Welcome to the Eastern Front! You are Karl Neumann, a recruit of the German Wehrmacht, who has to be able to immediately fight against the Russian colossus, that comes closer and closer every day to the German troops. After a short briefing you have to show your best at a training camp. Of course Karl succesfully complete the camp exercises and is sent to the front without any further notice. He sees how unfair the war is, his commander - a coward who is already on the run from the Russians - lets Karl and the rest of his troop look straight into the eye of death. After their lieutenant is killed, they are on their own, they don't even get support from the other Germans units. In the end he manages to get himself and his fellow soldiers to safety, back to the German lines and because of this he is promoted to lieutenant and gets his own troop...
This is how the German campaign "Vaterland" begins: Fast, Intense, Authentic.
You don't see many WWII games where you can play a campaign from the eyes of a German soldier. Iron Front: Liberation 1944 has changed this fact. You can experience the war from an other sight. Usually you have to play Americans or Russians and fight against Germans who are just depicted as "beasts, killers, Nazis or cowards". Iron Front shows how the "little soldiers" of both sides felt the reality of war: embittering, frightening, wondering about the sense of war and they have seen how corrupt and cowardly their chiefs were, may them be from the Allied forces or from the Axis.
But Iron Front is not a movie but a game, so we have to talk now about the main points of it:
Campaigns:
Iron Front has two campaigns, one from each side of the forces fighting each other to death : German and Russian. Both are showing a nice and enthralling story, many cut scenes and nice story-intros. But unfortunately the campaigns, as in many previous ArmA games, includes most of the bugs players will encounter. Sometimes the AI is brainless, sometimes the game doesn't notice that you are already sitting in the SdKfz and in the end you have no other choice but to restart the mission. Luckily the most bugs are already fixed with the latest patches. However if you have patched the game you have the same problem we had in ArmA once again : You have to restart the mission because of incompatibility between versions.
Single Player Missions:
The games only have two SP missions supplied.
In the first you have to attack Russian forces with a German aircraft. This missions was, before the patch, unplayable due to the game always crashing after starting the mission. After the patch it runs great except you now have to fly a Fw-190 instead of a Stuka.
In the second mission you control German tanks in order to overpower Russian positions. And again, while it usually run okay, sometimes a bug will prevent you to complete the mission, which can be infuriating.
These two missions are not very breathtaking, but are nice to play when you just want a quick game. Following this letdown we have to focus on the main strength of the -OFP/Arma/Arma2- serie, the well known ...
Mission Editor.
Thanks to the Mission Editor you can create your own missions or just make a fast play with some knowledge about the editor mechanics by placing some units in one of the four terrains, which are big and very nicely detailed areas, including : two Polish and two Ukrainian. The game also includes up to 35 vehicles and a lot of weapons and units you can use in the editor.
Graphics/Performance/Sound:
There is not much to tell about the Iron Front graphics here if you already have played ArmA2. Iron Front uses the Real Virtualy Engine 3 from BIS and it has the same benefits and cons like in ArmA2 : As cons you have the AI, often playing its own game by firing through grass, bushes and other trees foliages, bad animations (especially the faces), the FPS going very low and it needs very high PC specs to run smoothly (and it's not always the case). The pros are that the game is an authentic simulation, the weapons and vehicles are well made, and of course your surroundings are always nice to watch.
The sound is something special... The weapons and vehicle sounds are really great. Even though the environment and distance-battle sounds are excellent, the soldier voice acting is not that good, being often similar to a fast talking robot with broken vocal cords.
HUD/Menu/Radio chat
The HUD is similar to the one in ArmA2, not really user friendly, hard to master but when mastered offers plenty of possibilities, same goes to the radio chat. The Menu has a nice look and a in-game clip in the background like ArmA2. One thing is baffling: the fact that there is a button for armory that you can't use and you will probably never be able to use because Deepsilver hasn't got the rights from BIS to integrate the armory known from ArmA2, but they let the buttons on the menu.
Conclusions
Of course, Iron Front is not an ArmA 2 clone: you can switch between iron sight and scope, the tanks have a realistic damage model and 4 positions: driver, commander, gun loader, gunner and you can find many other differences more or less noticeable, but nevertheless the game feels like a mod.
