More warfare simulation

Apr 28, 2010 08:31 GMT  ·  By

Bohemia Interactive has announced that it plans to launch the Operation Arrowhead expansion for ArmA II on June 29 worldwide. The new campaign is standalone, meaning the original game is not needed to experience it, but the developers are saying that installing it on a machine, which also has ArmA II allows for some of the new features to be used in other engagements.

Operation Arrowhead will take military-minded gamers into the fictional nation of Takistan, a country modeled on real life Afghanistan, three years after the events that took place in Chernarus.

Players will get to battle insurgents while gaining access to new toys to help them in the struggle, including an FLIR system that is so detailed that Bohemia Interactive included body heat maps even for wild fauna. Gamers can also drive Stryker vehicles and Bradleys while facing workhorses created by the former Soviet Union, like the BTR-60 troop carrier, the T-72 and T-55 tanks and SCUD missile launchers.

Bohemia Interactive is not talking about the exact arc of the campaign but previews seem to indicate there will be a bit more structure and linearity than in the Red Harvest campaign for the original ArmA II with the player now inhabiting the body of an Army recruit.

Operation Arrowhead comes complete with three new maps and one of them, the town of Zargabad, appears to be very close to the type of scenery American troops need to fight through in Afghanistan.

Bohemia Interactive, which also worked on the first Operation Flashpoint and the initial Armed Assault, is set to deliver another shooter that tries to be as close to military realism as possible. There is the usual ample support for modders, who can come in and add more weapons, vehicles and realism to the game. Let's just hope that the developers manage to put out the game with a smaller number of bugs than the original.