Posted December 30, 2013
Indeed, why?
I first played Arma2 on release, and as I remember it was very frustrating. Then I played its predecessor (Operation Flashpoint), and it was instantly better by far (despite not exactly bugfree itself).
Despite my better judgement I tried this crap again yesterday, and oh boy. Nobody playtested this. Nobody - who had a say in its development - ever.
Got shot while in a vehicle? Squad mates won't heal you. Game over.
Got shot, and the new actual gives a squadmate an order to get in a vehicle 8km away? And he instantly teleports inside it? Tough. (yep, actually happened. Go engine!)
What's with the ad-hoc method of model loading? When the computer lags behind (swapping, loading textures, etc), character models look like the ones from Thief 1. (I love them _there_)
I was better off disabling the horribly irreal eye-candy like the vegetation (terrain detail: very low). What, those BI guys never went out of a city? Their depiction has absolutely no correlation to reality.
More on video settings: who the hell uses postprocessing? It's actually just a blur filter. You can get the same shit results with decreasing rendering resolution, except that will _increase_ your FPS, and this one will completely devastate it (also introduce inexplicable 1-1.5 second lag for your input devices, probably due to directx's infamous render-ahead feature). If you have bad vision, take off your glasses. There, you have native "postprocessing"!
Also an engine matter: it looks horrible. But I wouldn't mind the trademarked ShinyPlastic(TM) look of everything (traditional courtesy of games containing the Unreal engine, I don't know what this has), if the actors' were better animated than a pile of dogshit falling in mid-air. Just take a look at Operation Flashpoint: running and/or dying animations are completely believable and fluent. Shoot someone to death in OFP while (s)he's sprinting: it will be very gratifying. Here? Oh God, the last time I remember feeling such despair seeing a clunky ragdoll attempt was in Thief 3. Who approved this?
Also: reloading weapons while walking/running/sprinting? Wait, what??? Please do that IRL. Not just when the clip's empty, but reinsert the bullets too, as in the game. (in OFP reloading wisely makes you stationary) Streamlining...
The (vehicle) pathfinder got much, much worse than in OFP. And that's saying a lot. But now I can appreciate that one, at least. Anyone remembers the simplistic simulation "Rars"? Probably not. It ran more than 10 cars on a curving race ring, and it worked flawlessly. On a 4.77MHz XT. This AI can't even make a turn properly from one road to another!
The Huey will not stay still on a perfectly flat ground while waiting for the squad gets in. It usually flies away with my men, and I'll have fun times telling them to parachute out, then shooting at their descending bodies because that is more fun than banging my head into a wall when (not "if") this happens.
Get the squad in a car, switch seats then switch back (from back seat to driver or gunner then back2back), then tell the driver to go somewhere on the map. He'll disembark and jog off happily into the distance on foot. Nobody tested combat vehicles in actual combat scenarios in the last 4 years (!) and after significant number of patches. No one.
The game being completely dogshit probably doesn't apply as a "technical issue" as far as GOG is concerned, so let them keep my monies. But I implore everyone else NOT TO BUY THIS GAME!
I first played Arma2 on release, and as I remember it was very frustrating. Then I played its predecessor (Operation Flashpoint), and it was instantly better by far (despite not exactly bugfree itself).
Despite my better judgement I tried this crap again yesterday, and oh boy. Nobody playtested this. Nobody - who had a say in its development - ever.
Got shot while in a vehicle? Squad mates won't heal you. Game over.
Got shot, and the new actual gives a squadmate an order to get in a vehicle 8km away? And he instantly teleports inside it? Tough. (yep, actually happened. Go engine!)
What's with the ad-hoc method of model loading? When the computer lags behind (swapping, loading textures, etc), character models look like the ones from Thief 1. (I love them _there_)
I was better off disabling the horribly irreal eye-candy like the vegetation (terrain detail: very low). What, those BI guys never went out of a city? Their depiction has absolutely no correlation to reality.
More on video settings: who the hell uses postprocessing? It's actually just a blur filter. You can get the same shit results with decreasing rendering resolution, except that will _increase_ your FPS, and this one will completely devastate it (also introduce inexplicable 1-1.5 second lag for your input devices, probably due to directx's infamous render-ahead feature). If you have bad vision, take off your glasses. There, you have native "postprocessing"!
Also an engine matter: it looks horrible. But I wouldn't mind the trademarked ShinyPlastic(TM) look of everything (traditional courtesy of games containing the Unreal engine, I don't know what this has), if the actors' were better animated than a pile of dogshit falling in mid-air. Just take a look at Operation Flashpoint: running and/or dying animations are completely believable and fluent. Shoot someone to death in OFP while (s)he's sprinting: it will be very gratifying. Here? Oh God, the last time I remember feeling such despair seeing a clunky ragdoll attempt was in Thief 3. Who approved this?
Also: reloading weapons while walking/running/sprinting? Wait, what??? Please do that IRL. Not just when the clip's empty, but reinsert the bullets too, as in the game. (in OFP reloading wisely makes you stationary) Streamlining...
The (vehicle) pathfinder got much, much worse than in OFP. And that's saying a lot. But now I can appreciate that one, at least. Anyone remembers the simplistic simulation "Rars"? Probably not. It ran more than 10 cars on a curving race ring, and it worked flawlessly. On a 4.77MHz XT. This AI can't even make a turn properly from one road to another!
The Huey will not stay still on a perfectly flat ground while waiting for the squad gets in. It usually flies away with my men, and I'll have fun times telling them to parachute out, then shooting at their descending bodies because that is more fun than banging my head into a wall when (not "if") this happens.
Get the squad in a car, switch seats then switch back (from back seat to driver or gunner then back2back), then tell the driver to go somewhere on the map. He'll disembark and jog off happily into the distance on foot. Nobody tested combat vehicles in actual combat scenarios in the last 4 years (!) and after significant number of patches. No one.
The game being completely dogshit probably doesn't apply as a "technical issue" as far as GOG is concerned, so let them keep my monies. But I implore everyone else NOT TO BUY THIS GAME!