All in all Iron Front can't beat ArmA as the leading combat sim! For beginners it's very hard to come behind the controls, it needs too high system specs and it had the same problem like ArmA2 at its release: unfinished because of too many bugs, graphics failures (textures loading mostly), flawed AI, animations and performances problems. Of course Iron Front is a great and extensive sim, but it will always stay in the shadows of ArmA 2 and of the free mods released on it.
In short: A great combat sim with a complicated control and too many bugs - maybe it will come out of the shadows after more patches.
Here is the latest trailer of Iron Front (Release Trailer):
-The Multiplayer will be added in time-
This review is also available on our articles section: AA.info Articles
Sled88 has released his Conspiracies Rising Dead 3 campaign on the BI Forums. Additional download for Coop-playable up to 5 player.
Conspiracies Rising Dead 3 is the official sequel to Rising Dead 1 and 2. Because we have not exact intro made for CRD3, I maybe have to explain what the player is about to do in this game. Your mission is to destroy the Powerplant of Chernobyl at all costs. The so called "Free-Roaming" mode is, to say it short, a huge mission where you decide what you do, how you do and when you do your next steps. You can do what you want, as long as you succeed your mission. You can accept additional missions, which were maybe not that neccessary to succeed, but which will maybe bring you closer or easier to your mission-target. Remember that not all creatures or people were hostile to you in the zone... Special thanks to Old Bear for his time and work on the island.
VERSION 1.0
- new island with exact rebuild of chernobyl (not finished) - 19 missions in an open-world - Sleeping-Module 1.0 (no animations so far) - Jumping-Module by Arigato - Bash-Module - Weather-Module 1.0 (selfmade simple weatherchanging script) - Accelerated Day/Night change - Weight-Watcher/Tiredness by R3F - great atmosphere - featuring real existing places like DUGA-3, NPP, Prypiat ect... - several known and new enemies like glowing zombies or PSI-zombies - PSI-Radiation - Anomalies - a living world (also zombies and cleaners can die through independent fights or anomalies) - Intro & Outro - Coop-playable up to 5 player (additional download)
Mondkalb has released his MBG Generic African Buildings v1.0 addon on the BI Forums. Arma2 or Arma2:OA needed.
Originally part of a much much larger project, I decided to release these right now so more people can use these in the meantime.
It features a small collection of structures that are inspired by African/Middle-Eastern architecture. These buildings can probably supplement the existing selection offered by OA.
Content: 4 large apartment buildings, of which the biggest is fully walkable. 3 old buildings intended for small villages or ruins. One is painted in zebra camo as a safari/ranger station. 3 types of tiny slum huts that come in 8 different visual appearances. Highly accurate icons of the buildings for stress-free usage in the mission editor. Arma2:OA is not required For usage in (Northern-) African or Middle-Eastern terrains.
In total with all color variants this adds up to 33 new objects.
Delta Hawk has announced his mod-project US military forces of the 80s, 90s, early 2000 on the BI Forums.
I would like to announce my project of US military forces. Right now I'm focused on 90s US Army. I am putting tremendous effort into research, accuracy and quality into this project.
The idea behind this project is from the mid 80s to the early 2000s all the gear was basically the same with the exception of a few pieces of gear, so it shouldn't be too hard to create popular US Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force units from these eras. I don't know how far I'm going to take this project, but the first planned release will be of basic units from the 90s.
I would also like to implement more functionality into this project, starting off with customizable nametapes and patches. All the gear is seperate, which will come in handy later.
DetCord has released a WIP screenshot of his UH-72 on the BI Forums
I've been working on this for a little over a month, when time presents itself.
The UH-72 Lakota is a twin-engine helicopter with a single, four-bladed main rotor. The UH-72 is a militarized version of the Eurocopter EC145 and is built by American Eurocopter division of EADS North America. Initially marketed as the UH-145, the helicopter was selected as the winner of the United States Army's Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) program on 30 June 2006. In October 2006, American Eurocopter was awarded a production contract for 345 aircraft to replace aging UH-1H/V and OH-58A/C helicopters in the Army and Army National Guard fleets.
Hoping to look into doing several different variants that include the UH, OH, and AH versions.
Ready for Boarding! Twenty four years after the original Carrier Command was released, we've declared its modern-day successor seaworthy and launched it from the virtual drydock!
