Recently the That Aussie Game Site crew attended the preview of a hotly anticipated PC title named ArmA II. ArmA II is being developed by 505 Games, which is the same crew that brought you the ever popular Operation Flashpoint. The game has been in various stages of development for the past nine years and has been used by the military for training purposes.

As I mentioned in the title, the first thing that struck me while playing this game was the level of realism. When you're training humans for the military you can't make an easy simulator and I can definitely say ArmA II is no pushover. Every facet of the game relates to the real world, with a strong focus on features such as your aim and accuracy that's affected by your posture, breathing, and position. Couple this with the ability to shoot everything that moves including, harmless chickens, you get the feeling early on that this game could very well prepare your for an apocalypse. If you are mortally wounded you should consider yourself lucky given how frequently you can get 'downed' and then just hope and pray that a medic from your team will hopefully come revive and patch you up in time. I learnt very quickly that you cant just run and gun like it's Unreal Tournament.

The island setting is open world and looks fantastic. With over one million objects per map (so I'm told) it looks incredibly detailed and realistic. Given this level of detail it’s great to fire at a barnyard and find a destructible environment. Features like this really add to the immersion that this game has to offer. The weapons and vehicle modelling is painstakingly accurate and further enforces that this is more than just a game. The environment is meant to replicate the real world which means you will encounter chickens, cows and pandas. OK maybe not pandas, though that would be rad.

With 120 vehicles and 225kms of map for you to explore by land, air or sea. The weapons were faithfully recreated based on the specs of the real thing and range from handguns to static launchers and everything in-between. The guns recoil as you would expect, but it's better, more realistic and therefore less forgiving than most FPS, once again reaffirming that you really are playing a war simulation.

The controls were cranked in the sensitivity department and having played the majority of shooter games on a console, there was quite a steep learning curve. I felt a bit better when Kotaku's David Wildgoose was also experiencing similar challenges and feel the typical player will need to fine-tune his or her skills. This is typical Operation Flashpoint type realism and for veterans of these types of games this is to be expected.

The ability to give squad based orders via the keyboard is done quite well and gives you a lot of control over how objectives are carried out. One interesting feature is that the choices you make when interacting with your squad have a real RPG feel to them and add to the experience rather than detract.

The AI is frighteningly good and the enemy will attempt to flank you at any given opportunity. Their movements are completely random which caused me to die in the same spot on multiple occasions as it took planning to take out the enemy since they would travel in a different direction every time. The difficulty however really made this game feel very fresh and rewarding. It's obvious that planning your attacks ahead of time using the game's map and squad based orders will be both vital and rewarding.

You kinda get the feeling that ArmA II is being touted as the spiritual successor to Operation Flashpoint, and from what we saw it's every bit as fun and realistic as Flashpoint ever was. We keep making the comparison here, but I think it's a fair one. The sequel to Operation Flashpoint, Dragon Rising, will be out soon and there's no doubt that it and ArmA II will go head to head in their respective and respected weight classes. Regardless, what ArmA II it looks like it does it well and is definitely one to watch out for.