Unless you’re brand new to the world of shooters, picking up the basics of Armed Assault should be straightforward and easy.

Operation Flashpoint was just so much fun to play that some of the small annoyances in the game-play were ignored by most players. Bohemia Interactive fixed those small annoyances, and also fine-tuned the game-play.

First of all let me point out that Armed Assault is not just your typical combat simulator. The game is in fact very detailed. Lots of shooters offer the use of vehicles from time to time, but for the most part those vehicles are sluggish, temporary, unrealistic, and yet sometimes necessary in order to proceed to the next level.

Armed Assault is a total modern-times combat simulator, offering everything from infantry to jet fighters, with tanks, helicopters, light assault vehicles and boats filling in the gaps. In some of the campaign missions the use of vehicles is required, yet the game offers a beyond-awesome editor with which one can create endless missions with endless ways to play them.

The mission editor is probably my favorite part of the game. The game offers one enormous island that can be edited for just about any ideal mission. Small, quiet and covert is your game-style? No problem. That can easily be created with the editor. D-Day like invasion is more of your thing? Once again, Armed Assault’s editor can create that in no time. Me, I think I’ve watched just too many Vietnam movies lately: I took a chopper to about 50 to 75 infantry troops roaming through a jungle.

The second island is very small. It pretty much is a dirt airstrip. It has potential for some very fast paced missions, but if you prefer covert style stay away from it; you’d have to set the enemies to blind for them not to notice you.

When it comes to flying, a joystick is not mandatory, but I would strongly recommend one. As for the rest of the game, ArmA can be played entirely with keyboard and mouse.

Armed Assault comes with all the features we’ve gotten used to from the latest shooters and combat simulators. Run/walk, crouch, prone, lean left/right are defaulted to the same keys used in 90% of the shooters already on the market.

One new and really cool feature of the game is the rolling option while in prone position. Hit the lean key, and your character will quickly roll in the respective direction, giving you a more realistic chance to avoid danger (there’s nothing like throwing a hand-grenade at a machine gun nest then quickly rolling to safety behind a rock or wall or an unfortunate civilian).

Another really neat change to the game is the way water works. Between Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault, your character finally learned how to swim, so now if flack fire makes you eject over water you no longer have to restart that mission; just swim ashore and keep on fighting.

The game physics of the game engine works great as well. The bullets and all projectiles in general, seem to react much better to gravity and motion. If you want to actually hit a moving target in Armed Assault you have to lead your shot and adjust for gravity.

The AI seems to work pretty well for the most part. The enemies are not gods with perfect aim and a grudge against you, however they are trained soldiers. In another words you can only be so careless on your part before they smoke you. When playing the game or just your missions, follow basic common sense and you’ll be ok.

I’ve actually tested the AI in a very simple mission I created: night mission, me sniping from a distance. I took a shot without moving and got killed quickly by returned fire. The next few times I took my shot and then quickly moved, allowing me to survive much longer. That in itself showed me that the AI was shooting in the direction of the sound and the flash made by my shot rather than directly at me.