Arma 3
Arma 3


Welcome to the PC Gamer Game of the Year Awards 2013. For an explanation of how the awards were decided, a round-up of all the awards and the list of judges, check here.

A good sim pursues the lofty, unreachable goal of total realism. They shun accessibility in favour of complexity, but in doing so allow devoted and patient players to access marvellously detailed facsimiles of reality, which can inspire great gaming stories and player-driven drama. In the case of our simulation of 2013, it's a beautiful, sprawling and customisable depiction of modern military conflict, Arma 3.

EVAN It isn t any one piece of Arma s fidelity the ballistics modelling, the variegated island, the intricate military gear that wows us. It s how the sum of those replicates the experience of being a soldier something very distinct from being an avatar who happens to fire guns. You ve got to know how to read a topographical map. You ve got to know how to communicate with brevity and clarity while being shot at.

You have to think critically about stuff like encumbrance. When I m gearing up for a mission, throwing a satchel charge in my backpack may help me knock out a hard target, but the extra weight will tire me out more quickly when I sprint. So maybe I ll have a teammate taxi me across the map on an ATV. But wait the sun is setting, so we ll probably have to drive with the headlights on and risk detection, since we don t have nightvision goggles. Unless we find and kill an enemy who does. Again: it s not the individual realisms but how they knit into each other and prompt thoughtful decisions.

CORY I scoffed when Evan offered to teach me the ropes in Arma 3. Nothing sounds more boring to me than yelling out bearings and scrambling to find 7mm ammo instead of 6mm ammo. The UI is intimidating and the level of detail is daunting. I play games to escape from realism, not embrace it.

Evan s enthusiasm won me over, however, and he finally convinced me to join him on a mission. With a little bit of guidance, I was leaning around cover and marking coordinates on the map like well, not a pro, but like someone who might actually survive a mission. I marvelled at how seriously Arma takes its systems. Evan showed me how to move through all nine of Arma s infantry stances, when I was perfectly comfortable with crouching the entire game. And after he showed me how to use Alt to move just my soldier s head while moving forward, it became a feature I want in every FPS.

Eventually, we had to defend a compound from nondescript soldiers driving camouflaged, armoured jeeps with heavy machineguns (or so Evan tells me). Evan was pinned down in a far-off area (or maybe he just wanted me to feel useful), so he had me take over a downed jeep and use its HMG to hold off troops and vehicles at a distance. A quick keypress activated thermal vision, and I spent 15 minutes picking off enemies at range. It was glorious.

I was sceptical, but now I m a believer. Arma 3 is not only an impressive simulation of battle, but it s an incredibly compelling co-op sandbox. I ve played some janky Steam Workshop content that was still fun because of the group I played it with. I ll probably never play Arma alone, but I ll always jump in with some friends.

EVAN Even if you don t set out to roleplay, you inevitably end up doing something military like reciting compass directions as individual numbers (like bearing one-eight-zero to indicate south), or acronyming everything, or freely yelling phrases like suppressive fire! Because it feels like the appropriate thing to do. It s wonderful that something centred on realism can stimulate such playfulness.

Beyond all that, Arma 3 s Altis map was the most detailed world in a videogame this year a slab of Mediterrania jigsawed with salt flats, jungle shrubs, solar power plants and postcard-worthy beach resorts.
Counter-Strike
best gaming moment of 2013


Before running away for a few days of competitive eating and cooperative gaming, Evan, Cory, and Tyler gathered to reflect on the most memorable victories, losses, and stories they virtually experienced in 2013. Watch the whole five-video series on the PC Gamer YouTube channel, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more regular content, gameplay footage, and conversations.
BioShock Infinite
goty


PC Gamer editors are prohibited from celebrating Christmas. For the team, the end of the year is marked by an event known as GOTY Sleepover, a time where we somewhat-voluntarily sequester ourselves away from our families and loved ones in the interest of a greater good: selecting the best PC games of the year. We gather in a room with a very heavy door and very little ventilation and stay there until we ve reached a unanimous decision on every award category. It s a lot like the Papal conclave, but with more Cheetos.

So far, this is what we ve got. These are games nominated for awards in general, not just our single Game of the Year. Consider this a short-list of the games our team loved in 2013, one we ll whittle down into proper, named awards in the coming days.


Dota 2
Arma 3
Spelunky
Battlefield 4
Gone Home
Tomb Raider
Rising Storm
Saints Row IV
Papers, Please
BioShock Infinite
Total War: Rome II
The Stanley Parable
XCOM: Enemy Within

Check in each day over the holiday break to see who's victorious. In the meantime, here's our 2012 winners and some lively year-end video conversations about our best PC gaming experiences in 2013.
Arma 2
make-arma-not-war


Arma has always been quite moddable. Every piece of Bohemia Interactive s military sim has been renovated or replaced hundreds of times over by the game s prolific community--its missions, islands, audio, weapons, and vehicles. Today Bohemia makes a major effort to support that culture of community content creation as it begins a more than year-long competition called Make Arma Not War.

