Review by: Dave VanDyk

Thanks to the release of Armed Assault 2, I've come up with a brilliant recipe for immersive gaming. First, set aside an entire day to watch as many war movies as you can think of - We Were Soldiers, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, and so on. After completing this consecutive run of war films, grab the most intoxicating drink you can think of and boot up Armed Assault 2. Having tried this myself, I can promise you that the end result should be one of the most over the top, immersive war-gaming experiences you're likely to ever play. There's a chance you may also find yourself up a tree with the family rifle several hours later wondering how the hell you got up there, but I'm pretty sure that's a normal part of the process.

Sadly, being a bit tipsy is a prerequisite, as without this key ingredient it'll take much less time for you to catch on to all the game's little immersion-ruining problems. That's actually the unfortunate truth of what this latest release from Bohemia Interactive is all about: you'll run around the countryside with your ACOG-equipped M4, shouting out pin-point orders for your squad to flank around the enemy, take cover, mount vehicles, and so much more. You'll utilize a variety of vehicles and items to complete the tasks assigned to your team, and have a huge number of options available on how you'll choose to complete those goals. You'll practically taste the dirt as you hit cover with tracers and RPG fire flying all around you, praying the next round doesn't hit home.

And then...... you'll crest the hill on your way to inspect a destroyed firebase, only to mysteriously die or explode any time you get close. You'll try time and time again, only to find out later that a crude piece of mission scripting to stop you from going the wrong way was just being triggered at the wrong time.

Or you'll be given a time-limited task to hunt down someone's moving vehicle, and discover it got hung up on a tree somewhere or simply failed to spawn altogether. Or perhaps you'll instruct someone to get inside of a vehicle in the middle of a pitched firefight, only to have him run off in the opposite direction while trying to pathfind his way over and get cut down by enemy fire. The game seems to specialize in setting up these stunning engagements and then finding ways to completely trip over itself and ruin the immersion.