Operation Flashpoint: Red River's creative director, Sion Lenton, thinks military simulations are “immersive” and “realistic” but not necessarily “fun.”

Speaking to PC Gamer, Sion directed gamers yearning for an accurately simulated warzone towards Bohemia Interactive's ArmA series, and claimed that PC is “Not the market to be in.”

Ooo-rah indeed.


Sion Lenton was Executive Producer on Codemaster's Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, released in 2009. PC Gamer described it as “An attractive and powerful sim that spoils itself by trying too hard to be a straightforward military shooter.”

We asked Sion about that decision to move even further away from the series roots with the follow-up: “We want to steer away from the idea that it’s a simulation; we’ve banned the word in the studio. Authentic is fine, as it gives you some leeway to be creative, and that’s what we are. We’re creative, we’re making an entertainment product, and it should be fun. I don’t really get much fun out of military simulations. They’re immersive, they’re realistic, but I wouldn’t call them fun.

“If you want simulation, then it’s out there; go play ArmA. We wanted to do something different, in our own space, and we don’t want the Op Flash brand tied down to simulation.”



I'd argue that it is possible to have fun in ArmA, even though it's an unforgiving beast. Evan has video proof. What's even more odd about the comments is that ArmA developers Bohemia Interactive are responsible for the first game in the OpFlash series, Cold War Crisis. By 2001's standards, it provided unparalleled scale and extensive realism. The developer left the Operation Flashpoint name behind at Codemasters when it switched publisher.

Sion also didn't seem enthused by our platform of choice either, despite some high profile developers considering it to be one of their strongest assets: “As great as PCs are, from a sales point of view, it’s not the market. There’s a bigger market out there and if you get success you can start to experiment more. You need to get the sales under your belt, and then that gives you the freedom to do other things.”

Operation Flashpoint: Red River is due for release on April 21 in Europe and April 26 in the US. For more information read our Operation Flashpoint: Red River preview, or watch the latest trailer. What do you think of Sion's comments? Ever managed to have fun in a simulation?

A modder has painstakingly recreated every mission from Ghost Recon: Island Thunder in ARMA 2. ARMA 2 player Fatal Papercut was such a fan of the maps that he decided to film a crack team as they played through the missions. The result is a pair of videos that perfectly capture the authenticity, and sense of tension that make ARMA's skirmishes great. You'll find the second mission, Jaguar Maze below.




You can download the Island Thunder maps from Armaholic. If you fancy jumping into ARMA 2, the PC Gamer ARMA 2 community meets most Saturdays. We may not be as organised as the team in the video above, but there's still plenty of drama, courtesy of rogue volcanoes and magnificent battle buses. To join, simply swing by the ARMA 2 section of our forums and say hello.

While other, less war-hungry citizens of Earth were watching a movie awards show last weekend, our insane ArmA 2 community was violating seven protocols of the Geneva Convention by taking over an entire country with a weaponized bus. Here's a video of how we did it.

One of the mad scientists of our ArmA 2 community, Hypnotoad, created a custom mission for Operation Arrowhead. Using ArmA 2's "attachto" script, he used game logic to weld an absurd amount of fixed guns to one of our favorite, impractical combat transports: the passenger bus. Hypnotoad is the confident gentleman at the beginning telling us to "expect everything" as we prepare to embark. Now, witness the power of this fully armed and operational Battle Bus.



Secondary thanks to PCG intern alum Mike Quach for recording these antics.

As we do on most Saturdays, our ArmA 2 community rallied in Ventrilo last week to cooperate in the shooting of AI-controlled men. We did it with guns--realistic ones. Tangos were downed. Rules of engagement were occasionally observed. Compasses were used to indicate direction.

But there was also a volcano: a chimney of earth-hate overlooking our perfectly ordinary raid of an insurgent village. The volcano was angry. It melted the tires on our truck. Without warning, magma bombs began to fall all around us. The volcano's artillery nearly claimed me--a medic had to revive me amid the panic. We sardined ourselves into a Russian helicopter to escape. It didn't work.



Thanks to Max for the video capture (and above-average aim with his MK16). The mission above, called "Joe and the Volcano," was created by ArmA 2 community member cheesenoggin. Download it here--I'd recommend that you do.

Bohemia Interactive are launching this year's community awards to reward the best and brightest modders for its military sims, ARMA and ARMA 2, including Operation Arrowhead and other expansions. If you've enjoyed playing the missions and mods offered up by the ARMA community, here's your chance to vote for the best.

Voting is now open and you can make your nominations on the official ARMA 2 site. Voting will close on January 31st and the winners will be announced in March. Here are the categories you can vote for.

