Let's Talk... Arma Tactics (PC)

Arma Tactics is Bohemia’s first attempt to bring the hyper-realistic military sim series Arma to mobile devices. Originally released on the NVIDA Shield and Android, and now released on Steam, Arma Tactics is the first Arma game to be a turn-based strategy game rather than a first-person shooter. By bringing the Arma series to mobile platforms and using a more accessible genre, it’s fair to assume that Bohemia may have been looking to widen Arma's potential audience, and whilst Arma Tactics feels a lot more accessible than other Arma titles I can’t help but wonder who exactly this game was designed for. Hardcore Arma fans will likely be put off by the very arcade-like aesthetic, whilst non-Arma fans will probably be put off by the hardcore nature of the Arma brand. Besides, there are plenty of much better turn-based strategy games on the market, especially with XCOM: Enemy Unknown now having been ported to iOS. However, Arma Tactics is still a serviceable turn-based strategy game, and perhaps making the move to mobile was a smart idea for Bohemia.

Gameplay opens with a pretty limited tutorial that covers the very basics of movement and shooting dudes without going into the more detailed stuff in any appropriate level of detail. I found that quite a lot of gameplay features were poorly explained, or not at all, and the game seems to expect you to figure it out yourself, but most of the mechanics are pretty simple so you should pick it pretty quickly. There are around ten missions in the base game, but you can create missions or play other people’s content, which I thought was a neat little feature for such a small game. Missions will grant you XP and credits, which can be spent on upgrading and purchasing items and weapons respectively. There’s a decent variation of weapons and items and with the addition of user created content, and there’s actually a pretty nice amount of content for such a cheap game.

Expect to find yourself out-manned and out-gunned at all times

The actual gameplay reminded me more of the combat in Shadowrun Returns than anything else, the feel of the guns and the use of AP (action points) to determine movement and actions made it feel very similar to that above anything else. Gameplay is relatively simple, but often pretty challenging, you have a limited area of mobility per turn that take up either 1 or 2 AP depending on how far you move, and using items costs 1 AP whilst you can take shots that use either 1 or 2 AP with relative accuracy and damage rolls. The movement feels a bit clunky (it’s easy to see that the user interface was designed for touch screens), often requiring you to often click multiple times for a command to actually work and aiming the cursor feels spotty and unresponsive.

The game is actually rather difficult due to the extremely squishy nature of your men, though once a man goes down they can be revived within five turns if you have a medkit available. Although this did make much of the game feel frustrating and, at times, unfair, it does a pretty good job of making the game feel really tense and gave me a good reason to really carefully think about my next move, considering cover, angles, and line of sight. Something that I think really captures the tense realism of the Arma series.

The armory, where you can purchase and upgrade guns and items

The camera is pretty rough, it sticks to its current position as it pans to the enemy’s turn, which often places it in front of objects that block your view of what is happening, leaving you wondering what the hell happened in the last turn. The camera is also notoriously bad at tracking multiple enemies performing actions in one turn. Also, enemies aren't visible when the camera goes behind walls or buildings. In other words: the camera sucks.

Missions pretty basically set out, they usually consist of kill these guys and then go here and kill more guys but they can actually get pretty difficult at times. Your squad is limited to four guys but the enemy will usually have three or four times that, and boy do they converge on you quickly. Most missions contain too many enemies in a very enclosed space, which can make keeping sufficient distance from a small group pretty frustrating at times, especially when enemies have a habit of frequently hitting you from impossible ranges. The game makes it so you can’t actually see enemies until you are in line of sight, which would be fine if your line of sight didn't get caught on small obstacles and things that you generally should be able to see over; this becomes increasingly frustrating when you move a guy in front of an enemy without realising. What makes that even more frustrating is the fact that enemies will all too often take reaction shots at you when they first see you, something that you can’t do yourself.

A lot of things that were clearly designed for a touch screen don't work so well with a mouse

Arma Tactics does look pretty great overall especially for a mobile port, although I’d have liked some more video options above basic resolution settings and some extra post processing effects, although I didn't run into any performance issues myself. I did, however, run into a number of graphical bugs, such as the screen being completely broken if I tried to launch the game in windowed mode or other fairly minor glitches. I also experienced some broken or missing audio, as well. The sound design is pretty lacklustre here unfortunately, with some really horrible voice acting accompanied by some really weak sounding guns and a weirdly funky but extremely out of place soundtrack. The voice acting isn't just of low quality, it also just sounds poorly recorded with some voices featuring unwanted and obnoxious ambience. The game does actually have gamepad support, and seems to emphasise the use of one but preferred to play with a mouse and keyboard.