Developed for Windows PC & Xbox 360, Carrier Command: Gaea Mission features a refreshing blend of vehicular combat with tactical and strategic elements. In a massive open sandbox, players set out to conquer the archipelago on the planetoid Taurus.
The game will be released in North America on Tuesday... together with the launch trailer!
Latest trailer "Fundamentals of Warfare":
*UPDATE* -Patch 1.02 has been released-
We advise those who have bought the PC version of Carrier Command: Gaea Mission to apply update 1.02 right after installing the game.
Changelog:
* Save game corruption bug fixed. * Improved stability. * Various Walrus AI improvements. * Numerous Localization fixes * Various campaign script fixes and improvements.
Murcielago has submitted his updated Team DM and DM 3.0 mission pack on our site.
This mission pack contains two game modes (Team DM and DM) and 4 environments: Construction Site (Utes), Chernarus (Chernogorsk), Stary Sabor (Chernarus) and Shapur-1 (Shapur). There are two types of DM missions: Normal and Mix version. Mix version missions features a different characters for each player.
FEATURES:
3D Respawn System: That allows you to respawn safely inside structures.
3D Marker: System that shows a colleague position in team DM missions. This makes easier to "hunt" the enemy with a friend! 3D Marker is a dynamic feature, it will hide your colleague's name every time you use your weapon sights so the text will not bother you when you are shooting.
Anti-hacker System: This basic system checks if players are breaking the rules and it makes more difficult to hack the mission. Once the anti-hacker system detects a hacker it will broadcast his game ID and it will lock his game.
Anti-TeamKill System: This feature punish players in team DM missions that killed a colleague. The punishment consist in locking their character for: 10s (First kill), 80s (Second kill), 4.5 minutes (Third kill), almost 11minutes (Fifth kill) and so on!
Anti-Camper System: This feature is great to make the match more dynamic. In addition it is useful when there are a few players as the Anti-Camper system will make them move!
Scalable Features: This allows the admin to modify the mission parameters to create totally different experiences. Weather, day/night, weapon options (Use all weapons, limit weapons to a group of weapons such sniper rifles or use an specific weapon such a such a Glock pistol), Anti-Camper (ON/OFF)...
Realistic and Complex Environments: All missions have been created with realism and quality in mind to allow the players to have great action experiences.
Improvements: This mission pack is an evolution of my DM 2.0 mission pack released on 2011. This new project contains improvements to made the gaming experience more fun and easy. For example, you will have a marker (Waypoint) to let you know where the centre of the map is (You will always respawn away from the center) Another new feature is the intro aerial view to let the player know the battlefield layout so new players will find it harder to get lost.
(Thanks to the light scripts this missions will work fine even in mid-low end computers with a standard broadband)
W0lle from the Cold War Rearmed Mod has released an updated Cold War Rearmed² : Demo 4 on the BI Forums. ArmA2 and Operation Arrowhead (Combined Operations) needed.
Aloha from the CWR² Team!
If you asked where the August DLC was, now here's your answer. We worked hard in the past weeks and we're happy to present you the fourth (and definitely last) Cold War Rearmed² Demo. (Yeah I know, we said that last time too) Besides the many units, weapons, and vehicles from the past Demo and a lot of big and small fixes this one also contains:
* All 5 original Terrains from OFP, all with updated terrain textures and little enhancements * Assistant MG, AT and LAW/RPG units added * Squad leaders added to West and East factions * M151 and Willy's Jeeps added (thanks vilas) * Ladas added * Gaz-24 added * Round parachutes added (thanks ACE2 Mod) * Upgraded 6G30 and MM1 launchers (thanks hcpookie) * Some more editor objects from the OFP days are back, e.g. tables with maps * Old ugly field hospital replaced with one from ArmA2 * All previous 'DLC' added (Scud, Cessna and Kamov) And a lot more I can't remember now.
As a 'little bonus' we also included: * Saint Adam Terrain by Jakerod * Dutch Marines units and weapons by Sander * British Armed Forces units, weapons and vehicles by Col Stagler
This release is dedicated to James 'Planck' McNicoll. You will be missed and we're sure you would be happy with what we achieved in the past years.
Important if you have the previously released Demo and/or standalone Islands: As before, this is a complete new package! Please make sure you have removed all previously installed CWR² Mod folders! All of the previously released files are no more required or horribly outdated.