Best MOD/Addon Of The Year 2010
Best Mission/Campaign Of The Year 2010
Best Website Of The Year 2010
Best Member Of The Year 2010
Best Video Of The Year 2010

 
For more on ARMA 2, check out our review of the latest expansion, Private Military Company, or see Evan take out a tank with a sniper rifle.

Logan, Dan, Evan, Josh and Andy share their holiday wish lists and exceptional gaming moments of 2010 on this end-of-the-year podcast.

Download the mp3, subscribe and call in with your exceptional moments, questions and predictions of the future, toll free: 877-404-1337 ext 724.

PC Gamer US Podcast 253- Year Of The Trackball

I’m hunting for Russian tanks with an AS50 anti-materiel rifle. They’re guarding the dead forest that surrounds a nuclear site, idling over broken terrain like fat, metal deer.



I put my eye to my thermal scope to find the hottest part of the tank (the engine) and poke a 12.7x99mm hole between its pistons; my well-placed shot blows off the last T-55’s steel lid, clearing the way for my civilian inspection team to access the facility. This is exactly what an excellent ArmA 2 mission should be: violent, unscripted problem-solving with realistic military equipment. But oddly, this is one of only three open-ended missions in ArmA 2: Private Military Company’s 11-mission campaign.

PMC puts its focus on storytelling, which remains a weakness of developer Bohemia Interactive, and your role as a mercenary escort is hamstrung by awkward, on-rails missions that are at odds with ArmA 2’s massive, wide-open landscapes. In the intro, you’re running aimlessly through a village trying to locate a contact while artillery shells drop around you. In another, you man a minigun mounted atop an AI-driven SUV, gunning down roadside ambushers. Yet another assigns you the busywork of shooing civilians away from a facility. ArmA 2 has never been good at scripted sequences like these, and while the voice actors have improved, the lines they’re reading haven’t, and rigid facial animations make characters look like Kevlar sock puppets.

PMC’s new equipment also pales compared to the previous DLC. There’s a speedy-but-unremarkable Ka-60 helicopter, a machinegunning UAV drone that’s good for harassment and the AA-12 automatic shotgun, a weapon that’s rarely effective on ArmA 2’s expansive battlefields.



The star of PMC is the new Proving Grounds map—it’s dotted with skeleton trees and ruined shrubs; the bomb crater at the middle of the eerie scrubland looks like the work of God’s spoon. Unfortunately, Bohemia didn’t produce any stand-alone missions for it with PMC, so you’ll have to make your own (or download user-created ones from community sites like www.armaholic.com) to fully enjoy it.

While there’s novelty to playing as a mercenary in ArmA 2’s realistic universe, but there are too few new military toys and too few unimaginative missions to make PMC a must-download.

...blew up a T-55 Russian tank with a sniper rifle by putting a bullet in its engine block. Video within.



Part one of a recurring series, if you guys like these (do you?). Weapon used: the AS50, a British-made anti-materiel rifle that's nearly 54" long. The ammo: 12.7x99mm. The mission: the fifth chapter of ArmA 2: Private Military Company's campaign, "Elimination."

The latest patch for ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead will add vehicles and weapons from Private Military Company, giving players a preview of the new features included in the expansion.

Patch 1.56 will add Private Military Company Lite to Operation Arrowhead. This adds all of the new units, vehicles and weapons from Private Military Company to the game. The models will be of a lower resolution and sound quality than ordinary vehicles and weapons, but will handle just as they will in the expansion, letting players try out the new content before laying down any money for it.

The patch also adds the ARMEX Multiplayer Armory, which dynamically generates multiplayer missions for up to eight players and includes all of the weapons from ARMA 2. The patch also makes a few balance changes and bugfixes.

The Steam version should update automatically. If you don't have the Steam version of the game then you can download the latest patch from the ARMA 2 site. There's plenty more information about Private Military Company right here. The expansion is due out later today and will be priced at £8/$10. The launch trailer is embedded below.

The dodgy business of contracted military firms and mercenaries make up the back drop to the next slice of DLC for ARMA II. The ten new missions added in Private Military Company will introduce a host of new weapons and vehicles, and provide a single player and co-op campaign in which you play as a new faction. Read on for more information and a video report from the front line in Takistan.

The NATO Green Sea deployment is in the process of aiding the withdrawal of British and coalition armed forces from the region of Takistan, and have hired a series of competitive military contractors to fill the gaps left by the disappearing troops. There's also a small matter of Takistan's abandoned nuclear weapons program, and presumably related questions, like: "did they build any bombs?" and "where the hell are the bombs?" The campaign will have you defending a team of UN weapons inspectors on the hunt for just such answers. The DLC will be arriving on November 24th and will cost £7.99, for more information, check out the Arma 2: Private Military Company site. Check out in-engine news report below for a sense of the level of gritty realism Bohemia are aiming for with their latest expansion.