Have had ArmA for about a week and I would say it is NOT worth retail price. It's a decent game but you could do something else w/ the $40 you save. I love FPS games and have played every major release on all platforms for the past decade, but I was desperate when I bought this. Kinda like a Rainbow Six and BF game all in one, though it leans heavily toward Rainbow Six in the realistic elements. Graphics are standard, nothing that'll amaze you but you probably won't complain about them. Controls could be more intuitive, you'll find yourself searching for the right key for a basic move or command. Maps are huge and you will travel just to get to the action, sounds kinda cool but doesnt end up being cool. Multiplayer was a big drag, standard options and not many players. Really makes you feel like you could be doing something better. Just so many other good populated multiplayers you could be on instead. The game shows signs of being extremely rewarding if you put the time and effort into sticking with it. But initially, just doesnt seem worth it to. Get it if you need your fix, but be ready for disappointment if you are used to AAA titles.d12malu
I would just like to point some things out as I've played the full game for about 6 months now, I can't say I've played every major release of the last 10 years, but I surely played most of them (still waiting for duke nukem forever, damn!). :)
Rainbow Six and BF game all in one? Uh, well, that's probably a legit way to explain it someone who never heard of Operation Flashpoint, but ofc it hurts me a little bit inside.
Yeah, it leans heavily towards realism and if your just in for some quick Action it's not the right game, though some of the players vs players modes are pretty hasty to play, mainly berzerker missions and similar missions. Still the game in general has a very slow pace and is more complex than most mp FPS out there.
If one doesn't like the idea of maybe having to wait 10 minutes in the same spot without anything happening when for example, preparing an ambush. Crawling over fields in enemy invested territory, driving or flying to targets that can be miles away (which can be quite fun with the right people on board and you don't want to have to do it alone, so you better stay alive), constantly scanning your surroundings and moving from cover to cover, heavily depending on your teammates to accomplish something, then most other mp FPS are probably a better choice.
As you said, if one likes this style of game-play it can be extremely rewarding, but it will take time to even master the role of a simple rifle grunt, let alone all the aspects of the game. Personally, I like to be able to snipe at "real" distances and not looking at the wall of fog at ~500m, it also makes moving much more complicated because, for example, you could be detected by an enemy vehicle from 1km away and have no chance because it's out of range of your infantry weapons. The fun in this is of course sneaking up to it and shove an rpg down his exhaust, or trying a "mobility kill" where you disable one or both of his tracks, disable the turret, force the crew to bail out, etc.
The controls take some time to get used to as most keys on your keyboard are bound to something, luckily they are also highly customizable. I've grown quite comfort with them over time.
One thing about the mp at the moment is, that if you have the US version, you're separated from the rest of the world now, as they're using different versions of the game. The patch to fix this is upcoming and there are public beta patches available at the BIS homepage that let at least play friends together. Another thing is, that due to the high complexity, a bad egg can have much more impact on the success of a mission than in most other games (depending on the type of mission of course), so it's best to play in a controlled environment, and even better on servers where you have to get a password first. Of course the ultimate experience is to play in a fixed group, something a clan can provide.
"Standard Options" for mp modes is a bit harsh if you know what's actually possible to do in mp. Of course it does have the standard modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, conquest and hold, but it also has highly customizable mission objectives, supports several hundred of enemy AI for coop games with, at the moment, up to 64 players, 4 different playable sides that all can play in one mission what allows some pretty crazy stuff, and no hassle with having to download those missions before playing as you will get them on the run.
Good example of this flexibility is the Evolution mission that had quite an impact here on european servers, here some features that are added just by this mission that's downloaded when connecting to a server playing it (just copied the features out of laziness):
- A rank system based off the players score that unlocks vehicles and weapons as the player gains higher ranks.
- Automatic vehicle servicing anywhere in the base area (Airport)
- Dynamic groups, players can join other players groups while in the game.
- Recruited AI, players can recruit AI units if they are leaders and have a high enough rank.
- Side missions there are multiple random generated side missions that leaders can pick from.
- Scores for everything, you get scores for completing main objectives, secondary objectives, side missions, transporting and healing!!
- The mission remembers you , so if you disconnect and come back later your score and rank is remembered.
- Missile Cam for hellfires GBU bombs and stingers.
- Incoming missile warning sound for all aircraft.
- Optional One hour day mode.
- Synced time for all clients and jip players.
It runs consecutive even if all players disconnect until all the main objectives on the whole Island are done, which can take quite some time. ;)
I think it's a good example to show whats possible in mission design, even the randomly generated side missions could count as full missions in a lot of games, it's huge. Scripting is a very powerful tool for this and even with the "easy to start but hard to master" in-game editor you can make pretty complex missions (I know as I've put hundreds of hours into both).
Some words on the community itself: It will never reach the size of more "mainstream" communities as it is a niche game. On the other side it's a very active community in terms of user made missions, smaller addons like single Weapons, Vehicles etc. and there are a lot of bigger Mods in the works, but the new editing tools aren't even out yet, so people are mostly using OPF tools until now, well, those parts that still work with ArmA. Of course big parts of it are from the OPF community and there are also those kids that like to run amok on public server because they can't handle the fact that they would get virtually raped if they use their usual play-stile, but those will get bored eventually too. Because of its complex nature and slow pace it's also more likely to attract the 26 year old than the 16 year old, so it's a rather mature community. Of course that doesn't mean someone young can't like it.
To get to an end, some words of the graphics: It's very hardware demanding due to high possible view distances and the sheer amount of objects displayed at a time. Those objects are also destroyable, what makes its demands even worse. On the other side the devs are still optimizing it with some good results for performance. It can also look really breathtaking on high settings. If they are not or only slightly updated as some people said, they're free to show me some OPF screen-shots that look "slightly worse" than this, this, this or this, for more pics just check out my other Albums. Yeah, "terribly outdated", I really think BlackAlpha666 was "over exaggerating" a bit with his post, as he said himself, but it's true that most of the features were also in OPF and it's also a good contrast because I didn't mention much bad things about the game, just tried to give some more general information about it in this post.
One says the Controls are clunky, the other says he can finally feel that he's wearing a weapon in a game, that and "it's still just a game" goes for a lot of things BlackAlpha666 said, but it would be too much for this post to give another point of view on this "issues", as it's long enough already.
Log in to comment