Publisher: 505 Games Developer: Bohemia Interactive Year of Release: 2010 Platforms: PC I’ve already covered Armed Assault and ARMA 2 in an article here. This piece covers the additions in ArmA 2 patches, as well as the expansion and the first DLC. Bohemia Interactive, the makers of the ArmA series, like to give things away for free, in patches and the like. However, there does come a time when the free stuff would be too big and this is what lead to both Arrowhead and the BAF. But first, free stuff. ArmA 2 has received several patches since release which fixed quite a few of the issues it had at release as well as giving some performance improvements. But patch 1.05 added something else -  a totally new campaign and a AH-64 Apache helicopter. The campaign, Eagle Wing, was a fan made 2 mission campaign set after the events of the main game with the Russians and Americans now at war. It is a quick excursion based mainly around the added Apache and is a good diversion from the fan made missions and multiplayer which should take less than an hour to play. It does however require reasonable pilot skills. However, the first full expansion to ArmA 2 came out in July. Operation Arrowhead is set in Takistan, an Afghanistan-esque country on the receiving end of an American liberation force sent in to hunt down weapons of mass destruction. It overhauled the engine, adding in a new lighting system that allowed mod makers to finally add in the laser sights and flashlights that seemed an odd thing to miss out in a war simulation. It also added a thermal system allowing snipers everywhere to cheat by simply looking for a bad guys heat source. It is pretty cool that it acts properly – gun barrels only show when fired, vehicles won’t show if the engines are turned off and you can see through smoke using it. These improvements, alongside many other smaller ones, really make the game better and more realistic. I’m not a great fan of the campaign and its story but the single missions are all great to play. Even better is the fact all the ArmA 2 mods work in Arrowhead so all the fun of those can now take place in fake Afghanistan. More recently still, Bohemia Interactive also released the first of their DLC packs. British Armed Forces add Her Majesty’s troops to the game. They come in three different sets of camo (Woodland DPM, Desert DPM and the new MTP) and are armed with weapons of the near future army. It doesn’t feature a full range of vehicles like the US Army in Arrowhead so the Brits are close to the amount of equipment the Czech forces have. They are actually all featured in the standard Operation Arrowhead game, but without the £8 DLC, they all have really low resolution textures which can be painful to look at. Buying the pack also gets you a new industrial map called Shapur (perfect for some CQB) and a British campaign. I think the pack is great and definitely worth the price even if it is just paying for all the free stuff they have added throughout the game’s development. The updates, expansions and DLC for ArmA 2 has cemented it as the milsim of choice. It’s only competitor, the new Operation Flashpoint games, are nowhere near as expansive as Bohemia’s mammoth series. In fact, Arrowhead added in some of my favourite features of Dragon Rising such as the lighting systems and the laser pointers. Bohemia has already announced plans for future DLC and, based on the number of missions on Armaholic requiring BAF, its going to do well with them. ArmA 2 will probably run and run for quite a while.

Publisher: 505 Games
Developer: Bohemia Interactive
Year of Release: 2010
Platforms: PC

I’ve already covered Armed Assault and ARMA 2 in an article here. This piece covers the additions in ArmA 2 patches, as well as the expansion and the first DLC.

Bohemia Interactive, the makers of the ArmA series, like to give things away for free, in patches and the like. However, there does come a time when the free stuff would be too big and this is what lead to both Arrowhead and the BAF.

But first, free stuff. ArmA 2 has received several patches since release which fixed quite a few of the issues it had at release as well as giving some performance improvements. But patch 1.05 added something else -  a totally new campaign and a AH-64 Apache helicopter. The campaign, Eagle Wing, was a fan made 2 mission campaign set after the events of the main game with the Russians and Americans now at war. It is a quick excursion based mainly around the added Apache and is a good diversion from the fan made missions and multiplayer which should take less than an hour to play. It does however require reasonable pilot skills.

However, the first full expansion to ArmA 2 came out in July. Operation Arrowhead is set in Takistan, an Afghanistan-esque country on the receiving end of an American liberation force sent in to hunt down weapons of mass destruction. It overhauled the engine, adding in a new lighting system that allowed mod makers to finally add in the laser sights and flashlights that seemed an odd thing to miss out in a war simulation. It also added a thermal system allowing snipers everywhere to cheat by simply looking for a bad guys heat source. It is pretty cool that it acts properly – gun barrels only show when fired, vehicles won’t show if the engines are turned off and you can see through smoke using it. These improvements, alongside many other smaller ones, really make the game better and more realistic. I’m not a great fan of the campaign and its story but the single missions are all great to play. Even better is the fact all the ArmA 2 mods work in Arrowhead so all the fun of those can now take place in fake Afghanistan.

More recently still, Bohemia Interactive also released the first of their DLC packs. British Armed Forces add Her Majesty’s troops to the game. They come in three different sets of camo (Woodland DPM, Desert DPM and the new MTP) and are armed with weapons of the near future army. It doesn’t feature a full range of vehicles like the US Army in Arrowhead so the Brits are close to the amount of equipment the Czech forces have. They are actually all featured in the standard Operation Arrowhead game, but without the £8 DLC, they all have really low resolution textures which can be painful to look at. Buying the pack also gets you a new industrial map called Shapur (perfect for some CQB) and a British campaign. I think the pack is great and definitely worth the price even if it is just paying for all the free stuff they have added throughout the game’s development.

The updates, expansions and DLC for ArmA 2 has cemented it as the milsim of choice. It’s only competitor, the new Operation Flashpoint games, are nowhere near as expansive as Bohemia’s mammoth series. In fact, Arrowhead added in some of my favourite features of Dragon Rising such as the lighting systems and the laser pointers. Bohemia has already announced plans for future DLC and, based on the number of missions on Armaholic requiring BAF, its going to do well with them. ArmA 2 will probably run and run for quite a while.