ArmA II (PC)

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This is Olga. She's 47 and looking for a hot guy to date. Likes: Cabbage. Dislikes: Soviet invasions.

Now, in theory the idea is that you form a well-organised plan and set out to realise it. In practise, we and the other journos leapt into the nearest vehicles and shot off in search of trouble - which we all too easily found. A quick glance at our map showed that hostile forces were attempting to capture a nearby town, so we set off to test our mettle. As soon as we showed up we were able to get a good idea of where the opposing forces were by simply following the sound of gunfire. Unfortunately, we were perhaps a bit too relaxed about wandering into the warzone - and we got gunned down before we really managed to get anywhere. After this happened our old Operation Flashpoint training kicked in, and we went about things a bit more carefully.

Once we respawned, we armed ourselves with a sniper rifle and summoned a humvee, which we filled with three standard squaddies. This time we stopped the vehicle just outside of the settlement. The four of us crawled into town on our bellies, then we sent our troopers in one direction while we covered another approach with the sniper rifles. This proved far more effective than our first, blundering assault. Bohemia says that its improved "micro AI" lets NPCs make decisions based around their immediate surroundings - the idea being that soldiers respond to their environment, rather than to just "the bigger picture" of all the things your CPU is handling. Well, they certainly did a good job here - taking out a couple of hostiles with ease. Then as we crept around the town from a different angle, we spotted a Russian vehicle trying to get away from our boys. We sniped the driver with a single round through the rear-view mirror. Awesome stuff.

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When tactics like this actually work, you feel really proud of yourself and your AI troopers. A full-blown game of ArmA Warfare could go on for hours, and we could easily see this becoming a massive time sponge once you get comfortable with the way everything works. We imagine that it'll take a while to learn the best way to approach battles on this scale, but it seems fairly easy to change things like spawn points and the like. The greater challenge will probably come from coordinating with other players in an effective way - so let's hope that the user base is a bit more civil than the usual Xbox Live crew.

The actual in-game controls are fairly close to what was used in Bohemia's previous games: you have movement mapped to the WASD keys, with separate keys to set your stance, while most actions are governed by the mouse wheel, which is used to cycle through menus that vary depending on what you're doing. On foot it will let you change weapons, but near a vehicle it will climb aboard or stow away equipment. Ordering troops about is a bit trickier as it involves using the function keys to select soldiers, and the numerical keys to pick instructions from a series of menus. At first this may seem horrendously complicated, but you'll soon learn the commands you need to use the most often - and the right mouse button can be used to shortcut many basic actions: you can click on the ground to send your guys to a specific spot, or click on a vehicle to make them climb aboard. As with so many things, practice makes perfect.

Nobody messes with Cousin Itt.

It's important to note that this massively complicated multiplayer carnage is just one slice of what ArmA 2 has to offer. At the other end of the scale from this huge complexity, Bohemia is also including a sort of playable encyclopaedia of all the game's units. Here you'll be able to inspect the models close up before taking them out for a spin. All of the game's land, sea and aircraft will be available for a test drive, and as you roam about the map you'll be offered spontaneous challenges to try. You might have to blow up a certain number of targets, notch up a high speed in a usually-sluggish tank, or simply get as far away from your starting point as you can within a set time limit. These mini-games aren't limited to vehicles either: there will be challenges for every weapon and soldier class too - you can even play as the in-game wildlife, if you like. Hopping around Chenarus as a bunny rabbit was far more enjoyable than we're comfortable to admit; we can't wait for the 'make 200 offspring in 30 seconds' challenge.

Of course, the major ingredient of ArmA 2 that we've not yet covered is the main campaign itself. We didn't get to play this in Prague, but it looks to be shaping up neatly. Bohemia seems to be giving more attention to the story this time around, with a plot that follows the exploits of a five-man unit as the USA, Russia and two groups of rebels battle over the future of poor Chenarus. We're sure that many gamers would be content if the developer just shipped ArmA 2 as a pure military sim, but no-one's going to complain about a fully-fleshed out story. The cut-scenes we were shown looked suitably dramatic, but we're more interested in how the RPG-style elements will play out. We already know that the game will have multiple endings that stem from how and where you fight, but we've now learned that you'll be able to do things like talking to civilians to learn about enemy activity in your local area. Naturally, you'll only be able to do this if you've not pissed everyone off by killing innocent bystanders (and if you're using the one member of your squad who speaks Russian).

It all sounds quite ambitious to us, but we've got high hopes that the guys at Bohemia are really going to deliver the goods. We get the impression that the developers are trying to make this game everything that ArmA wasn't, and then some. At the moment the studio is keeping fairly shtum about plans for a console version, but it's hinted that it's planning something. Given that Codemasters is bringing its own Operation Flashpoint 2 to PS3 and 360 next year, that could make for some interesting competition. Either way, what is already clear is that ArmA 2 is going to offer masses of things to do. Given that a lot of people are still playing and modding the original OpFlash, this game has the potential to inspire a whole new generation of bedroom generals, and that can only be a good thing.

Arma2 is due out for PC Q1 2009, with console versions TBD.

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