It's game day 2 - the revenge! Nice early 8.30am start (actually been playing and farting around since 7.30am) and it's already very warm in Milgeek HQ (the attic). So, without further ado let's switch the fan to full, crack open an ice cold bottle of cider and let battle commence!

8.30am

Since I downloaded the ArmA2 demo last weekend I have begun to get to grips with the most efficient set-up for my system and seem to have the game running OK. I installed the full game a couple of nights ago, but today is my first chance to really immerse myself in the single player scenarios.

But before I start the Gaming Day proper, I'd just like to pause for a few moments thought for Lt Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, who was killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday. He is the latest and most senior of British Army personnel to be killed in action thus far in this conflict - and my thoughts are with his family, friends and comrades. The BBC have constructed a very moving online photo memorial to our service people lost in both Iraq and Afghanistan, which can be seen here: UK fatalities in pictures

9.00am

First game of ArmA2...

"Our patrol moved through the streets of Elektrozavodsk, nearby mortors exploded - but we couldn't tell if they were ours or the enemies. The T-90 tank which was assigned to our patrol rumbled and clattered ahead of us, it was some reassurance but the eerily quite town jangled our nerves...

We moved slowly from street to street, house to house, trying to watch every window, every doorway for movement, but we didn't see the enemy who were waiting for us down the alleyway!"

"We seemed to surprise them as much as they surprised us, but the ferocious exchange at such close range cut soldiers down on both sides. It was a dreadful and short firefight and it left a comrade and myself wounded and needing medical treatment."

11.40am - Partisan Ambush!

This game just gets better! I'm just playing the last single player mission - 'Freedom Fighters' - and it exemplifies something I was saying to some friends the other day. ArmA2 is so big that there is a real opportunity to play guerilla forces properly - hiding out in the woods and mountains and ambushing enemy convoys.

Above: Although the night vision makes this scene a little hard to make out - I have just ambushed a small enemy supply convoy on it's way to the front. I first took out the jeep escort and then the driver of the truck.

Living on the land does have it's disadvantages, primarily that you are surrounded by enemy (who do come looking for you) and secondly you are always finding yourself short of ammunition. Luckily ArmA2 allows you to steal any available weapons and ammo from your victims.

In this case I 'upgraded' my AK74U to a more useful AK107*. This next screen shows the gear inventory...

*Side note: It's very interesting that the makers of ArmA2 have gone for the AK107 as the primary Russian faction assault rifle. In reality this was only a experimental weapon which was never issued in large numbers to front line troops - the AN-94 'Abakan' would have been a more realistic choice perhaps?

12 Noon - Lunch break

Just need to refuel and make a much needed 'pit stop'! However, I was just sent this by my mate Magnus - it's a download link for a HQ trailer for the forthcoming BF1943. This looks marvelous: TechPowerUp Battlefield 1943: Guadalcanal Trailer HD

Lunch today will be a very quick snack. I have some very nice Stilton & apricot cheese and also an interesting Marmite cheese. Together with some digestive biscuits and a big mug of tea, this should keep me going the rest of the afternoon!

After lunch I will be trying my hand at online multi-player games. I have had a couple of very short attempts at playing ArmA2 online when I had the demo, but I hadn't really learned the controls properly so they were a little disappointing.

I'm a bit nervous about jumping into large co-op games on public servers, but I do find it is the best way to learn - trial by fire!

1.30pm - Into the lion's den!

Well, here I am, right in the middle of a huge online co-op game of ArmA2. The first thing you will notice is the enormous distance between your spawn point and the actual 'front'. It's miles away so transport is an absolute necessity - but here comes the first ArmA2 problem (or feature, depending how you look at it).

ArmA2 is a game of points to promotion - and points (as we all know) mean prizes! In this case you have to be of a certain rank to drive or pilot certain vehicles. As a private soldier the best you can hope for is a motor-bike of an unarmed HUMVEE. The only alternative to this is to hope a generous higher ranking soldier is willing to be a team player and ferry you 'grunts' to the front.

Hitching a ride can be fraught with it's own dangers, however, as the above picture illustrates. Some fellow grunts and myself had hitched a lift in an Osprey, only to have the pilot bark a very urgent 'bail out!'. We had been targeted by a Russian fighter (red circle) and all we could do was eject hastily over enemy territory! Our problems didn't end there - as speeding towards us as we floated to the ground was a section of Russian infantry complete with T90 tank!

Even when you do manage to get where your going you can find that it was a long a fruitless trip if you get picked off as soon as you reach the objective. Dropping right into the action can seem the speedy way to the firefight, but you soon learn to disembark from your transport a little early and carefully hump the last mile or so by foot and stealthily!