A total of a half-million Euros (about $680,000 USD) will be be awarded to modders in 2015, with the winners in four categories selected by a panel of about a dozen game industry professionals, community members like Dslyecxi, and Bohemia developers. Having a competition like this is giving the people something back, essentially. Giving them more serious reasons to show off, to make something out of their hobby, says Ivan Buchta, Creative Director at Bohemia.

One of the many subcategories of missions that have emerged for Arma 3 is racing. We're not very good at them.

CEO Marek Spanel underlines that the competition is Bohemia s way of supporting a fundamental part of its franchise. Ever since Arma: Cold War Assault, we ve made it a priority to support our community with tools, documentation, and sample models, and Arma 3 is no different. With the integration of Steam Workshop, a refreshed tool suite, updated user licenses, and of course the Make Arma Not War contest, we re hoping to push things further. It s clear that, with our open architecture and creative community, much more extra content can be produced. Correspondingly, we ve seen this affect the longevity of our games: each Arma installment is played actively for years and years after their release.

Employment and publishing rights, along the lines of what was earned by DayZ creator Dean Hall, also aren t out of the question for potential winners and entrants to the contest. It s a great way for us to find new employees, says Korneel van t Land, Brand and PR Manager at Bohemia. They re training themselves with our tools and technology. We might be able to find talent. The recruitment aspect is also quite important.

The disproportionate, 200,000 sum allocated for the Total Modification category indicates that Bohemia is serious about stimulating more Arma spin-offs through this contest. After the success of DayZ, a mod that shifted Arma somewhat out of its simulation roots, Bohemia says it s looking for more original ideas alongside content that enhances Arma 3. It would be great if more people were able to think out of the box, step outside of the technical military simulation game we have, or even go deeper inside it, and create something revolutionary, something inspiring, something that will set a direction for the future, even for our competitors, says Buchta.

Read up on the contest rules at www.makearma.com. Bohemia will accept entries until October 28, 2014. In the meantime, here s a list of some of our favorite Arma 3 content created to date.

Prizes
Total Modification
200,000 1st place

Single-Player Game Mode
50,000 1st place
30,000 2nd place
20,000 3rd place

Multiplayer Game Mode
50,000 1st place
30,000 2nd place
20,000 3rd place

Addon
50,000 1st place
30,000 2nd place
20,000 3rd place
Arma 3
arma 3


Arma 3 is a bit good, as opined in greater detail in our review. But it's also a bit lacking in campaign content, for the time being at least. Thankfully, things will change for the better when the second of the game's three campaign episodes releases next month - on January 21st to be exact. Following on from the first part, 'Survive', Adapt will feature "more open and unorthodox scenarios" and a "much stronger enemy", which must be a nice thing to hear if you've dedicated your life to enemyhood. If you can't wait till January and you want to play with Adapt's new toys now, however, Bohemia have you covered: on December 11th, its new weapons and vehicles will automagically be downloaded to your game folder via Steam. More details below.

That content includes new vehicles for the Altis Armed Forces: the Wy-55 Hellcat helicopter, the FV-720 Mora and the MBT-52 tank. You'll also get infra-red grenades, black versions of the MX rifles, and an LRPS sniper scope. I hope you understood some or all of that sentence, because militaryspeak is all Greek to me.

Together, the three campaign episodes - 'Survive', 'Adapt' and 'Win' - form The East Wind, Arma 3's free (if you own the game) episodic campaign. The third part hasn't yet been given a date.
Arma 3
ArmA III, screenshot 7


The Arma series has long been known for its often stunningly realistic visuals. But alongside all that eye candy, modders have been consistently working to sharpen Arma's soundscape as well. A new, in-progress sound mod for Arma 3 the Advanced Combat Sound Environment continues this work and looks to achieve a dramatic level of audio immersion for the military simulation.

The ACSE is a standalone mod that alters weapon sounds to reflect a changing and dynamic battlefield, according to modder tpM, who also released the video above. The team behind ACSE features veterans of the earlier Advanced Combat Environment mod for Arma 2 and includes modders zGuba, Rocko, ViperMaul, and Mr. NouberNou, as tpM reports in the official ACSE forum thread. The goal of the mod is to give detailed and specific sounds for different weapons based on distance, interior or exterior environments, or even if you fire off the last round from a magazine. As you can hear in the video the sounds change depending on where you are and what the terrain is like.

