I'm expecting to see a GRAW2(ghost recon advanced warfighter 2) type of experience in Codemasters new game. Not that this is a bad thing (for some)...but it also means zero dynamics which also means zero re-playability due to the fact that the enemy bots will always be hiding in the same exact position everytime you play a particular mission.

For me, 50% of a game's interest like this comes from its potential for dynamic situations/missions in coop modes....where you can play the same missions over and over and still not know where or how many enemy might appear, and what they will do exactly.

If its got great AI dynamics, great sound, and good scalability in terms of AI skill and graphics options then count me in...but i seriously doubt it because thus far Bohemia's "Arma" is the only current game that offers dynamic AI capability (and still it wasnt straight out of the box either, you have to dload 3rd party missions or build your own where the dynamics are active)

and yes, im VERY glad there will be a demo...afterall its the responsible thing to do with ANY game these days. After 25 years of thowing away money on bad games I no longer bother with non demo games.

This comment was edited on Mar 13, 2009, 10:11.

One last point I'd like to make (since some of you here have brought up things you like/dislike about arma/ofp)...

Arma's strong points have nothing to do with its campaign or its included missions out of the box (which all are done poorly IMO). The grandness of Arma is what the community has made out of it themselves with addons, mods and 3rd party missions for free download. There are countless weapon and vehicle addons, sound addons, weapon addons, tons of missions and gametypes, maps etc all for download which make the game what it is and why it keeps going for so many years for some of us.

Arma and OFP are essentially open architecture shell games...somewhat like MS Flight simulator, where you dont expect the greatest content out of the box initially but KNOW and wait for what will be forthcoming from the community which will make it worth more than its weight :-)

As with all games there are many annoying faults with it, but all in all when you take into consideration how there is NO other game title that offers such complete dynamics/changing outcomes with maps large enough to take hours to drive across from one end to the other, it becomes a no brainer to see how that can vastly increase a games replay value, and HAS.

Some of you should try playing some of the missions that were made using the 3rd party DYNAMIC AI (ive made a few mission myself with this)...you can play these sorts of mission over and over and you wont know where the enemy will be comming from or how many you will come across while completing objectives...theres no other game that offers this on such a land scale like this. On the crap side of things the AI is pretty stupid most of the time, the player movement and aim is slow and clunky in feel (both said to be vastly improved in arma2 by the devs themselves) and fps performance can be low with too many AI running around or if you have an older machine.

If you can get passsed its short comings its really hard to find a simulation type game like this which offers such huge value and years of playtime...even if it does still make me curse all the time, lol.

yea i know what you mean, but back then when the deal was initial made developers had very little footing when dealing with a publisher...it was more like an employer/employee relationship almost (not legally of course) where a dev who badly needed money to get their game going was at the mercy of whatever the publisher might demand of them. It's still alot like that today although now we're seeing a little more "Self Publishing" going on. I only feel bad for Bohemia because I understand WHY they probably had to give away the name in their decision...if they didnt it would have killed the deal with Codemasters and they might not have found another publisher in time to get it to market...you do what you have to do when you have a new unproven title. The part that hurts them is that alot of folks really are very confused about these titles now from what i see on the boards all the time lately.

MT - ive played both OFP and Arma since their release and can attest as far as "feel" goes they are essentially the same exact games and share the same game engine...in fact i can remember the first words that came out of my mouth after playing Arma for the very first time was that it "felt" just like OFP, and looked like OFP on steroids....if you play OFP for awhile and then by Arma most people would agree they are obviously made by the same author and have essentially the same feel. Some may not like that but thats just a matter of opinion...there are many things i hate about both games but when all is said and done its the only game that has stayed the test of time by keeping its share of real estate on my hard drive since its inception.

But....the point being made here really has nothing to do with whether or not one likes or dislikes any of these games...its about the business end of product ownership and marketing. All I can say in this situation is that YOU try putting a few million bucks and 10 years of full time hard work into creating and marketing a piece of software and theh have you original publisher trying to confuse your fans by making them think a new untested gaming platform might be the sequel to all your hard work and SEE how YOU'd feel...it pretty much sucks, trust me. But as I said, its Bohemia's own fault as they agreed to let Codemasters have the name to begin with.

Codemasters was shrude enough to know that the masses dont in most cases associate likes or dislikes with developer or publisher names, they associate with the name of the Game itself.

This comment was edited on Feb 26, 2009, 09:51.

I agree with this concern by Bohemia, and feel for them. I feel that what Codemasters is doing is in essence a rape upon the hard work and art produced and owned by Bohemia and their Flashpoint/Arma product...however that being said, business is business and Bohemia made the mistake (under immense pressure im sure) of ageeing to let Cdemasters have ownership of the "Flashpoint" name and now are having to deal with that bad business decision years after the fact.

Its too bad, but im sure its a lesson learned, and in the end Bohemia's game will do better than Codemasters anyway as im sure the Codemaster product will leave alot of gaps.

This comment was edited on Feb 26, 2009, 09:21.

apparently the queue/install procedure is completely borked over there and does not work due to serious bugs. It seems MOST downloaders have wasted their time waiting in queue only to be disapointed after waiting for a couple hours and the game not installing and then being re-queued all over again, lol.

I thought maybe these poor folks just didnt have a clue so i went ahead and tried it myself only to find that its all true...you wait in a line of 50,000 people ahead of you (about a 3 hour wait) then it asks you to install their browser addon and restart your browser, but after doing that and logging back into their site it just places you back in the queue to start all over again, weeee!

If there's any silver lining at all to this is that at least it the experience was free and only a waste of TIME, because typically you'd have a similar experience after having to PAY for a game these days, hahahahahahahaha.

its hard to believe in such hard times and with unemployment numbers as high as they are that such morons are still at work :-)

Will be interesting to see if this strong initial interest will die off quickly or not. Quake95 (for windows 3.1) was my very first fps shooter experience (and then Quake2), and therefore has some nastalgic value for me, however since 1998 the UT series has always been a much better game for this genre.

While I'll be spending the time to download this (80% due to the fact that its free, 10% nastalgia, 10% curiousity) I cant help but wonder what all the hub-bub is about in getting to play a 13 year old game because personally speaking I think that once the nastalgia thing wears off (within a week for me i think) itll be right back to UT and Arma, heh.

Flashpoint1 was made by the same people who make Arma & Arma2 and they all share the same game engine and coding... Flashpoint2 is made by completely different people and therefore is a completely different game with no code or common engine with Flashpoint1 and the Arma series.

Poeple get confused because of the way the games were published, you see...the makers of flashpoint1 no longer work for the Flashpoint1 publisher (Codemasters), they went off on their own to make Arma1 & 2... they had to name it Arma because the publishers (Codemasters) owned the name "Flashpoint". ...so now the publisher (Codemasters) decides to hire completely different team of talent to make Flashpoint2 (since they own the name), but its really a completely different game than anything that exists right now.

So for all intense purposes Arma1 is in actuality the real Flashpoint2, and when arma2 comes out it will actually be the real Flashpoint3.

The Flashpoint2 waiting to be released by Codemasters really should be called something different (since its a completely new and different game and has zero in common)...this is what consfuses folks.

This comment was edited on Feb 20, 2009, 17:57.