The overall the concept and realism is great and I've been playing non-stop for the past several days
GAME PLAY:
**First and foremost, I like the open world freedom and realism. You are given instructions to get from point A to point B, but you are not restricted to following a predetermined path. Even though you are given way points to lead you to the next objective; you don't have to follow them.
**The firefights are awesome. I like the tracer rounds and AI characteristics. When you get close enough to AI, you can hear them talking to each other
**Game is polished
**Very clean HUD interface.
**I like the landscape and feel for distance. There is true depth of field and you really believe you are walking up or down hills and valleys.
**I like the statistics summary. Stats are maintained for practically everything and you are promoted based on your online stats.
CHARACTER
**you can slowly bleed to death if you don't bandage your wounds
**You can sustain crippling damage to limbs and it is displayed on an icon on your HUD. Even though you can bandage small wounds yourself, you have the ability to request medic assistance for more severe injuries (if your medic isn't dead).
AUDIO
**Audio, Ambient sounds and weapons are authentic
MISSIONS
**Missions mimic real life scenarios. I like the fact that you don't have to engage everything in sight to complete a mission (you can if you want to, but you don't have to). You have to think, and you decide if you need to engage or avoid in order to complete your mission.
**Artillery and air support attack visuals are awesome and vicious. Massive collateral damage! (However, the aftermath damage to buildings and lack of craters is not consistent with the explosions).
*********THE BAD*********:
GAME PLAY
**The aftermath damage from artillery and gunfire to buildings is not consistent with the explosions. Artillery and air strikes leave no craters
**Views feel very limited. I guess ArmA II spoiled me with their 1st and 3rd person prospective. I was expecting that in this game too.
**When using the mouse wheel to review inventory, your character stops and if you hover to long over an item, it will automatically select the weapon for you. I prefer it not stop your character and it should not change your weapon unless you press "E".
**There are some little details that are missing that would enhance visuals (i.e. thumb doesn't move whenever you change your weapons rate of fire, audible sound when someone turns on their mic or when typing in text online etc.
CHARACTER
**No head movements? This is unforgiveable. You can't look to the left or right without turning your entire body - whose idea was that? The fact that you can't look left or right while driving is totally unacceptable for a game released in 2009 – come on guys. If you are the driver of a vehicle, you can't even see if everyone has loaded on your vehicle because you can't look left or right. I'm hoping this was just a programming oversight/glitch that will be corrected with the FIRST patch to be released.
GRAPHICS
**Limited graphics to be a 2009 pc game, we expect more options for pc. Not enough detail to characters face and clothing.
MULTIPLAYER
**The multiplayer options do not allow you to kick or band players. This is very frustrating if you have a jerk who needs to be kicked or someone who is AFK during the game.
**Multiplayer pings are EXTREMLY high. I'm used to my pings being about 40-60 for high demanding games like Crysis, Call of Duty, ArmA II etc. In this game it averages between 100 to >300.
**There are not enough "RANKED" servers.
**When talking on the mic, there is no icon on the screen to indicate which player is speaking.
SUMMARY, I don't want you to get the wrong impression about my feelings for this game because of the items in my "bad" list; This is really a good game and most of these problems can be fixed with a good patch. Even if these items are not fixed, this is still a GOOD COMBAT SIMULATOR and worth buying. I gave the game an 8.5 because it's definitely enjoyable. The overall concept and realism is great and I've been playing non-stop for the past several days.