Last weekend the first/third-person military shooter, ARMA 3 was free on Steam so I thought, "What the hay."  I set it to download and two hours later fired it up.  What followed was the most direct amount of game playing that I've had in a while, which equals roughly three to five hours of game play (that is, Steam calls it three but with restarts is closer to five).  What is my impression by the time the free weekend period was over?





Oddly enough my first thought when booting this game up was one of surprise:

"This game has a story?"

As strange as it may seem to you ARMA fans I was under the impression that the game was a giant mod/multiplayer-fest.  So when I first booted it up I didn't even look for one, and instead busied myself with the tutorial (which I quit after the first scenario) then began messing about with the available vehicles, which number a total of...  well, there are a lot.  Tanks, cars, trucks, helicopters, quads, jets, boats, and even a submersible.  Yep, as small as it is, they have a submarine in ARMA 3.  But I feel that I need to warn you before you go searching on Steam.  ARMA has a bit of a learning curve, and most of it has to do with the realism mechanic that Bohemia Interactive has built around this game.  The rest of it has to do with the clunky interface, but within an hour I was past that and crawling through the scrub and firing with no problem.  Now the realism is taken to the nth degree.  Take the UAV (unarmed aerial drone) for example.  There is a mission where you must appropriate a UAV to rescue a squad pinned down by mortar fire.  You have to pilot the UAV and "paint" the target for destruction.  But first you have to take the UAV and the controls from a dead teammate.  Then you have to deploy the UAV on the ground, connect the UAV to the UAV terminal, then activate it.  While these actions all done with a menu, I still failed the mission several times attempting to deploy it and even fly around without running into anything.  Maybe I should have spent more time on the tutorial.  And this says nothing about actually finding the enemy mortar emplacement on the hillside, hovering, then "painting" the target with a laser for bombardment.  One thing is for certain, Bohemia Interactive isn't pulling any punches with this game.  I changed the difficulty setting to easy after getting killed too many times, but it didn't seem to make a difference, as I was immediately head-shot by a hidden sniper, then upon reloading was gunned down mercilessly when I advanced and fired without seeking cover.


This is the first ARMA game I've actually played.  Did I mention that?  I'd heard quite a bit about it, but not until the now infamous DayZ mod was released in 2012.  Since then I've associated the series name with modding.  And a difficult learning curve.  My surprise at finding a functioning story line in ARMA 3 was genuine, let me assure you, so much that I only looked into the mods once I was no longer able to play the game Sunday night. Much like the previous games, ARMA 3 is completely within an European setting, this time in the Cyprus-inspired fictional islands of Altis & Stratis.  NATO forces, who helped train the fledgling AAF faction, have apparently been back-stabbed, and lay scattered.  Whether or not NATO can gain control and fight off the AAF (and other factions) is entirely up to you and your fellow soldiers. 

If you hope to succeed in ARMA 3 you have to learn to treat the game like a sim.  For example, when your squad leader calls out to,  "Advance 75 meters," you will walk forward with the rest of the squad, weaving throughout cover as necessary, and stop after 75 meters, when he will call out another advance (or contact with the enemy).   If enemies are spotted they  will be identified and targets will be dolled out by the squad leader.  Now the entire time you should be scanning the environment for movement, as all it takes is a single good shot to end your life and force you to reload.  You can save-scumm (i.e., continually saving the game as little as a few seconds apart to advance) but for the most part there can be a great deal of tension and sometimes frustration in simply walking forward.  While I never ran out of ammunition (thanks to the ready amount of dead bodies to loot) I did expire several times due to injury.  You can patch yourself up a small amount of times, as well as receive a visit from the medic (if your squad has one), but at the end of the day fatigue and blood-loss will takes its toll on you.  A couple of times I watched in fear as my squad mates pulled ahead of me as my wounded and exhausted soldier found it impossible to sprint across mountain terrain.  It gives the game a very real feeling that I imagine the creators were looking for, though I cannot verify for sure.  I've cannot recall a time when I've been mortally wounded wounded and running through a pine forest carrying fifty pounds of equipment on my person.

The sim nature of the game that I experienced (so far) also extends past operating your soldier and into the vehicle realm.  Remember those cool toys I mentioned earlier (submersible and tanks)?  While I imagine that there are a lot of liberties taken, piloting a helicopter or tank is suitably difficult enough as to make this a very enjoyable balance of arcade and sim.  You won't be pulling any GTA-style stunts in your AH-9 Pawnee small attack chopper, but with a small amount of practice you can take off, fly in a straight line, and land with a modicum of grace.  Maybe even strafe something without crashing into the ground. 

And all of this features some pretty realistic sound as well.  Get out of your jet fighter while the engines are still on and expect to turn down the volume on your speakers.  Significantly down if someone is close to you and on their cell phone.  I found this to be a very nice touch, though I felt firing the main weapon on a tank really lacked the aural "oomph" that I imagine it would really sound like.  But then again this may be the reality of it.  However, I can report that while the submersible just sits on the dry floor of the VR "garage" simulator of the game when you select it to test, there is a lot of dripping water sounds that I find alarming, especially on something that is supposed to safely carry people underwater and not sink.


So after three or five hours of game play the free weekend of ARMA 3 on Steam ended and I had to hang up my keyboard.  How did it turn out for me in the end?  While I certainly wasn't a fan of the series when I started I believe I am not.  After all, the experience moved me enough to not only put the title on my Steam wishlist, but also to write up this article (as quick and dirty as it is) that is most certainly not my normal monthly front page article.  To you military sim fans I imagine you already either know about all of this, already have it in your sites, or already own the game.  To you fans of general third-person shooters...  Maybe give the series a look.  I've heard that the first and second in the series are pretty similar to my experience with ARMA 3, and might open the gate to a wider world of games.  While I would rate this game as more difficult and "hardcore" than say, FarCry 2, I nonetheless fully enjoyed myself and look forward to playing ARMA 3 again sometime in the near future.

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