9 August 2009. Three possible ways to beat the campaign are now posted. Alternative solutions and comments are welcome over on the ArmA 2 forums at forums.bistudio.com. My account is br@cob if you want to leave me a message.

Single Missions

Armed Assault 2 Campaign - Harvest Red

Armed Assault 2 Bonus Campaign - Eagle Wing Warning Major spoilers!

Hints for Veteran ArmA Players

Most, but not all of the commands are the same. The key differences are in the infantry commands. Looking through your gun sight is now the 0 key on the Numpad, instead of V. V is now used for climbing over low fences and similar obsticles. However the right mouse button will bring up your gun sight. If one of your AI needs healing, you send your medic to him, in ArmA and OFP you sent the troop to the medic.

ArmA 2 Welcome Additions

• Unless they have been disabled, up to seven unique multiple saves are now possible while in single player mode, like most other games.
• You no longer have to find a field hospital or medic if you or your squad are injured, all troops now have basic first aid skills.
• If you are in an area too dangerous to administer first aid on the spot, you can drag or carry the wounded soldier to a safer location.

ArmA 2 Annoyances

• Walking and running in first person view is very shaky, like a bad home video. This does not happen naturally when a person walks or runs, your brain compensates for the motion. I did not notice this problem in OFP, and it did not seem as bad in the original ArmA. The fix is to use third person view when running or walking. However, walking while trying to look through a scope or gun sight is presented in a fairly realistic manner.
  UPDATE The annoying shake while running or walking in first person can be fixed by going to "Options","Game Options" and moving the "Head bob:" slider all the way to the left. Thanks to Sparks50 for this tip.
• The land vehicles are impossible to drive with a mouse and difficult with a keyboard with the default settings. You'll have to learn to drive all over again in ArmA 2.
  UPDATE Here is a work around for the undriveable cars. The default settings for vechicle controls are optimized for certain types of joysticks, but suck for those of us that play with a mouse. Go to "Options", "Controls". Delete all of the "Car More Left" and the "Car More Right" settings. Add "Mouse Left" to "Car Left" and "Mouse Right" to "Car Right" and click "OK". You will now have a mouse that behaves like ArmA and OFP for land vehicle controls.
• Overly bright highlights. If you are in a certain position relative to a building and the sun, the reflection is much "hotter" than it is in real life; again, the original ArmA did not have this issue. One can try to fix it in the video settings, but you'll then find that dark areas are too dark, and if you fool with the gamma to fix that the contrast is lacking.

ArmA 2 Cheats and Hacks

• ArmA 2 has some of the same cheat codes as OFP and the original ArmA did. Like OFP and ArmA, they are activated by holding down the left Shift key and pressing the - key on the num pad. After executing this key sequence, type in the following.
  • savegame = Saves the game, even if you have already saved once. Not necessary if you are in regular mode, as multiple saves are allowed in most missions while playing as regular.
  • campaign = Unlocks all missions in a campaign. Execute while in the campaign mission menu.
  • missions = Unlocks all missions in the single missions folder. Execute while in the single mission folder.
  • endmission = Ends current mission. Note that it does not successfully end the mission. If you have not completed the objectives, they will be marked as not completed. Execute while playing a mission.
  • getallgear = Unlocks all the items in the Armory. Execute while in the Armory menu.
• Multiple saves: Even though you can use the cheat code (or play in regular mode, which allows multiple saves), in some missions previous saves are overwritten with the current save. Other missions do allow up to seven multiple saves. For those that don't here is the work around:
  Save the game, pause and then alt-tab out of ArmA and get back to your desktop.
  To make multiple unique saves in the Armed Assault campaign navigate to My Documents/ArmA 2 Other Profiles/YourUserName/Saved/ca/missions/campaign/ Make a copy of save.ArmASave and give it a unique title.
  To make multiple unique saves in a single mission navigate to My Documents/ArmA 2 Other Profiles/YourUserName/Saved/ca/missions/scenarios/NameofMission/ Make a copy of save.ArmASave and give it a unique title.
  To revert to one of these specially saved missions rename it back to save.ArmASave, go back to ArmA 2 and use Load.
• Another way to unlock everything in the Armory is to modify the PlayerName.ArmA2Profile. It is located in Documents and Settings/ComputerUserName/My Documents/Arma 2 Other Profiles/PlayerName. Open it in any text editor and go to the line near the bottom of the file called (obviously enough) armoryPoints. Change this line to read armoryPoints=30000; Don't forget the semi-colon at the end of the line.