Travelling the obvious routes can be just asking for trouble, so for the grunt a trip through the woods is often the best way to approach your final destination. Roads mean fast travel - but really, you are just asking for it!

Don't think that a walk in the woods is a picnic! You will often meet the enemy coming the other way or laying in wait for you. The above screen shot shows me beating a sneaky Ruskie to the draw - just! Lucky for me the idiot had chosen not to use any of the available cover, otherwise I would have certainly been a goner.

Use your head and don't treat ArmA2 like CoD4 and move in a stealthy fashion and you will soon find you will start picking up some points. I was lucky in my first online game it seems - quite obviously I had picked a good time to play as there were some worse players than me on the enemy side! Hence a first score sheet that flattered me greatly...

I took things steady and was eventually awarded with my very first promotion. It was a very enjoyable introduction to multi-player ArmA2, but in the end I desperately wanted to play with my friends as part of a team.

7.00pm - Team game problems & final thoughts

The afternoon's multiplayer games had gone fairly well, but I had suffered from playing on servers full of other *individuals* - you had to hope that someone was prepared to be the good Samaritan and be willing to ferry you over the long distances. Sadly, public servers are never the ideal place to find unselfish team playing.

So I was very excited when my friend Magnus came online and was anxious to get involved with a multiplayer game - and good news for me because Magnus is BIG clan's pilot extrodinaire! (Taxi?)

The first thing was to sort out voice comms - we opted for VENT, but in order to take part in proper team play in ArmA2 you really need to set-up and use the in-game VOIP. This was quickly sorted - but we came across a rather mysterious problem that spoiled our first attempt at linking up to form a unit.

The spawn system in ArmA2 (Domination format on the RIP clan server) seemed to be a bit flakey - it worked ok for me but it just wouldn't work for Magnus and frustration eventually ended our evenings play.

All in all, ArmA2 is a very ambitious game which is quite mind-blowing in it's size and scope but there are a few areas where the game could use polishing (and may well be the focus of later patches perhaps). Magnus was sure that the basic programming was still not quite as efficient as it could be, there were slow downs if your system was at the low end of the recommended spec and the graphics optimisation needed a lot of tinkering to get a reasonable frame rate online.

The multiplayer interface was very basic - to say the least - and looked like a bit of an afterthought! And obviously there was an issue as Magnus couldn't see the multiplayer respawn interface at all!

ArmA2 *is* going to be huge, the military sim-heads will love it. I like it and will undoubtedly be spending many hours playing online with the RIP and dMw clans (good places for 'fair play' and teamwork). BUT, I will still be looking forward to both the release of Operation Flashpoint 2 and even Battlefield 1943. I still haven't found that 'perfect' game to fill the void left after Battlefield 2.

The Vietnam War has always held a fascination to me quite over and above my general interest in things military. This stems from my vivid recollections when I was young watching flickering black and white TV images of the Battle of Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

Since then I have read, watched and listened to many histories, documentaries and recounts of that war. The vast majority of these – naturally – have originated in America, and so have had a very US bias to them. So it was with great interest that I downloaded Paul Ham’s audio book rendition of ‘Vietnam: The Australian War’.

Click to read more ...

Above: View from a hill over-looking Stary Sobot. Click on picture to see (very) large version!

Just a walk in the countryside. It was a lovely sunny day and the birds were singing - if it wasn't for the fact that there was a hoard of gun-totting enemy around it would have been a nice place for a picnic!

One of the nice things about ArmA2 is your ability to just wander off, just to see what's over the next hill. However, as I found, this lovely wooded countryside made ideal terrain for some 'behind the lines' partisan tactics - I managed to ambush several supply trucks on their way to the front!

Another obvious difference between ArmA2 and Call of Duty 4 and, to a lesser extent, Battlefield 2 is the ranges at which you make contact with the enemy (and they make contact with you).

Take a look at the above screenshot - the red circle marks the position on a hill from which I took out the unfortunate enemy rifleman you see before me. That - if I'm not mistaken - is more than the length of a whole CoD4 map!

And finally, my stroll in the countryside ended not in tea and cakes, but rather in an unfortunate gun battle for a bunker objective at the edge of Stary Sobor itself. I joined in an assault on the edge of the town only to have the enemy counter-attack and break up our forces - which left me hanging out to dry in a bunker surrounded by enemy!

I made a good account of myself, taking out several enemy infantry and a couple of jeeps - but this only attracted the attention of some near-by BRDM-2 armoured cars. I was down to my last magazine in my captured AK74, and my only hope of escape seemed to be one of the jeeps which lay near my position - by an eagle-eyed BRDM was waiting for me to make my move!

