In 2001 a game titled Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was created by Bohemia Interactive. It was easily the most realistic first-person shooter of its time. In fact, Operation Flashpoint was so realistic that a more advanced version of the game called Virtual Battlespace ("VBS") was adopted for use as a training tool by Australian and New Zealand armed forces as well as the United States Marine Corps. Now, six years later, Bohemia is back with ArmA: Combat Operations, the spiritual successor to OFP.

This time the action takes place on a fictional island nation called Sahrani. You're part of a US military detachment responsible for training the locals in modern warfare. As expected, all hell breaks loose and you and your buddies will find yourselves caught up in a violent coup. Now you'll have to hold out against superior numbers until the cavalry arrives.

This would be one of the more serene and picturesque moments in ArmA.

Something Familiar

Anyone who has played OFP will feel right at home when they load up ArmA. In fact, at first glance very little has changed between OFP and ArmA. The controls are virtually identical, as is the interface and the command system. Even the music will sound familiar to OFP players.

This might appeal to OFP die-hards, but to us it was a little disconcerting. Six years have passed since the release of OFP and a lot of advances have been made in first-person shooters since. The result is that the already-clunky controls feel even worse now. To make ArmA as realistic as possible, your mouse movement is tied to your avatar's arms, so as you move your mouse your arms will move your weapon. This means that if you aim at something on the extreme upper-left-hand corner of your screen your own arms will obstruct your view, which quickly gets frustrating.

Not only that, but rather than having the mouselook feature move the camera like in a conventional shooter, there is a small invisible window of movement in the center of your screen where you can move your weapon without actually affecting where the camera is pointed. If you actually want to look in another direction direction you'll have to move your mouse beyond that small window and only then will the view change. This felt clunky in OFP, and it still feels clunky now.