Developer: Bohemia Interactive
Publisher: Bohemia Interactive
Platform: PC
Arma 3 – Review
Last years, the huge stream of shooters is unstoppable, only a few of them start with an original idea though. Most of the recent shooters are copy pastes of Call of Duty and are scared to bring something new. That’s why it was a relief to start playing Arma 3. This is not just a shooter, it’s more like a game platform.
Story
Arma 3 has no story mode but contains a few scenarios to learn the basics of the game. This is no problem though, since Arma 3 provides a great creator mode. A lot of players created a ton of great scenarios already. They delivered a great variety of game modes: from simple and short single player scenarios to huge multiplayer missions. This makes the lack of original content no real problem. The community solved the problem all by itself!
Graphics
Grading the graphics of Arma 3 is pretty hard. The environment of the massive 290km² terrain looks great and so do the characters. Effects like explosions look pretty nice and scuba diving through the ocean is brought to you in a really fun way. Arma 3 has a pretty big problem though: the “emptiness” of the environment and the recycling of buildings. There are too few places which are filled with buildings, houses, etc… Having a terrain with some beautiful nature elements is nice, but it gets boring pretty fast. On top of that, most of the houses you find are empty. No chairs, no tables, no furnitures. A massive terrain is great, but a smaller, more “lively” terrain would be more preferred if that would create some liveliness.
Sound
The sound of Arma 3 is pretty decent. Weapons, tanks and choppers, all sound pretty realistic. The dialogs sound really good, the voice actors did a great job to put some emotions in the dialogs.
Gameplay
People who play Arma for the first time, will have a very hard time to even complete the first scenario. These scenarios are meant to learn you the basics of the game, but they are just so hard to understand. You need to find out about most of the controls all by yourself, even with the huge amount of different keybinds. The scenario’s vary from learning to shoot targets, drive a tank, fly a chopper and even defuse mines while scuba diving. Whilst the scenario’s themselves are pretty nice, they are also pretty frustrating. Even when you read your current task in the task list, it still turns out to be really hard to find out what your exact objective is. A small token shows you the location where you need to go next, but even when you reach that point you might be running around and have no clue what to do. All of this might even result in a “Mission failed”, even when you have no clue what you’ve did wrong. Very frustrating.
On top of that, the GUI isn’t the most user friendly. There are a lot of keybinds to open menu’s, operate your squad and use the different stances. During the first hours, it might even become a little frustrating to get used to all these features, especially since they aren’t explained so well in the scenario’s. Of course not everything is bad about the gameplay. Once you finally learn how to use all these features and you understand what is expected from you, the scenario’s might become pretty challenging and realistic. Most of the times you’re able to use multiple strategies to complete the mission successfully, which makes it possible to use your personal playstyle. The only thing that interrupts the realism now and then are some very weird bugs. One of the weirdest bugs we’ve found out was our tank getting catapulted into the air while just driving against another tank. It’s hilarious, but it isn’t very realistic.
Of course Arma 3 is not about the offline missions, the real fun starts when you play online with real people. The community has created many online scenario’s, some in co-op, others completely multiplayer team vs team. Objectives tend to vary a lot. Some of them are extremely easy like “driving a tank from point A to B”, while others are really advanced. A great example is a multiplayer map where you need to survive while gathering food, water and money to buy new equipment. Now and then a new mission will spawn and will reward you for completing it successfully. It’s really fun when you find a nice server full of experienced people, but most of the servers are filled with unexperienced players who have no clue what’s happening. This is pretty normal since it’s so hard to learn the basics of the game, but this way many online sessions turn out in total chaos. Players just running around in circles or constantly jumping against you while shooting in the air. These issues might resolve themselves pretty soon though, since a lot of people, and this is completely understandable because of the insane learning curve, will quit the game pretty soon since they aren’t up to learn all the mechanics by themselves.
Conclusion
Arma 3 has some pretty big issues. Empty areas and buildings, an insane learning curve, a confusing GUI and confusing objectives. Although, players who keep practicing the many features this game has to offer, might have a great time playing this game. Beautiful graphics, a very detailed and extended gameplay and a huge amount of user-created content makes this pretty much an endless game. On top of that, it’s a pretty original shooter and not one of the many uninspired copycats of shooters like Call of Duty. Arma 3 is a nice game, but it could have been way, way better.
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