Edit : CWR² Demo4 Patch #1 released Edit 27-09-12 : CWR² Demo4 Patch #1 archive reloaded on .ftp, sorry for the inconveniences.
CHANGELOG [FIXED] Changed crew in (now hidden) cwr2_DSHkM_Mini_TriPod [FIXED] All US Soldiers wearing same glasses [FIXED] V3S Open fixed shadow lod [FIXED] Police officer model [FIXED] All Winter units carrying RPG-75 [FIXED] Readded Zeroing to infantry weapons [CHNGD] Improved textures/rvmats for HMMWV [FIXED] M249 ammo belt direction [FIXED] Stringtable in cwr2_wrecks [FIXED] Missing crew in Tractors Some smaller, undocumented changes/fixes.
Unfortunately Take On Helicopters' Downtown patch was released with a multiplayer key registration issue. This has now been addressed in a hotfix. Please read the following information to determine whether you should apply it or not:
* If you are playing the Steam version: no hotfix needed, it was already updated with the fix! * If you already applied Downtown (1.06): download just the hotfix, and apply it. * If you had not yet applied Downtown: select the lite or full patch and apply it (the installers now contain the fix).
Apologies for the inconvenience; hope you are all enjoying the Rearmed experience!
Nilmerg has remind us about updated Armarize 1.2.5.0 release.
Simplicity matters, that's my idea of an application that will provide its users a fast, straightforward and promising way to get the most out of something. In this case out of the game ArmA2. Armarize is intended to meet this idea so you don't have to worry about how you should set up the game, you'll just play the game! At most all of the complexity which ArmA2 implies will be undertaken by Armarize especially when you want to discover more than the standard game. You can simply enjoy all the great modifications out there with only some clicks! So don't hesitate and be armarized...
Main features:
- Fully featured buddy list with which you can connect with other users of Armarize. - Powerful serverbrowser for ArmA2, ArmA2: Operation Arrowhead and Take On Helicopters with ping support. - Synchronisation. Installing and updating ArmA2(OA) as well as ToH modifications through the Six-Rsync-Network. - Create your own compressed mod archives and store them for later use. - Fully automatic installation of archived modifications. - Substantial interface for the modification management. - User defined profiles with many options to customise the launch of the game. - Automation of third party applications to be started on game launch. - Full Steam support for ArmA2, ArmA2: Operation Arrowhead and Take On Helicopters. - Different languages are supported. (Currently English, German, French and Russian.)
larsiano has informed us about the release of the ArmAII mod Dutch Armed Forces that requires ArmAII:CO, CBA and ACR.
Until now the mod includes a lot of vehicles such the Leopard 2 tank, the Fuchs APC, helicopters, jets and dutch troops.
This mod is made by and for arma players with the permission of the original modmakers. We are looking forward to expanding and enhancing this mod for the best possible experience. We are also on the lookout for adding arma maps of the Netherlands, Navy vessels and other Dutch branded objects.
Ota VrťĂˇtko has send us a statement by Marek Ĺ paněl - Bohemia Interactive CEO - regarding the detainment of Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar
Prague, 20th September 2012
My colleagues and I were shocked when we found out about the detention of our co-workers and friends, Martin Pezlar and Ivan Buchta, on the Greek island of Lemnos. Everybody who knows them realizes that they’re not spies and certainly never intended to threaten Greek national security.
The guys visited the island as tourists. Their trip to Lemnos was personal, organized via travel agent, with the single goal of experiencing the place that had inspired the virtual environments of Arma 3, a computer game that they’ve been working on over the past two years.
Our company has never gathered or collected any restricted information, such as photos or blueprints of military installations of any nation, nor have we ever tasked anybody else to do it on our behalf. We always respect the law and we develop all of our products using publicly available materials only - Arma 3 is no exception.
According to media sources, the Greek ministry of National Defence actually examined our game, after local authorities raised this topic. They assured that the game is fine. Originally planned for release in autumn of this year, it is based upon a fictional future, set in 2035.
The whole incident is a terrible personal tragedy for Ivan, Martin and their families; I believe it to be no more than a deep misunderstanding, one which will be swiftly explained. I’m ready to support the guys and their families in these difficult times as much as I can.
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Arma Tactics released for PC via Steam.
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