low frames per second i get playing, i usually have to put all the graphics settings on low just to get decent frames. Other than that, the game is riddled with bugs, but if you play on multiplayer the community usually optimizes the servers to remove bugs and low frame rates, which shows just how powerful a good community can be for a game. 

Overall, Arma 2 really is a military simulator, and it is one of the most immersive shooting games i have ever played in my life. If you wanna see me in action, i have links below of me playing the game with some buddies.

My gameplay vids:

 1. I was sniping an enemy insurgent filled town from a hill, and they came to get me with a tank.
2. Some cool Squad based gameplay.

   Jimmy is a freelance writer in Los Angeles, California. He enjoys playing videogames, doing parkour, and writing fan-fiction on his favorite video-games. His tumblr: http://writerjimminy.tumblr.com/