Recent hiatus

So.

It probably felt like I started this blog, then proceeded to kill its whole family while it watched, then drowned it in its tub.
I didn't necessarily do that, even if I have a tendency to outright forget things or not have the energy.
I've been busy. With life. Some things more serious than others.
Most notably school. And sickness.

Although, something has caught my recent attention.

Old times sake

Its been months since I last played a helicopter mission in Arma 2, mostly because the flight model is not all that amazing, and I still remember when the EW campaign came out. Arma creates a great blend of infantry, mechanized, air and naval combat, but is only really good at infantry combat. That's not to say that you can't have fun with any of the other areas, so I decided to play the "Ground attack" scenario from Cold War Rearmed 2.

Lets get to it, shall we.

The bird of the day is the AH-1S. Designed from the Hueyobra, the AH-1 has been around since Vietnam, and this variant shares some parts with the UH-1 Huey. Its is equipped with a cannon, a few TOW missiles and a few rockets.

The CRW2 team did a great job at modeling the cockpit. Although the avionics barely even work, it still looks nice. Too bad the only Arma helicopter to ever have proper avionics will be the AH-64 pack in development... http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?107995-AH-64-Pack
Anyway, our mission for today is to destroy a convoy heading North.
Simple enough.

Firing a TOW missile at them. They don't seem to have AA. ATGM's in vanilla Arma are fairly unrealistic, you just cycle through targets and fire. Mods like Mando's missile mod and ACE change this a bit.

Some more townage. (That was bad.) Don't mind the buggy chat, its beta after all.

Firing some FFAR's at them, which are also unrealistic, they lack proper CCIP reticles and release cues.
Not much resistance to now, I sense some difficulty flaws with this mission...

Well that was that, RTB.

CWR2 has some nice scenery, they really retain the OFP feel.

Landing attempt. Landing in Arma is far, far easier than in proper helicopter sims, although there is no trimming or autopilot options, you don't really need them, mostly because the aircraft have barely any weight to them.

All these faults aside, I liked this mission.

CWR2 is available for download from "PlayWithSix".

Cold War Rearmed

This is mostly a test to see how everything plays out in use, but it might be interesting, I don't know.




I've always liked the Cold War. Something about the oldschool special forces, NATO and Eastern Block tactics and equipment used just does it for me. I've always liked Arma 2, as well.
Fortunately, Arma 2 has a huge modding community and even a mission editor.
See where I'm going with this?

As of writing, the "Cold War Rearmed" mod for Arma 2 is in 2.0beta 2.
Cold War Rearmed is a mod that attempts to recreate Operation Flashpoint : Cold War Crisis (ArmA : Cold War Assault as it is known now.) and breathe some new life (and units) into it.

A couple hours ago I felt like playing the first scenario included with the package, and this ensued.
The screenshots are not directly from the beginning of the mission as I didn't plan ahead.

Late into the mission, I begin taking screenshots.
Our mission was to insert on the beach to the South by parachute, move into the compound (Not seen here) assisted by a landing group of a few M113's. We were them to repel a Soviet counter attack of a few BMP's and move to clear the next compound.
In the screenshot I had chosen to first scavenge an AK-74 with a GP grenade launcher from a dead adversary, then move on up to the high ground.

The high ground attempt proved to be successful. On attempt #1, I had took the exact route to the compound that the enemy soldiers are watching right now. Getting the high ground allowed me to recon the area and make a plan.

I spotted a T-72 and was planning to destroy it with my AT weapons, but I had already played through one time and noticed that the T-72 was not crewed, so I opted to assign targets to my squad, then provide direct fire artillery with my LAW.

Here's some of that direct fire artillery in play. I also lobbed some grenades in there.

We took cover in the trees and proceeded to overpower them with superior firepower.
Here's me lobbing the last of my grenades in there.
To now the mission is going great, only two of our men got wounded a bit back there and without a single casualty.

Firefight's over because I say so. Moving out before they get an idea of how many of us there really are.
No casualties, everyone has plenty of ammo, no enemies in sight, everything's going great.

Tactically OPERATING our way into the compound. What could possibly go wrong?

Apart from the T-72 crew gunning down half of my squad, everything went perfectly fine.
Yeah, perfectly fine.

Blog introdruction

Here it is.

After over a year of thinking about it, posting hundreds of screenshots with commentary on various websites and achieving a fanbase of about ten people, I've finally decided to make a proper blog.

I have absolutely no experience, so apart from the countless html errors and whatnot I'm gonna encounter, I might get a following, some popularity and another reason to take screenshots.

You might have guessed to now, this is a gaming blog.

A gaming blog about simulations, RTS, tactical shooters, whatever you can imagine that isn't on consoles.

Primarily, the Arma series (with its great mission editor and my four years of experience) will be my main subject, although I'm bound to slip some DCS and Falcon in there.

I am not affiliated with this blog I am about to link in any way or another, but this is my inspiration, and if you haven't check it out yet, be sure to.

Shout outs to http://kriegsimulation.blogspot.fi/.