I don't recall any boss fights in ArmA or 2, but I found large numbers only a problem if you were caught out in the open or couldn't shoot. The AI was still pretty terrible. And weirdly dumb in places, like vehicle
Can you expand on that? How do you define large numbers? Does couldn't shoot mean bad aim or lack of ammo?
I had a different experience. I think it depends on a lot more factors. Never played the campaign nor tested multiplayer extensively. I prefer to experiment with the mission editor.
There's some weapons and situations that guarantee lots of AI kills.Properly manned machineguns for one.Sniper rifles for two. I usually don't get OPed weapons liike scoped rifles because I know I'd kill a lot of AI russkies from a safe distance, but then would be the point? They are the situations I can think of as infantry where the AI could be killed in absolute impunity.
As long as the AI was dismounted and
had a waypoint/clear axis of advance, they could be relied upon to shoot even if in a human wave like fashion.
Wooded areas didn't do much of a difference, it was almost like being in the open.Unlike say Ghost Recon, the forest and foliage often just wasn't dense enough to make a big difference once spotted.
Sometime, it's just target acquisition that is hard. One of my buddy and I tried this.In OFP, we put ourselves in a small village along with M16s and a small infantry section and two AI snipers in the woods. Because of the scale of the map, it proved to be fairly difficult to spot them before they killed us.
But as a whole, I do agree: AI leave a lot to be desired.
Have you tried LAN games? They're an absolute blast. The game is absolutly at its best when you work with close friends and use teamwork to your advantage without AI.
Ahmm...hmmm.....I'd give it to ArmA series as much as anything, except that bloody AI is hilarious. And I can kill lots and lots of guys in ArmA without dying or really being much at risk. And have. So have you, no doubt. That kind of stamps on the "realistic" angle.
But those are facets of lethality, not fixing goon-wave or Boss mechanics.
Yeah, but I think there's a difference between killing a lot of people because of good positioning and fighting say a lvl 1 rat in Everquest.
Killing large amounts of enemy is acceptable if you have the drop on them. Machinegun nests decimated whole platoons in WW1.
If you put prime Mike Tyson against 20 average people taken from the street and tell them to take on Mike one on one successively in a boxing ring. Mike would still win.
Of course, getting free potshot because the AI is running around like headless chickens, won't dismount or the driver of an unarmored troop carrier simply chooses to do slow doughnuts on the road is unnacceptable.
Weirdly enough, I find if you put the difficulty up high enough, the AI is still terrible, but some non-realistic game get close to that, like say DXHR. You try to play a few hours of that, in gunfight mode, without dying. Same for Alpha Protocol. Stalker, too..
You deff. had to be careful but I didn't think they were that hard espescially if the AI was at a distance. There were many things that mitigated the difficulty. For example, the assault rifle had an addon with homing bullets! You went out of cover for like 3 second, waited for the rifle to lock on, and then you could fire 50 cents style until it killed the target! Cover until health regenerated.
Sure, enemy could try to close in on your position. But you could fire on them, they would stop and that would force them to take cover. And so the cycle restarted.
Also the enemy had a rhytim to their firing pattern, so you could gauge that and use that to get out of cover.
I liked the combat in DHXR for one reason only: takedowns aka fatalities.
So unrealistic but oh how satisfying and useful!
I did die a whole bunch of time on the first playthough, I'll give you that
Edit: Red Orchestra 2 was pretty good and the MP wasn't swarm..but it was accept-death-and-go as well as being very very map knowledge based. Still, I liked a lot of how they handled the guns and damage and it was less clumsy than ArmA series.
Hm. Interesting. I shall look into it.
I think i remember SWAT being pretty good on one of the later versions.
You're prob thinking of SWAT 4. Good game.