Thinky stuff: Armed Assault

I realized that I was setting myself up for a 50/50 coin toss when I got this game. I knew about its crazed uber-realism. For those who know me know that I always hark on about realism in games, shooters in particular, and how games ike Call of Duty is like watching a blockbuster movie rather than being in a war. So I decided to put my money where my mouth was and got Armed Assault, the spiritual successor to Operation Flashpoint, the grandaddy of military simulation.

To cut a long story short, I died in the first 15 minutes of the game. Well 5 minutes if you don't count the 10 minutes (exaggeration, but it felt long) it took for the military convoy I was in to drive to the town where there was a fighting. The graphics is horribly old-school, the landscapes are sparse, a friend even commented that it looked like the Sims (and the original one, not the sequel!). Although, the character textures from the uniform to the packs are highly detailed. But I knew the graphics were not going to be good and that I was playing for its military simulation.

The radio-calls were there, a constant feed of orders and information, but the real intensity came during the first mission. The two humvees that the squad deployed from are blown up by rocket launchers leaving you stranded in a hostile hotspot. Back up takes awhile to get to your squad's location leaving you watching as your squadmates fall left right and centre.

I could have helped and shot back at the enemy, but this was a game where the enemy is a pinprick dot in the distance and one well-placed shot from the intelligent A.I. meant game over (and having to start from the very beginning of the mission). It really spoke of the realistic mortality that soldiers faced down in places like Iraq.

A military vehicle was waiting some distance away to pick up the survivors but every time I ran to it, I was shot down. The game was dynamic in that replaying the same mission didn't always have the same sequence of events. What I mean is, the first time I played through, my squad survived and ran with me towards the pick-up vehicle, whilst subsequent playthroughs saw them being cut down by enemy fire that was not there the first time. This was a dynamic A.I. that I thought was only possible in 2008 with a game like Left 4 Dead. Evidently Bohemia Interactive were on to something in 2007.

But it was also the first game that gave me a tough time getting through even just the first level. Only games like Braid and World of Goo do that to me, and they aren't shooters!

Was thoroughly impressed by the unpredictability, and it made me all the more frightened. This was the first time in a game where I truly did not want to join in the firefight, and hid behind cover like a little girl. But I died too many times, got frustrated and uninstalled the game.

The end.