arma-ii posts

The revival of a classic adventure game has apparently become a big success. Telltale Games' bundle deal for all five episodes of Tales of Monkey Island was the number one best selling game on Steam's weekly best selling games list. Capcom's PC port of Street Fighter IV came in at number two on the list, proving that fighting games have an audience on the PC as well:

1. Tales of Monkey Island Complete Pack - Telltale Games/Lucasarts
2. Street Fighter IV - Capcom
3. Fallout 3 - Bethesda Softworks
4. ArmA II - Bohemia Interactive
5. Left 4 Dead - Valve
6. Dawn of Discovery - Ubisoft
7. Counter-Strike: Source - Valve
8. GRID - Codemasters
9. Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood - Ubisoft
10. Trine - Frozenbyte

With no more weekly PC games sales lists coming from the NPD Group, we have to use the somewhat less accurate lists from the Steam and Direct2Drive downloadable sites (they don't contain all the games available in retail stores and temporary price decreases can boost sales in older games). The latesttop 10 sales list from Direct2Drive for the week ending July 4 shows, however, that Bohemia Interactive's military shooter ArmA II is proving to have a solid release in the US.

The title made the number one spot on the list (the game was number two on Steam's current list). Another interesting trend on the Direct2Drive list is that pre-orders for the September launching MMO game Aion are proving to be high; the NCsoft title is in the number two spot:

1. ArmA 2 - Bohemia Interactive
2. Aion: Tower of Eternity - NCsoft
3. The Sims 3 - Electronic Arts
4. The Sims 3 (Mac) - Electronic Arts
5. Dawn of Discovery - Ubisoft
6. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision
7. Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood - Ubisoft
8. Overlord 2 - Triumph Studios/Codemasters
9. Civilization 4: Complete Edition - 2k Games
10. Fallout 3 - Bethesda Softworks

IGN's Direct2Drive site is celebrating the upcoming Fourth of July holiday with some big price cuts on selected games. From now until July 5 you can download and purchase Call of Duty 4 for just $27.95, Call of Duty World at War for just $34.95 and a Company of Heroes bundle (containing the original game and the two stand alone expansion packs) for just $34.95.

If you are a procrasinator you can wait until July 12 to get the following deals: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for just $14.95, the Game of the Year version (containing the original game, the Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles expansions and all of the official DLC content) for just $17.95, and the original ArmA for $14.95. You can also get the original ArmA with its just released sequel ArmA II in a bundle for $60.

Bohemia Interactive's military shooter ArmA II only started on Steam's download service last Friday but sales were high enough to put it on top of the sales list for Steam for the last week. Second place went to Overlord II, the fantasy RPG-strategy from Codemasters. Here's the rest of the list for the week ending June 28:

1. ArmA II - Bohemia Interactive
2. Overlord 2 - Triumph Studios/Codemasters
3. Empire: Total War - The Creative Assembly/Sega
4. Left 4 Dead - Valve
5. Prototype - Radical Entertainment/Activision
6. Counter-Strike: Source - Valve
7. Team Fortress 2 - Valve
8. Killing Floor - Tripwire Interactive
9. Empire Total War: Elite Units of the West (DLC) - The Creative Assembly/Sega
10. Dawn of Discovery - Ubisoft

While the game has been in retail stores in Europe for a little while now the US version of ArmA II is now available for purchase and download via Steam. The military shooter sequel from developer Bohemia Interactive will also be shipping to stores in the US on July 7.

Just in case you are interested here are the PC hardware specs for the game:

Minumum:
• OS: Windows XP or Windows Vista
• Processor: Dual Core CPU (Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, Intel Core 2.0 GHz, AMD Athlon 3200+ or faster)
• Memory: 1 GB RAM
• Graphics: GPU (Nvidia Geforce 7800 / ATI Radeon 1800 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB VRAM
• Hard Drive: 10 GB free HDD space

Recommended:
• OS: Windows XP or Windows Vista
• Processor: Quad Core CPU or fast Dual Core CPU (Intel Core 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or faster)
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: Fast GPU (Nvidia Geforce 8800GT or ATI Radeon 4850 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 512 or more MB VRAM
• Hard Drive: 10 GB free HDD space

The game is already out in Europe and will be made available via Steam on Friday but if for some reason you want to get the retail box version, ArmA II is heading to retail stores as well in the US. Today publisher Got Game Entertainment revealed their plans to release the Bohemia Interactive-developed game on July 7.

Meanwhile a post on the Bohemia Interactive message boards has announced that we can expect an ArmA II demo to be released sometime later this week. There's no word yet on what the content will be like but brace yourself for a big file; the final demo is expected to be about 2 GB in size.

Believe it or not, it's still technically spring outside but in about a week that will change and the longest day of the year will spell the official start of the summer season. For some reason, the games industry in general and PC games in particular tends to be on the slow side in terms of new game releases to stores.

To be frank, it looks like history is repeating itself again as the game industry is prepping once again for the fall/holiday seasons to release a ton of major titles. However, there are a few PC games that are planning for a summer release and Big Download has picked them in order of their scheduled release date. Keep in mind that, as always, release dates for game titles can and do change so this list might not turn out to be accurate in terms of ship dates.

Click on the image above to read more of Big Download's top 10 most anticipated PC games of summer 2009

We've been a little busy with our E3 coverage for the past two weeks that we haven't had a chance to check out our beta copy of ArmA II, the upcoming military shooter from Bohemia Interactive. But other people have had a little time on their hands and have taken some gameplay movies from the beta and posted them on YouTube.

One of the movies (shown above) shows a massive air battle between AI units in the game. Another movie, which can be seen after the break, shows an over 5 minute ground battle between what the author says are 1,500 AI units. Both are pretty spectacular and are pumping us up for for the final version that's due out later in June.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

In preparation for the release of ArmA II, developer Bohemia Interactive has launched a new Flash game that could net you a free copy of the upcoming military shooter. The game itself is actually rather complex as you take command of a military unit engaging the enemy. You have to equip your men and use a overhead map to guide them to their targets.

Bohemia Interactive makes playing the Flash game more inticing by offering to give the top two scores a free digital copy of the real ArmA II for the next five weeks. The game itself will be made available for purchase and download via Steam in late June.

As Bohemia Interactive puts the finishing touches on their military shooter sequel ArmA II, you may be wondering to yourself, "Self, what in the wide, wide world of sports does 'ArmA' mean?" Well we happen to have that info for you via a statement from Bohemia's Marek Spanel "The word 'Arma' is Latin in origin; a multifaceted word that depending on context can be used to mean defensive arms, shields, soldiers or weapons of war amongst others."

And why use such a name for this game? Spanel says they wanted a title " . . that is easily remembered and pronounced across different languages and to signify that just like the name itself, ArmA II's gameplay is boldly different and not afraid to deviate from tried and tested shooter formulae." Hope that clears everything up because there will be a test on this (Ok, not really).