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Armed Assault, the franchise with a pretty standard love/hate relationship factor. You'll love the free-form, gigantic sandbox that it has to offer, but you'll hate it at the same time for it's (unavoidable) bugs and complications.
Combined Operations is simply a package-deal with the latest "Operation Arrowhead" (Takistan, Zargabad, Desert environments) standalone expansion, as well as the original ARMA II (Chernarus) in the same box. The value is great, as you're basically buying the keys to a massive mil-sim amusement park, free to do whatever you please with not too many constraints. There isn't a good method in describing what kind of game this is if you haven't played it before. If you're used to Call of Duty and similar shooters, then you're in for a surprise if you play this game. It's a lot like the original Operation Flashpoint, except on a much grander scale, with more flexibility. I could spend a couple hours writing up an essay on what this game is, or I could just give a quick rundown on what one should expect.
PROS:
Flexibility in doing what you want. Create your own missions, scenarios, dynamic environments, etc.
Striking visuals with the proper hardware. (Proper, as in: Very nice rig, $2,000+) A lot of things going on at once, leads to amazing scenes.
Community and it's modding counterpart is amazing. First thing one should do after buying this game, is visit or the forums.
Extremely *massive* environments, with land-air-sea mobility. Jets, tanks, helicopters, armored humvees, the works.
CONS:
Can be ridiculously complicated for first-time users, even for PC game veterans. Patience is a virtue.
Quite a system hog, especially when the action is at it's finest.
Large, open-world, sandbox environment = plenty of bugs that one has to come to accept with such an undertaking.
Overall, this is a game for PC gamer veterans and enthusiasts. This is not something you just jump into all the while expecting a simulation to be handed to you on a silver platter. Time and patience has to be put in to be able to get a great experience. Is that really a problem, or is it more of a quality? When typical gamers spend a large chunk of their lives dying-and-respawning in Call of Duty, with no change in pace and with little rewards... I would say it's a quality with it's own rewards. This is the kind of game you purchase as an investment, one that you will keep coming back to when you feel like trying something different. Making a new scenario, having a tactical battle online with others, etc.
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ARMA2 is a realistic military simulator, probably the most realistic on the market. It's not just infantry combat, although you can play it that way. ARMA2 also has cars, trucks, tanks, helicopters, planes, and more. It even models ballistics and bullet drop, if someone fires at you from 200 meters away you even hear the bullet hit the ground before you hear the rifle. It's a big sandbox, which is good and bad.The game ships with 2 islands, a large and a small. Both have forests, hills, roads, towns, fields, mountains, etc. I'd say you would spend a good 15 minutes driving from one side of the island to the other. If you can see it you can go there, there are NO invisible walls. The game locations are fictional, although they are based on real-life topography. ARMA2 is set in Eastern Europe, Operation Arrowhead is set in the Middle East. The possibilities on the huge playing areas are almost endless. You can also download user-created islands, some of which are impressive in both scope and detail.
A mission designer is included to make your own missions, along with sophisticated scripting capabilities. In addition, there are hundreds of user-created mods and missions, everything from a simple "destroy the enemy" mission to new weapons, vehicles, sounds, etc, to new game modes like "capture the island" and a GTA clone.
In a way there are almost too many possibilities between official and user-made content, and the quality varies. The official missions have some neat tricks, although they don't expose you to everything the game has to offer. Some things work well, others don't. You'll have to find a way to manage missions/mods and all your time gathering, installing, and playing all the different things. A launcher like "ARMA II Launcher" helps you manage what mods you want to use. There is plenty of help on the official Bohemia Interactive forums, although they are picky about posting in the appropriate forums.
Although the visuals and presentation are quite good, ARMA2 is quirky and not without bugs and oddities. Just mapping the controls is an adventure, what's the difference between "Prone" and "Go Prone?" You'll use practically every key on the keyboard, although remember you can map something like Control-G for landing gear or Control-E to eject. With a large playing area and so much going on, performance is also an issue, ARMA2 benefits from tweaking and downloading mods to do things like get rid of motion blur and tame the tall grass a bit.
There is plenty to do in this game for both single player and multiplayer. Setting up local, LAN, or Internet games is smooth and easy. It even remembers the last IP address you manually typed in (I'm looking at you OFP Dragon Rising!) Co-op missions, deathmatch, capture the flag, and more are all there, and with mission designers being able to do scripting plenty of different game modes are out there. There are "Warfare" or "capture the island" missions that add strategic and real-time-strategy elements as you build your base, build units and vehicles, and try to take over towns while searching for the enemy base. You can choose to be a soldier and take orders, command a squad, or be in high command mode and command all the units. The learning curve on Warfare modes is moderately high and documentation is scarce, but they are very unique and rewarding.
If you have the time and patience and like realistic military combat simulators, ARMA2 will delight and amaze you. If you're a run-and-gun sort of player with a short attention span, this probably isn't your game. It also helps to be somewhat computer knowledgeable and have good hardware. I have a 2.4 GHz dual core AMD, 4GB of RAM, Windows XP, and a GTX 250 video card. With tweaking it runs acceptably on my system, but I wouldn't want to play with much less. I'm saving my dollars for a solid state drive (SSD), from what I read ARMA2 does a lot of small file reads and greatly benefits from the almost 0 access time of SSDs.
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I owned the original Flashpoint and the first ARMA game both decent but not without bugs. But this game, ARMA II has way too many bugs for me to bother with it. I gave up after a few hours of gameplay. It was simply too frustrating trying to complete a mission when the scripted events wouldn't occur or execute properly. For example, my squad leader was supposed to lead us in clearing out the village and then move on to the next objective. He instead stood in the middle of the street for 3 hours. I had to shoot him in the end. Ok if a bug happens once, but it happened mission after mission some new, frustrating, roadblock of a bug that killed the action. Maybe a patch will fix it, but I can't recommend this to any non-ARMA fan. You have to really want to play this game to put up with the shortcomings.If the game runs properly then it is a lot of fun. This is a realistic combat game and it's great to have games like this coming out in the age of Call of Duty. The graphics and shooting mechanics are well done in ARMA II and it's quite a rush to come up on the enemy when you have been marching quietly over the terrain scanning for signs of activity. The firefights are brutal and make the point that combat isn't easy.
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If you are a soloist, a Rambo, a loner, this is probably not the game for you. The majority of people playing video games now days, are multiplayers. They play online for that extra challenge. This game involves not only multiplayer but teamwork on a high level. That high level is set by the players. Once you immerse into the land of Arma II, you will find yourself talking as if you have been in the military for years. This is a military simulation, not the average arcade game. You will not hear people talking about face rolling, and total pwnage and all that crap. You will only hear the calls for close air support, transport and long ranged artillery. If you are that role playing, military game guru, you will love the multiplayer associated with this game. However if you are into points and worrying about your kill to death ratio, find a server with Player Vs. Player. Some snipers pride themselves on taking out those loners. The Delta Force will work together on special operations missions, the pilots will be in their own group, and don't be surprised to see a Shooter and a Spotter acting as one Sniper. This is an incredible game, if you play it the way it was intended to be played.If you are considering picking up the game. Check out the guys at 7th Cav, they always keep a populated server, and they really use that teamwork you are looking for.
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if you plan on playing DAy Z buy through steam. Couldn't get amazon version to work.. wait untill the stand alone version comes out
