ArmA II (PC)

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War has never been so much fun! Go to your brother, kill him with a gun...

When the Moral Majority bleat on about the potential links between video games and real-world violence, they're mostly talking out of their rear ends. Never mind grizzly stuff like Manhunt 2 - in the minds of some concerned parents, even Mario games have the potential to warp their angelic children into bloodthirsty, murderous nuts.

For these hand-wringing worriers, Bohemia Interactive Studios should be the gaming equivalent of Marilyn Manson. After all, BIS are the brains behind Operation Flashpoint, the uber-realistic 2001 war game that evolved into VBS1 - a military simulator currently used by the US Marine Corps and several other armies around the world. It's kind of amusing that the same "intelligent adults" who fret about GTA will be more than happy to let Little Johnny play America's Army - a VBS1-inspired game that encourages you to join the military. Go figure.

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Anyhow - let's cut the rant on social politics. The point we're trying to make is that BIS are the absolute gods of the military sim: The Operation Flashpoint license may now reside with Codemasters, but the spirit of the original title lives on in the ArmA: Armed Assault series. The second ArmA game is due for release in the first quarter of next year - and on the basis of our brief encounter with the dev team at Leipzig, we're really rather excited.

...leave him lying in his uniform, dying in the sun.

As with previous BIS games, ArmA 2 will pretty much dump you into a great big military playground. Yes, you're still given specific missions - but the way you approach each goal is very open-ended. Do you proceed by stealth, slowly picking off enemy troops - or do you attempt to steal a tank and take the opposition head-on? In total you'll have access to 73 different weapons and over 80 vehicles - all of them precisely modelled on real-world items. Because ArmA 2's plot details the Russian invasion of a small Eastern-bloc country - something that sounds disturbingly familiar - you'll have access to everything from advanced modern helicopters, to beaten-up old transport trucks that were built during the Cold War.

The game's setting is even more impressive in terms of its scope: the fictional ex-Soviet state, Chernarus, has been built using satellite imagery of real world terrain. BIS is keeping tight-lipped about where they've used, but they claim that the to-scale recreation - which includes local plant and animal life - is so accurate that you could find it in an atlas, if you were really bothered. As things stand, you'll probably be more interested in exploring the 225 square kilometres of play area, complete with a real-time daylight and weather system. There are no level maps in ArmA 2, just a single virtual landscape that is tailored to the requirements of each mission. BIS also promises that Chernarus will feature intelligent wildlife and an independent civilian population, both of which are affected heavily by the actions you'll take in-game.

As this last point might indicate, it appears that narrative progression will play a prominent role in ArmA 2. The original Operation Flashpoint followed the careers of four soldiers, but their stories were really little more than a peg on which missions and situations could be easily hung. Here you'll follow the same five-man marine team throughout the game as they become embroiled in the Russian invasion. The eventual fate of Chernarus will change depending on the choices you make during missions, and how you conduct those choices. We're told, for example, that if you're sloppy in your early battles and shoot too many innocent civilians, then support for the local guerilla faction will increase as a direct result - giving you a harder time later in the campaign. This in turn might cause you to lose an important battle, allowing your enemies to entrench their position.

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