"ArmA: Armed Assault - Worth it?"

It was only last year that I stumbled across Operation Flashpoint, after reading a short article naming good vids that would run on the junkiest machines. At first I was hesitant, for OFP was not your typical first person offering. Life was fickle and short; a carelessly running through an enemy controlled valley would likely gift you a bullet in the head. Realism, you see, was the heart of it all. And it still is.

Now called ArmA: Armed Assault, which may be the single most banal title ever conceived, Bohemia Interactive's latest offering has finally made its way to the consumers, some 6 long years after OFP. Like Speedy Ramirez, it's the full measure.

Story: Think OFP without the Soviets themselves, just their equipment. The single player campaign follows the same arc as OFP, but in a new locale. Situated on the fictional island of Sahrani, the game follows the retreat, retake, counterattack, conquest format of all the previous games by Bohemia.

Graphics: OFP's chief sin, arguably, was its hardware demands for such, well, unimpressive visuals. ArmA disappoints again. Not that the graphics are poor - in fact they're absolutely fantastic in my opinion - it's that to run the game on medium settings, you will, and I mean will, need a rather powerful PC. Aside from that, and as I just mentioned, the graphics are top notch. Equipment and vehicles are lovingly detailed, footprints are left in the sand, distances are rendered perfectly.

Sound: What would a FPS be without good sound? ArmA provides all the glitz that we've become accustomed to: Bullet hums and near misses, ricochets, dogs barking, enemies barking orders, et cetera. Good sound makes for better atmosphere, and thankfully ArmA's sound is almost perfectly done.

Gameplay: ArmA, in this respect, is virtually identical to OFP. And I'm not complaining. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The core gameplay is the same (command, command, command), although this time it seems that your squad is less likely to stay together. There will be occasions when your precious AT private darts off ahead of you for no reason, against your wishes, only to taken down and ergo reveal your position to the enemy. And that's a good segway into ArmA's best gameplay feature - replay-ability. OFP's battles were only passively scripted (tank a will be at location b). Now battles are even more passively scripted, meaning that tank a will not always be in location b. This means for unlimited replayability, because, as the cliche goes, no two battles will ever be the same.

Overall: Like OFP, ArmA is a love-it-or-hate-it affair. If you can put up with extremely poor path-finding, unresponsive squads, graphical glitches and poor frame-rates, then you'll ArmA. If you can't, steer clear. Unpatched, the game is unforgiving, but patched, it is a joy to play. Plus, even though its only been available for a few months in Europe, the famous modding community is already in full swing. You can find near-perfect mods for nearly anything in about 5 minutes.

7/10 unpatched, 9/10 patched.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/13/07