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You can play from any side, use any weapon, drive or fly any of the included aircraft in the single mission aspect of the game. I personally don’t like fictional scenarios and far away make-believe lands- it doesn’t take too much away from gameplay however, it would have been nice to play the campaign in the world’s current hotspots, such as Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. For what it’s worth, the playing area is a vast environment, over 250 square miles of forests, desert plains, beaches and mountains.

What’s in ArmedA? When you load up the game, you’ll notice the user interface is much different than the one used in Opflash. It looks a lot cleaner, all of the gameplay options are easily identifiable and layed out in a simple, yet effective style. You get your usual selection of training missions, single-player mission, campaign and multiplayer options. The actual command interface inside the game for controlling your troops is a little clumsy.

Essentially, you use your middle mouse button to cycle through the many commands, and then click. It sounds easy, but there are so many commands that you have to read through and choose from, it can be quite awkward when you’re in the heat of battle. One new feature that wasn’t available in Opflash is the interactive library. This is where you can view all of the weapons in the game, be it hand weapons, ground vehicles or aircraft. You have the option of viewing the weapon in a scene, which shows a soldier employing the weapon or trying it out on the training grounds yourself. Once on the training grounds, you can either practice on the firing range or you can complete some of the mini-scenarios, such as racing, time trials or fending off enemy attacks.

You’ll have to complete these scenarios in order to unlock more library objects. Not every weapon is unlocked in the library at first. It’s a little consoley, but what are you going to do? You get about a dozen or so missions, which covers a wide selection of tactical considerations. Unfortunately, most of them are designed very poorly. Most of them have you vastly outnumbered, or badly under equipped. There are some missions that task you to take out an enemy vehicle column by yourself or have you take on an enemy base alone. This is one of the biggest killers of the game. The mission selection structure works the same as the library.

As you play and complete the mission objectives, you’ll unlock new missions to play. As I mentioned earlier, the campaign is one sided only, with the player using Western equipment. You take on the persona of a soldier and work your way up the chain of command in the story driven campaign. The campaign itself is weak and the plot won’t have you on the edge of your seat. The biggest plus in the game is that you can play the campaign missions in any way you want. Once you receive your mission briefing and study your map, how you complete the mission is entirely up to you!

I love the way the strategic map is set-up. There’s a general map of the operational area, with the objective lines drawn on the map with several missions to choose from. You can choose between the main operation and auxiliary operations. By choosing these “side” missions, you’ll be helping your cause immensely. For example, let’s say you have to attack an enemy base and one of the side missions is to take out an artillery position. If you choose to take out the artillery first, you won’t have to face the artillery when you’re ready to attack the base.