Game Reviews

Arma II: Firing Range THD (Tegra)

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 Arma II: Firing Range THD (Tegra)

Porting Bohemia Interactive’s lauded PC strategic shooter Arma II to Android would be an insanely ambitious mission, fraught with touchscreen peril and tense standoffs with hardware fragmentation.

So, Bohemia went to plan B: showcasing its spiffy graphics engine but only in the bland, barely interactive environment of a shooting gallery.

Exclusive to dual-core NVIDIA Tegra devices, Arma II: Firing Range is a real looker, yet sets its sights low in terms of gameplay, and even then it sometimes misses the target.

Guns, lots of guns

Billed as “the ultimate firing range simulation”, Bohemia’s title safely ticks most of the boxes you’d expect.

There are targets, most of which pop up in random sequence and some of which slide across the range like ducks in a fairground game. And there's a serious amount of firepower with which to turn them into Swiss cheese.

Aiming is handled with accurate if sluggish touchscreen or gyroscopic controls. Even with the aim speed ramped to maximum, waving the guns about feels slow and unresponsive – although the tap icons for firing and using ironsights are mercifully quicker to respond.

Still, gun nuts will be drooling over the range of nearly 30 real world rifles, machine guns, and pistols to get to grips with, not mention the optional extras you can bolt on (such as silencers, optical sights, and recoil dampeners).

From the trusty AK47s to the less well-known VSS Vintorez, there’s a weapon for every itchy trigger finger, and each one can be viewed in intricate, 3D detail.

They also come loaded with detailed facts about their manufacturers and combat history, which will be invaluable if you’re attending this year’s NRA quiz and dinner dance.

Bang for your buck

Once you’ve drooled sufficiently over the weapon selection to oil the chamber, it’s time to pick from one of a trio of gun ranges to blast away at.

Three may not seem a lot (it’s curiously bumped to “several” in the Android Market description), but the detailed Desert, Plains, and Hangar settings do offer a welcome touch of variety to the 'see-target-shoot-target' gameplay.

The ranges also give the Tegra processor a solid workout, with realistic lighting and shadows that bounce off your barrel in a very smooth, natural way.

The high resolution textures and detail rendering are pixel sharp and remarkably smooth, while the audio feedback of gun cracks, rattles, and spluttering recoils is suitably deafening.

Gameplay itself is limited to simply beating your high scores or taking on the sharp shooting might of the OpenFeint online leaderboards.

You can customise how long sessions last, or how many targets you need to hit within a set time limit, but it’s still a pretty slim package bolstered with a handful of achievements to unlock, including one for playing two hours (which, admittedly, is a bit of a stretch).

The not so long shot

At heart, Arma II: Firing Range is really just a tech demo for Bohemia’s engine on Tegra devices.

Taken as such, it’s an interesting glimpse at how Android shooters can match the visuals of a mid-spec PC, but leaves questions about just how well the tech would hold up if taken into a full-blown shooter campaign or frantic multiplayer experience.

Arma II: Firing Range THD (Tegra)

Racks of weapons and dazzling graphics cover-up a shallow gameplay offering, with slow shooting and lack of variety that means you’ll run out of enthusiasm before you run out of shells
Score
Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo