I picked up ArmaIII from the steam sale and already regret it. I'm going to explain why as a warning for anyone thinking about getting the game.

First off, no, I am not from CoD. I grew up on flight simulators, played all the Jane's/Novalogic games, and even to this day STILL play Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. It has always boggled my mind how Codemasters and Bohemia together released one of the best games, but alone, they cant create diddly crap. ArmaI-III have all been horrible. I was hoping III was better but still, its bad.

A few main things.


Basically, the Arma engine is trash. I'm using a gtx970 and easily get 80+ frames per second on 64 player BF4 maps. During heavy combat it stays silky smooth, all through the awesome physics, graphics, lighting, destruction, and thousands of objects moving/particles. Contrast this with ArmaIII, it looks significantly worse than BF4 and I can barely get over 20 fps in multiplayer. I can get 35-60 fps in SP, but even large scale SP editor battles start to crawl. I've tried all the fixes available online, but even on mostly low settings with barely 1800 visibility, the game looks and plays like garbage. Vehicles 20 meters away look like boxes. It just sucks... bad. It reminds me of early Crysis engine... the game looks good on higher settings but the engine is built so bad that you need massive CPU and special configuration just to squeak out a good looking game in SP muchless MP.
Some will argue about the draw distance. Again, BF4 on maps like Firestorm/Caspian have far distance rendering, it looks 100x better, and plays 100x smoother. Arma uses a terrible engine.


Something that Operation Flashpoint did well for its time. The way tanks darkened when they were hit in certain places, the way the rocked from RPGs, the way the smoke hit the target, crumpled up, etc, for almost 15 years ago was awesome. Even today, it still feels like it has more life than ArmaIII. ArmaIII, there is no visible damage except generic holes/scrapes all over the vehicle. There is no darkening except maybe little scorch marks on tanks prior to death. They don't react to hits, and overall, it just feels lifeless. The generic, rusted looking husks and crappy looking fire is sad for 2014. The blackening and paper crumple effects in CWC were more fun.


A few noticeable things here. In the editor, I've noticed simple "move" and "search and destroy" waypoints causing tanks to spin in circles, get stuck on small rocks, etc. Unloaded units will just sit still for 2 minutes before moving on. Campaign/enemy infantry AI often easily see you through brush, yet if you are prone and moving, they cant see you 2 inches away. Enemies (non-sniper) can sometimes shoot 50 bullets at you and miss every one, other times they insta-kill you with headshot from a regular rifle (example: campaign redo point, encountered this mixture from enemies without sniper rifles).
All around, feels like 2 steps forward, 1 step back from the first OpFlash.


The game is not a simulator. I know what simulators feel like. I also know the contrast of what arcady games like BF4 feel like. ArmaIII feels like a broken mix between the two. Flying helicopters sideways, rudder pedals not working, and so on. Much of infantry realism comes from frustration, and not "realism." Your soldier is obese, runs 2 feet, and then when you want to aim at something, the reticle sways all over the place horribly. Then he can throw 3 grenades like an olympic hero. Sometimes, even after standing perfectly still, simply turning will cause a ton of reticle sway, so bad that its hard to hit someone 20 meters away. Switching to full auto helps alleviate this because you can just spray the target and conveniently the recoil is low... (unrealistic) Basically, go prone...


Operation Flashpoint: Cold War, for its time, was an amazing game. Of course, it had many limitations. The Arma series sadly falls far from this tree. Each time, we get a new one, it takes prettier screenshots, but plays worse. They are not optimized. They are clunky. "realism" sometimes comes from adding sometimes unrealistic frustration, while physics/flight/damage models are completely half ♥♥♥♥♥. Multiplayer is a slideshow on hardware that effortlessly runs 64 player BF4 multiplayer combat. Arma is filled with visible, noticeable bugs. You can shoot a guy in the knee with a pistol, his body goes rigid, and his ragdoll will flop into the air like he hit a landmine. You are an olympic grenade thrower, but so obese that you cant shoot something 25 meters away after a 5 second sprint.

Overall, Arma just does not live up to its predecessor, even almost 15 years later. It fails so horribly at almost everything other than taking cool screenshots on max settings. But, that "scene" will not play smooth. And, even once you get the settings low enough to be 30-60fps in singleplayer, the game looks bad for 2014. Really bad. Icing on the cake is that the damage/physics are so bad/unfun/unconvicing, that id rather play Cold War Crisis in 2015 to satisfy my military sandbox imagination