Armed Assault

PC game / COULD-HAPPEN-BUT-HASN’T confl ict, cold war baking on a common border: As the pro-West, prodemocratic kingdom of South Sahrani stink-eyes its northern communist neighbors, America sends in troops for training purposes. “It’s primarily a means of posturing,” says Armed Assault community manager Paul R. Statham. “Patronizing photo ops with no real intent of providing an actual presence.” Political cachet turns Pandora’s box when the North irrupts with Yanks still on Sahrani soil. See Armed Assault, Czech developer Bohemia Interactive’s sophomore combat sim, as the unoffi cial follow-up to Operation Flashpoint, the army-versus-army shooter that trailblazed warring over land, lake, and air well before Battlefi eld stormed the same space. Yet unlike EA’s built-for-online blockbuster, Armed Assault’s unplugged play is fully featured. “Single-player campaign proceeds upon the initial invasion,” Statham says. “South Sahrani is caught with its drawers down, so it’s pretty much a case of ‘up, on with the socks, and at ’em.’ First, you’ll struggle to slow the North’s swift aggression, but with a little skill and a lot of luck, you’ll make progress.” Freedom rings in the form of wide-open space (some 250 square miles’ worth of encompassing cities, boomtowns, and whistle stops), and attack plans (clandestine or direct) are yours to plot. According to Statham: “What happens in one mission affects the next, whether that be the squadmates you save or the hardware you spare. And that’s true in real time. For example, blast enemy artillery early, and it won’t bombard you when you attack a base; frag roving patrols fi rst, and they won’t shoot you in the keister later as you approach your primary objective.”
Where macrotactical dividends pay —* over time,
moment when hawks and insects fl y and fl it - through trees and shrubs—false positives for the high-strung and itchy-fi ngered. “Much of Armed Assault’s environment is interactive and, more importantly, functional,” says Statham. “It’s primary in our mindset: Only introduce features and effects if and when they have some sort of useful functionality and can contribute to the entire experience. It holds true for our use of special sound and HDR lighting—where staring into the sun, a fl ashlight, or a vehicle’s high beams interferes with your vision.”
Online, Armed Assault’s nationwide scope—orders of magnitude bigger than Battlefi eld’s—is the stuff of up-all-night i fi refi ghts. Flexible win conditions allow for anything from attrition and set score to the assassination of a specifi c target to the complete capture of every single city and shanty on Sahrani, coast to coast. “Of course,” says Statham, taking aim at Battlefi eld’s seesawing cap points, “seeing some missions through might take serious time—althoughw players can come and go over the coursel ' of the campaign—but beating feet from one checkpoint to another and back with a few vehicles haphazardly thrown in is no comparison. download game rapidshare.com.de megaupload fileshares megashares sendspace