It seems the tension between Codemasters nominal sequel to the Operation: Flashpoint and its spiritual successor, Armed Assault 2 by Bohemia Interactive is becoming a thick mire of division, and the colossal conflict between fans of the series and developer is set to give us a three way split; the long term BIS loyalists, the Codemasters rebels, and those of us who just want a damn good soldier sim. For the record, I firmly consider myself in the latter catagory.

(Armed Assault 2)

Since Codemasters unveiled Operation Flashpoint 2 however, the conflict has become pronounced, and frankly unsavoury. Recent comments by BIS have begun to become particularly ignominious, and to set the theme of this article; frankly rather crude and unnecessary. I was initially irritated a few months ago when Codies released those first screens; BIS rather cynically released their first with the line “Please, note that all these screenshots are true in-game images without any modification” in response to the Codies’ altered ones. Granted, that was a bad move on Codies’ part. But was it really necessary for BIS to start with the smarmy rhetoric? Not really. It’s pretty childish in all honesty. And come release, actually ingame screens for OF2 have thus far more or less lived up to the “concept” images.  Not fully, but whatever. I’m not really bothered.

(Operation Flashpoint 2)

But BIS seem determined to keep up the jibes. A recent interview with RPS and on a news update on gamesindustry.biz highlighted the BIS perspective – they’re upset at Codies’ marketting of OF2. Fair enough really. But they could y’know, just get on with it and just make a better game to compete. Now I loved Operation Flashpoint. It’s easily my soldier sim of choice. But I definitely hated Armed Assault. It had none of the soul and epic feel of the cold-war conflict, and certainly didn’t go far in improving the deplorably counter-intuitive interface of its predecessor. What do you mean important functions are controlled by a menu operated by the brackets keys? Why do I have to press * to turn my bloody head? I always felt the animations were a bit to mechanical to really bring to life a combat situation too (though admittedly my military experience is little more than watching the likes of Black Hawk Down – can’t wait for people to lay into this point) If BIS produce a game that improves on this, and maintains the stupendous degree of realism (which I have no doubt they will) then I’ll be totally willing to say it’s the better game providing Codies aren’t up to the task.  All this bullshit and whining over the fact that you’re not getting the same degree of media attention is really quite childish.

(Armed Assault 2)

Just make the better game guys. If you do that, the likes of us web-sites will do all we can to let people know. All this name calling only serves to create a rather banal ideological division.