TpM writes that the team has been working on the ACSE mod for more than two years and says the project will release "when it's done, hopefully sooner than you'd expect." There's no doubt that a massive Arma 3 map like Altis offers up a wide variety of situations in which sound and the way players are able to interpret it plays a vital role in victory or defeat. It's one of several mods for Arma 3 that we'll be keeping an eye on as it progresses towards full release.
Arma 3
arma-3-maxed-gameplay-video


I don't know if you heard, but we built a ridiculous computer. The first thing we fired up on it was Arma 3, a fitting inaugural test of our four GTX Titans. Here's the result, captured in first-person and with help from Arma 3's Splendid Camera.

See what's inside the Large Pixel Collider, our own personal demigod of a PC.
Arma 2
Arma 3


All summer, we enjoyed the community guides published in the run-up to Arma 3's fall release. They were not only informative, but they offered a nice look at the systems and graphics that the open-world military sim offer. Now that Arma 3 is out, community guide narrator Andrew Gluck (aka Dslyecxi) has compiled a wealth of information in his official guide. And while the full guide is bundled with the deluxe edition of Arma 3, a ton of it is now available for free.

Gluck is the founder of Shack Tactical, the most devoted bunch of military sim roleplayers on the internet. In addition to diving into Arma 3's various systems, the guide explores how to function within Shack Tactical by roleplaying a set of near-military rules and procedures.

"In our eyes, hardcore milsim is chock-full of 'tactical fluff' that is irrelevant to the games at hand," Gluck writes. "This hardcore milsim typically presents itself though excessive rules, regulations, attempted recreations of full military rank structures far beyond what is relevant in the scope of your average Arma mission, doing things 'because the real military does them' regardless of their actual application to the game at hand, and other things that we believe do not have a place in these games. This guide reflects that mindset as well.

Even if you're not interested in enlisting with the most hardcore of tactical simmers, the information and tips on offer will be useful to anyone who plays Arma 3. There are over 130,000 words of it in the free, online version, so you've got no shortage of briefing materials to sort through before your next mission. Better get to it!
Arma 3
Arma Survive


Arma 3's campaign was AWOL at release. Don't worry, though, it hadn't been captured by the enemy, to be set upon by growling dogs, placed into falling buildings, or attacked by acid-spitting aliens. Instead, it was back at base, undergoing a top secret operation to separate it out in to three chunks, to be freely deployed in stages over the following months. The first of those chunks, codenamed Survive, is air-dropping in now. A launch trailer has released, as proof.



"Tensions rise as NATO peacekeeping forces begin to leave The Republic of Altis: a strategic fault-line between crumbling European influence and a powerful, resurgent East," helpfully explains the video's description. A press release sent out by Bohemia Interactive offers more details:

"In Arma 3’s campaign, players take on the role of Ben Kerry, a soldier who is a part of the NATO peacekeeping operation in the Mediterranean. Five years after the bloody civil war in the Republic of Altis & Stratis came to an end, NATO has started to withdraw its forces from the region - unknowingly creating the conditions for a Mediterranean flashpoint. Kerry's unit, 'Task Force Aegis' - together with a clandestine group of UKSF operators - is soon caught up in a situation beyond their control, and trapped in a fight for survival."

All in all, it sounds like a solid reason to shoot some men, with the additional bonus that the campaign provides mod makers with more building blocks for their own missions. Survive is out now, and being pumped through your Steam pipes of Arma 3 owners.
Arma 3
Arma Survive


I bet Bohemia are feeling really embarrassed right now. In all the excitement of ArmA III's official launch last month, they completely forgot to add in its singleplayer campaign. Weirdly, they'd planned for this forgetfulness, announcing beforehand that the campaign would follow as three free DLC chunks to be released over the coming months. Incredible foresight, that.

The first of these chunks will be called 'Survive', and it's due to be released on October 31st. ArmA's creative director, Jay Crowe, explains what players can expect:

“Our first campaign episode, ‘Survive’, introduces players to Ben Kerry, a regular soldier who’s part of a NATO peacekeeping mission in the Mediterranean. Following a couple of years of uneasy cease-fire, this US-led deployment is now in the process of a staged drawdown. The vacuum left by withdrawing forces is being rapidly filled by the opposing CSAT faction, creating the conditions for, one might say, a flashpoint.

“Of course, it's not just about our own story, but another opportunity to provide yet more building blocks for the platform - new weapons, animations, 3D objects, scripted modules - each designed to grant content creators even greater freedom to create and share their own content. Looking forward to the forthcoming episodes, we’ll continue to expand Arma 3’s sandbox with additions such as new vehicles.”

Even without the campaign, Evan was quite taken with Bohemia's military sim. You can read his review here.
...

Search news
Archive
2024
Jun   May   Apr   Mar   Feb   Jan  
Archives By Year
2024   2023   2022   2021   2020  
2019   2018   2017   2016   2015  
2014   2013   2012   2011   2010  
2009   2008   2007   2006   2005  
2004   2003   2002