You're in the ArmA Now: Part 1

In which I actually play the game past the tutorials.

I'm in the passenger seat of a Humvee, moving into the outskirts of a vaguely middle eastern looking city as part of a two vehicle convoy sent to investigate gunfire. This city is part of the US allied half of the island. Opposite it is a bunch of communists, who, being communists, can be shot without feeling guilty. I'm playing a US soldier sent here to train the non-communist monarchy in communist-shooting. The mission's been a snoozefest and is almost over, with my company the last to leave.

I dismount the Humvee, and, along with the rest of the squad, press onwards into the city. The radio suddenly comes alive with stilted military reports of enemy activity:

"Enemy. Missile soldier. Twelve. O'Clock."
"Enemy Machine Gunner. Is history."
"Move. tothat. House. At. Twelve. O'Clock."

Hey, it's me. When I'm writing in italics, I'm discussing the game itself without any attempt to maintain a narrative. This is actually how people in ArmA talk. Unlike most games which just have some stock phrases like 'enemy sighted,' ArmA will actually give you a description, heading and distance to target on contacts. This can be very helpful, the downside is that these are made from pasted together sentence fragments, and thus sound absolutely dreadful. In a surreal touch, the person you are playing as will radio in contacts without being told, or even telling you that he's doing it. This leads to a weird condition wherein my soldier dude know the location of somebody I haven't even seen yet, or me shooting at somebody my soldier dude doesn't know exists. It's rather like having split personalities. One of them is eerily professional, giving precise reports on enemy movement with the diction and emotion of an automated phone system , the other (me) is vaguely incompetant, keeps walking off of rooftops, wondering how I get into a vehicle, and missing things with the M203 grenade launcher.

We run move tensely around the city for a while, but it's very confusing, very brown and bullets keep flying past me coming from God knows where. They've obviously got RPGs somewhere, because the Humvee that moved into the city with us is destroyed, killing No. 4. Finally, desperate to see what's going on, I climb a rooftop, and find myself face to face with a Communist Special forces soldier, lying prone and taking pot shots with an AK-47 at my buddies in the street below.

I think it took both of us by surprise. I hadn't expected anybody to be on the roof, and he had clearly thought all of us would be too busy trying not to get shot down in the street to come up here. We both freeze for an instant, but I'm a bit faster, and get the first shot off. My three shot burst tears through him. In an instant he's covered in blood. He rolls over and goes limp. I watch him for another few seconds, part of me horrified that I just killed him, part of me elated that he didn't kill me, part of me wanting make sure he really is dead and not faking.

This encounter happened more or less like I wrote, except the first time I went up on that rooftop I was so shocked to actually see an enemy, I think I forgot how the mouse worked, and was promptly shot. Fortunately the incompetant side of my personality has the ability to rewind time to a 'save point' and thus avoid death. It goes a long way towards getting through those little inconviences like multiple bullet wounds.

No sooner have I decided he really is dead than the order comes for us to get out of this street and fall back to a yard about two hundred meters away. I make it there in a panicked dash, flaming green tracers licking my heels, and crouch behind the rock wall with the rest of my group of soldiers. We see a tank, whoever is in charge radios for extraction, and we jog another 300 meters or so to an APC without encountering any more resistance.

So it looks like the commies have waited until almost all of us were out of here before attacking in earnest. Our friends the Royals are doing pissall to form an effective resistance, so it's just up to us now.

Thus ends my report on the first mission of ArmA's campaign. I actually died about five times during this section, once because I stood too close the Humvee when it blew up, a couple of times from enemy fire, the rest from accidentally walking off rooftops. One of ArmA's weirder features is no jump button. If you can't walk over it, you can't get over it. If you can walk over it, it really doesn't slow you down at all, which, combined with the inertial movement, makes those little ledges at the edges of roofs completely worthless for actually stopping idiots like me from plunging to their deaths.

I should also spend a moment talking about the various bugs one will encounter in ArmA, because there are a lot of the things. They come in two sorts- mildly amusing in a surrealist way, and completely show stopping.

The first happen more or less constantly. They range from the interiors of APCs forgetting to draw themselves, to my personal favorite, the muzzle flash of my rifle undrawing any nearby walls. Essentially I fire my gun, and get XRay vision for a quarter of a second. I've also had sniper rifles spontaneously fire themselves, and various trees randomly decide to fall over without any obvious reason. If it was a part of the level design, that'd be one thing, but I really doubt the designers intended to block the main road through a town with a big old pile of branches like that.

The second also happen consistantly. I'm unable to complete the helicopter training mission, because the script that causes the copilot to board the Blackhawk is broken, so he won't get in and I fail as soon as I take off. I had one mission that occurs later where I'm supposed to blow up a bridge, but cannot plant explosives. So basically it's just like the real military, except with a touch of Lovecraftian madness. It's a heady combination.