![]() Unless you're a hardcore combat aficionado you'll doubtless wince at the sheer grotesqueness of it all, though military map lovers will no doubt think they've been prematurely transported to Heaven. On a negative point, your objectives and achievements are presented to you via a collection of ugly, unintuitive briefing and debriefing screens, further sullied by some poorly written segments of text. One thing's for sure, this certainly isn't Battlefield. Mastering each one, especially the aerial units, is almost a game within itself. These range from flimsy jeeps to hulking tanks and deadly attack choppers. As well as battling the enemy on foot, you're also given the chance to drive and pilot an abundance of vehicles, each with unique handling, controls, turret positions, speeds and physics. The most effective way of doing this is by issuing commands from the third-person tactical viewpoint, which despite being far from perfect, proves infinitely more effective than using the hideously clumsy first-person menu command system - one of several substandard interface decisions on the part of the developer. Using combined arms is also an essential skill to master if your stretched forces are to prevail against the enemy's superior numbers. During these intense firefights, you're never more than a couple of bullets away from death, even on the easier of the two difficulty levels. Around you, your squad mates form up to cover every angle and bellow commands and affirmatives at one another. Just surviving a mission is a monumental feat, with searing lead whistling so close to your ears you're forced to press yourself into the dirt and let off short controlled bursts of fire at lines of advancing foes. Battles are often fought at a distance, with enemies little more than dark specs against the horizon. It's this kind of realism that permeates every crevice of Armed Assault. At other times, you'll find yourself sitting in the back of trucks, gazing at the scenery whizzing by as you're transported to a nearby hotspot before you even get a sniff of the action, though an option to speed up the game goes some way to alleviating any onset of boredom. ![]() Just moving from one waypoint to the next can be a protracted affair as you and your team jog for what feels like an eternity across the rolling countryside, often veering away into foliage and forests to avoid enemy patrols. Levels stretch out in every direction, seemingly without end. This is warfare at its most guttural, stripped bare of all Hollywood glitz and razzmatazz. Instead, you play as a soldier within a squad, who must work alongside AI teammates to outfight and outmanoeuvre the enemy on some of the largest and most freeform levels ever to grace a videogame. Unlike the majority of shooters - tactical or otherwise - Armed Assault doesn't cast you as a lone hero who can single-handedly win the war. Auxiliary tasks are optional, 20 or 30 minute operations which, if completed successfully, have knock-on effects on the essential missions. The plot-driven essential missions are mandatory - key battles of the conflict that can last several hours. The main campaign is broken down into two sets of missions - essential and auxiliary. However, when the island is invaded by the neighbouring North, you and your team are tasked with holding back the tide until the cavalry arrives. Set in the war torn, fictional island state of South Sahrani, you control a group of US soldiers posted on the idyllic isle to train the locals in the art of combat. Armed Assault is much the same, but without quite so many of the dodgy bits. On its release, Operation Flashpoint proved to be an epic, enthralling and utterly unforgiving war sim, blighted only by an unimpressive game engine and a bunch of glitches and irritating bugs. ![]() The similarities between the two games are striking. Created by the same team behind Cold War Crisis, Armed Assault takes the impressive realism of its predecessor and propels it to even greater heights. While Armed Assault isn't officially a direct follow-up to Operation Flashpoint, it's essentially its spiritual successor. In fact, the only thing it's been lacking is a sequel. ![]() Its adherence to realism and open-ended gameplay set it apart from every other hardcore tactical shooter on the market and since its release in 2001, it's built an ardent fan base and an impressive array of mods. ![]() Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was without doubt one of the most complete virtual military simulations of the new millennium. ![]()
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