ArmA II Preview

ArmA 2 will ultimately put over 80 vehicles at your disposal.

Losing a battle may now be a likely scenario, due to the fact that BIS has significantly increased the amount of attention paid to AI. The game no longer uses scripts or waypoints to dictate enemy movement, but rather lets units "make decisions" based on information they gather from their environment. "We're now at the stage where your team-mates can hear which direction gunfire is coming from, and use that to take appropriate cover," a BIS representative told us. "Dual core processors will now be a requirement, because one core will be exclusively used to handle AI."

Other than this demand, ArmA 2 should be able to run on a relatively middle-of-the range system. BIS says it's keen to make the game available to as many people as possible, and much of the series' existing fanbase is still on Windows XP. The final release will therefore use DirectX 9, rather than 10 - but this certainly doesn't appear to be hurting the graphical side of things. ArmA 2 was among the best-looking games we saw at Leipzig - with scenery that bordered on being photo-realistic at times. Indeed, the only problem with the level of detail is that it may inadvertently highlight the few areas that fall short: the wing-mirrors on one helicopter we saw were a set texture, rather than a reflective surface - and the overall effect was if someone had stuck a drawing over the place the glass was supposed to go! Still, we can't imagine this will be a frequent problem, and in a back-handed way this observation merely underlines how good everything else looked.

Of course the proof of the pudding (war) is the eating (killing), and we've yet to play the game for ourselves. Combat sims are complicated beasties at the best of times, and each time someone attempts to raise the realism bar, a corresponding amount of pressure is dumped on the control system. In short, all the AI and pretty looks will count for nothing if it proves too fiddly to command your troops. But come on guys, have faith! This is BIS we're talking about, the Big Daddies of the genre. We're confident the Czechs can pull this one off... And if they don't, well then we'd better just join the army. Last one to smack Private Pyle is a rotten egg! Oorah!