Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead Demo

Modern shooters have become more and more realistic over the years, but they still kept a few elements that made gameplay easier to handle and accessible to new players as well. The Arma series, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction and made things as difficult to manage as possible, in order to provide gamers with unseen levels of combat realism and a lot of daring gameplay mechanics.

Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead continues the action in the original title, only this time in Takistan, three years later. Here, the US Army is sent to restore peace and assure that there are no more civilian casualties, by neutralizing any hostile forces they stumble upon, rescuing hostages and destroying vital objectives throughout the Asian country.

Just like until now, this expansion features enormous maps for you to explore and take advantage off, with highly-detailed terrain modeled after real locations and plenty of opportunities to take the enemies by surprise. Thus, by making use of the latest technology when it comes to weapons, vehicles and aircraft support, you and your team must infiltrate various settlements and take out the foes defending them, as well as accomplish a wide array of other objectives over the course of the new campaign.

The thing that really makes your head spin when you first enter the game is the staggering number of controls and possible actions. Hence, you are practically forced to go through the training missions first, otherwise it would take a very long time for you to find out how to accomplish even the simplest things, such as crawl, enter vehicles or shout out orders for your teammates. Speaking of which, the vehicle component has been greatly improved, with a lot of new additions, both on wheels and in the air.

Technically speaking, Arma 2 is by far one of the best-looking games out there, especially when it comes to texture quality and the natural animations employed by the characters. The ballistics are about as close to reality as they can get, with each weapon having a certain range, endurance to stress and accuracy, all of which depend on your ability to make proper use of their abilities.

In the end, when it come to realism and simulation, Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead is a few classes above anything else in its genre, although it does sacrifice a lot of user-friendliness in the process. Despite that, it is worth the effort to learn how to play this game, since you are handsomely rewarded once you get the hang of it.