PC News and Game Reviews

After getting the game the first thing you’re advised to do is patch it immediately. A lot of games will say this jokingly but with Armed Assault it is a requirement. By the time I had bought the game they were shipping version 1.4 so all I needed was a small enough patch of 250mb. A mate had told me he was downloading a patch for 500meg.

Moving swiftly along, I’m a big fan of Operation Flashpoint (OP:F from here on), so I had an idea what to expect : freedom, bugs and a very tough game. ArmedA is all that and more. I loaded the mission editor and plopped myself somewhere in the Island of Sahrani and ran around for a look. The graphics are impressive, lots of textures, wind and HDR effects add to the realism and the distant landscape looks hazy as it would. I really liked the flora that they added to the game, Operation Flashpoint looked like the surface of the moon at the best of times, A:A is much more appealing. The long swaying grass would remind you of Oblivion!

Anyone who has played Op:F before knows about the freedom, A:A is the exact same with much bigger territory to explore, so I won’t bore you those details. The Island of Sahrani where the campaign takes place is much bigger than anything in OP:F.

Having shelved OP:F a long time ago and played games like, Doom3, HL2, CoD1 +2 I got complacent about the realistic weapon aiming etc and the need for decent cover. On the first level of A:A I got wasted 5 times in a very noobish manner. You quickly learn that if you don’t take cover and look around you before moving, you won’t get far. That’s what this game is, it’s real.

I said above there are bugs, but at the moment not many spring to mind! I thought there was a bug about trying to blow up a bridge in one of the campaign missions, but after a little reading on the Armed Assault forums it turns out I was placing the explosives at the wrong section of bridge. Also, I thought there was a bug when you’d jump in a river to swim across, on the other side all my gear would be gone!. No bug it was just my gear was washed down the river! Ooo taste the realism! So in terms of bugs it’s not as flawed as I expected, obviously the patches helped solve this. If you like immersion, realism and playability then get Armed Assault. It’s one of the best war simulations available.

If you want arcade get any Call of Duty or Battlefield 2. Armed Assault is a real war game.

You have to love the “Hack em ups”. The first game that springs to mind when playing Dark messiah is Severance. I don’t know if the two games are linked (forgive my ignorance) but they are definitely similar. If memory serves me correctly, Severance had the honour of being one of the first games where you could burn objects. Throw a barrel on a fire and watch it burn! So the torch that you carry into the dungeon actually had a use after all (Torches used with “Dark Monitor Syndrome” don’t work like torches at all!)

Really Severance filled another gap on that mighty bridge to true Physics and Chemistry heaven within Games. Thanks to Half Life 2 and the guys in Havoc who really hammered home a huge Physical keystone.

Also in Severance, hence the name, you could separate enemies from their much needed limbs. It lacked hit locations that Soldier of Fortune may have had, so you could only hack a few predetermined bits off. But in D.M you can hack many, many things off with impunity! The fighting is excellent; there are lots of moves, 4 main Power attacks easily found by using the WSAD movement keys. There are flurries too which leave the victim wondering where is legs have gone. One nice touch is getting your sword stuck in the guy’s body. Bliss.

Monsters are varied and spread out over the whole 10 chapter affair. The levels are massive, although linear, they go as far as the eye can see in various directions. For example the Orc mines and caves are especially my favourite as when you look up you can see other walk ways and bridges that may or may not be the place to go to. Ultimately they’re not, but still nice to have there, as they immerse you in the game that little bit more.

As for graphics they are nice, but not spectacular. No jagged edges or dodgy 2D that’s for sure. Animations are good and FX for fire and spurting blood is pleasing to the eye.

The story is believable, in some games nowadays (Fahrenheit for example); the story is random hoping that you’ll follow it. DM’s storyline is fairly consistent and entertaining; with some delightful cut scenes and saucy actors.

There’s a nice puzzle element to it at times, with a trusty “rope bow” you need to make escape routes from time to time or to just get to places at a higher altitude. Thanks to the physics again, you can dislodge heavy objects and have them swing from the ceiling sending your malleable opponents to their doom. And not forgetting your lethal right boot, as you can kick you way through the game nearly, always handy when the bad guy is on the edge of a cliff…

DM in a few words:

“I finished Dark Messiah last night; I’m really impressed with it and loved every minute. There’s a welcome twist half way through with optional endings”

I recently upgraded my rig to a swanky Dual Core chip with a Geforce 8800. The only components I shipped from my old hog was the dvd rom and my backup drive which was the normal PATA IDE drive. I decided on the spot to go with a SATA drive and put WinXp on it.

Anyway I just want to include few pointers for anyone wanting to put an OS onto a SATA drive. Assuming you have a sata drive & a ‘copy’ of windows ready to go, you will need the following:
*Floppy Drive
*Another computer lying around with a CD Rom
*A few hours to spare
*Internet (Just in case)

This was a brand new sata HD, straight out of the wrapper. I had some trouble installing Windows on the SATA with my slave IDE connected so I disconnected that. It took me the whole day to figure out what was wrong and I won’t embarrass myself further by explaining it, so I’ll just give you the short version with all the correct moves included.

You’ll have to search your mobo disk for drivers for the SATA drive before you go installing windows. I found them in the chipset folder if I recall. The two drivers were called “NVIDIA RAID driver controllers” & “NVIDIA nForce Storage Controller”. Putting them on a floppy I then turned to begin the Windows Installation. You will either have SATA ports onboard or else you’ll have to buy a SATA PCI slot Controller, depending on your mobo.

When you boot from the CD on your new computer and the windows setup starts, immediately keep a careful eye on the bottom of the screen for a line like :

“Press F6 to install Third Party SCSI or Adapter Drivers” Or something to that affect. Press F6 and then a prompt will appear after a sec or two to insert the disk. After all this, you’ll go on to the partition and format options. The Comp will reboot and then carry on with the Windows Installation.

And that’s that. I had serious trouble installing windows at the time I didn’t know that I had to install drivers before installing windows on the sata drive. All this is necessary if you want to put an operating system on your sata drive. Hope this was of some use!

When in doubt go to www.techsupportforum.com

Those guys are very handy when it comes to computer problems!