Arma II: Firing Range THD Visually Stunning 3D Shooter with Questionable Potential
by Jonathan Lonczak
Aug 10, 2011 10:42 AM –
Install
Arma II: Firing Range THD is the ultimate firing range simulation. Pick a weapon from dozens available. Examine it within an interactive 3D preview and study its specs – or try it out immediately! Several highly detailed firing ranges with different game modes wait for you to show your best. Compete with other players in online leaderboards. Unlock all the achievements.
Game developer Bohemia Interactive relied on the power of the NVIDIA® Tegra™ processor to deliver the award-winning Arma II PC video game visuals to mobile devices without sacrificing quality. By using the same high-resolution textures used in the PC game and high polygon weapon models, Arma II: Firing Range THD is the ultimate firing range simulation.
Price: $1.99
Tested on: Motorola Xoom
Content Rating: Medium Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Best looking 3D shooter in the Android Market!
- Extremely large selection of weapons and attachments!
- Excellent sound effects and musical score!
- Two different control schemes & three different firing ranges!
- Explosives promised in future updates!
- Open Feint Support!
Cons
- Accelerometer controls are unusable.
- Only three firing ranges and they lose their challenge quickly.
- No alternative control schemes for touch screen controls.
- Game is completely dependent on OpenFeint, if yours doesn’t work expect constant crashes.
Features:
Arma II: Firing Range THD is a firing range simulator for devices on the Android platform utilizing the power of the Nvidia Tegra II Processor. Arma II features an extremely large selection of weaponry and attachments, a visually stunning graphical interface, OpenFeint Support with achievements, accelerometer controls, and three different firing ranges.
This is a firing range simulator for Android. It is important to know that when you are purchasing the game, because there is absolutely no combat, no movement, and no enemies in this game. Instead you choose from a large selection of weaponry and blast the hell out of paper targets. The weapon selections in this game are truly immense; there are 26 different military weapons included within the current release and each weapon has different variations of the primary model based on the attachments available. After selecting a weapon to use at the firing range,; you’re given a brief overview of the weapon you will be using, its firing rate, accuracy, and clip size. Now you are ready to enter the range!
There are 3 different firing ranges: the open desert, the oasis, and the hangar. The open desert range features a single unmoving target. This is the simplest range to achieve high scores. All you need to do is sight carefully down your weapon and maintain a consistent grouping on the target. As long as you keep your weapon steady there is no way for you to score poorly on this map.
The Oasis features moving targets. This firing range is a little more difficult because each of your targets are moving and sometimes in a different direction. You will have to be careful firing at each individual target and ensuring that you do not accidentally hit a target behind the one you are sighting at with a miss and score poorly. The controls for this game are somewhat difficult to manage at quick speeds making this level one of the most difficult, but I will touch on the controls later.
Finally, the Hangar is a fast paced shooting rage with stationary targets that pop ups and fall down quickly. You will need to sight on to these targets quickly and fire or you will miss your chance to hit any of the targets. The range on these targets is also much greater so this firing range is much better with a stronger rifle with a scope. I wouldn’t like to use the pistol on this one.
There are two control schemes in Arma II: Tilt Controls and Touch Controls. After trying both I can confidently say that the Tilt Controls are virtually impossible to use. I tried using the games calibration controls to accustom the game to my Xoom’s accelerometer and could never achieve a manageable control scheme. In fact, I was not able to hit a single target while on this scheme. Instead I spend the majority of my time either staring at the sky or at the ground. I don’t know who tested the accelerometer controls and on what device, but I can tell you it most certainly was never used on a Xoom.
The touch controls are a different story. When using them all you need to do is swipe your fingers across the screen to drag the targeting reticle and then tap the screen to fire. This method of aiming was much more usable and allowed me to play the game relatively easily. My biggest complaint about this control scheme is that there were not alternative touch control options; like touch to aim tap to fire, or virtual thumb sticks. I felt that with the current touch controls my scrolling speed and accuracy was vastly limited, and although sensitivity could be adjusted through the settings menu the accuracy of the current control scheme could not.
The last feature that is really supposed to make the game enjoyable is Arma II’s OpenFeint support and achievement system. Unfortunately I was never able to utilize this feature of the game or see any of the game’s achievements. Instead Feint would crash every time the game opened. I tested it in Riptide GP and the same issue occurred so I am assuming it is an issue with either my device or OpenFeint itself and not Arma II. However, the game launches Feint every time it launches and so would constantly spout errors as soon as it was launched until I closed out of OpenFeint. I would like to see the leader board in a separate portion of the game other than its launch screen to prevent boot crashes like I experienced.
Watch on Mobile
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Arma II Desert Firing Range
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Arma II Firing Range Aim Down The Sight
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Arma II Multiple Targets with Pistol
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Arma II Level Scoring
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Arma II Hangar and Scoped
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Arma II Title Screen
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Arma II Weapon Select 1
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Arma II Weapon Select 2
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Arma II Weapon Info
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Arma II Weapons Filters
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Arma II Level Select
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Arma II Attachments
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Arma II Options
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Arma II Help
Fun Factor:
Arma II is relatively enjoyable. There is an extremely large selection of weaponry and an even greater selection of weapon attachments. The firing ranges are very well detailed and enjoyable, but unfortunately there are only 3 firing ranges and only 2 of them present any real challenge. This game will need many more additions of new ranges and explosive weapons before the fun factor is high enough to challenge other Tegra II products.
I would also love to see the accelerometer controls work on my device. Unfortunately they do not function in an even remotely usable way, but I like the concept. I think that with the addition of better accelerometer controls and more optional control schemes this game would greatly benefit.
Addictive:
Arma II is actually relatively addictive and I could imagine it being much much more so with working OpenFeint support. As I stated earlier I am sure the problems was associated with either my device or the OpenFeint program, not with Arma II. So I would rate this game’s addictive factor relatively high compared to other games like HISTORY Great Battles Medieval. I am a huge fan of shooting games and the biggest appeal to these games is the competitive element, however, with working achievement system this game would create an excellent competitive shooting environment.
Graphics:
Arma II: Firing Range THD has incredible graphics. The three-dimensional modeling in this shooter is unrivaled in the Android Market. The guns and ranges are of the same high quality as games like Modern Warefare and Call of Duty Black Ops. If you are looking for a cheap game to show of the potential of your Tegra II device this is the perfect game for you.
Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:
The soundtrack for is excellent. The sound effects for each gun are customized and realistic to the device and its attachments plus the music creates an excellent sense of urgency. I would compare the musical score to games like Call of Duty or Duke Nukem Forever. Unfortunately, the accelerometer controls are not of an equivalent quality to the soundtrack and were completely unusable on my device. In order for this game to achieve a perfect score in this category the developers will need to greatly refine the accelerometer controls.
Tags:
3D,
3D Games,
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Game,
Android Tablet Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Arma II,
Arma II Firing Range THD,
Firing Range,
NVIDIA Tegra 2 Processor,
OpenFeint,
Tablet Apps,
Tegra Zone,
THD
Categorised in: Arcade & Action
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