Above: If only I could get to that jeep - the motor was still running! But that BRDM had it's cannon trained towards me waiting for me to break cover.

OK, this was just a bit of fun - and I certainly haven't got the settings or quality worked out properly yet. But here's a little video I made using the FRAPS software of me taking out a couple of enemy trucks in ArmA2!

If you play it in YouTube's HQ you get a better idea of what's going on. I'll hopefully get better at making these sort of in-game movies, registering (buying) the full version of FRAPS will help as the demo version only allows 30 second clips.

The one interesting thing you do see in this wee movie is the rather useful third-person mode. I've never really liked third-person games, but the ability to switch between first and third person views in ArmA2 is actually a very useful one and I have taken to it.

> FRAPS screen recording software: www.fraps.com

Gamespy.com has a nice little article about the forthcoming Battlefield 1943, and whether it represents good value for money (with just 4 maps and 3 infantry classes). I will put a 'rain check' on this issue until I try it out - but, in my opinion - BF1943 is what it is, a bit of silly fun to keep the crowd interested while other larger projects are in the works (principally Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3).

So, what can one say about what is just a bit of amusing frivolity? Well, only that I think the designers missed out one one really cool element they might of added.

You see, by the time the *real* 1943 came around the writing was already very much on the wall for the Japanese - it really was a case of not 'if' the allies in the Pacific would win, but 'when' - the American industrial machine was already winning the war, and all the Japanese could do with their disintegrating manufacturing base was stem the tide. This was how it was for the next two years until final victory was achieved.

Japanese weapons manufacture was never a match for the USA, that's not to say they weren't technologically capable - but the US strategy of pouring out huge numbers of crude but effective weaponry drowned the Japanese war machine (and a good thing too).

Battlefield 1943 is a snapshot of this fact, with the US forces very much out-stripping their Japanese counterparts technologically. Balance in the game is only really achieved by a bit of judicious 'cheating' when it comes to Japanese inventory - most notably in the case of the Japanese infantry being issued with the 'Type 5' semi-automatic rifle in order that they can compete with the M1 Garand equipped GIs!

"The Type 5 Rifle (Type 4 Rifle in Japan: 四式自動小銃 Yon-shiki jidousyoujyuu) was a Japanese experimental semi-automatic rifle. It was a copy of the American M1 Garand, with a 10-round charger-loading magazine and Japanese style tangent sights, which had been developed alongside several other experimental semi-automatic rifles. However, none of the rifles entered into service before the end of the war, with only 250 made and many never assembled." Wikipedia

My niggle is NOT that the game designers did this - but rather that they didn't follow through this interesting scenario and likewise equip the rest of the Japanese side with equally experimental Japanese designs!

As we all know, Japan had many cutting-edge weapon designs 'on the drawing board' when the war ended - and there has always been much speculation about 'what if' some of these remarkable advanced weapons had reached the front. Think of 'Luftwaffe 1946' and you can see where I'm going with this!

For example, take the BF1943 Japanese tank - the rather feeble and obsolete Type 97 Chi-Ha. This venerable 'medium' tank mounted a 57mm gun, but was hopelessly out-classed by the US M4 'Sherman' with it's 75mm gun. So, 'what if' we substitute - as the designers did with the Type 5 rifle - the Type 97 tank with the more advanced Type 4 or Type 5 Chi-Ri tanks?

Above: The Type 5 Chi-Ri tank. Only one prototype existed at the end of the war, but the intimidating nature of this design is obvious from this drawing. It had a 75mm main gun, but it's engine and slopping armour intimated it's superiority to the US M4 Sherman tank. Drawing: Vincent Bourguinon, 2007, source - ww2drawings

These advanced designs were much more the equal (and some would say superior to) the US Sherman tanks, but were only ever produced in prototype form by the end of the war. But think what a real challenge BF1943 would be if one of them had been included for the sake of game balance?

Likewise the famous Japanese Zero was 'past it's sell by date' by 1943 - but there were a host of very interesting Japanese designs that had equal performance to the US F4U Corsair!

My point is - if you are going to bend history to make an interesting and balanced game, why not make a feature of it and go all the way. I know all military buffs would relish the thought of fighting against the 'what if' weaponry of Japanese - just to see if they really would have made the difference. After all - that's precisely what made the concept of 'Luftwaffe 1946' so interesting and successful!

Above: J-7W1 'Shinden' Interceptor - "It was expected to be a highly maneuverable interceptor, but only two were finished before the end of war." Wikipedia - Drawing: Vincent Bourguignon, 2007 - source: ww2drawing

> Battlefield 1943 web site
> Gamespy.com - Battlefield 1943 Hands-on Preview