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Arma series

Forest Dweller

Smoking Dicks
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Oct 29, 2008
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This is another series I've been meaning to get into for a while. I know it has like ten games in it now, so I was wondering if it's worth it to start from the beginning. Should I do that, or go with more recent offerings? What about the expansions?
 

Inspectah

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Jun 29, 2015
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There really is no reason to play it in chronological order, since I dont think the campaigns are connected in any way, and even if they are, they aren't that good.
My favorite is the second one, but just because it seems more stable on my computer. Be sure to get operation arrowhead for it
 

Forest Dweller

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Well, one reason I can of is if each game improves significantly upon the last, if you play later ones first, you might not be able to enjoy the earlier ones because you've already played later versions.
 

Inspectah

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While I agree with that, I still think there is no reason to play the whole series. I mean, since it is a simulation, the gameplay that metters, and Arma 2 is just Arma 1 with better everything.
It's the same thing I feel with other simulation games - no reason to play silent hunter 2 if 3 is just better
 

potatojohn

Arcane
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Jan 2, 2012
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The single player got worse in each game.

OFP had awesome campaigns, ArmA 1 was ok, ArmA 2 was total garbage, ArmA 3 doesn't even have a campaign
 

Cadmus

Arcane
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Dec 28, 2013
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Play Operation Flashpoint. It's the best game ever ever and you won't find anything like it.
the newer ARMAs have a very effective copy protection....
 

Carrion

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ArmA 1 was ok, ArmA 2 was total garbage
Arma 1 campaign was total shit, they didn't even bother to have proper mission briefings at times and most missions made no sense and seemed like they were put together in fifteen minutes without any playtesting. Arma 2 at least had a bit more effort put into it and had a bunch of nice non-linear special forces missions at the start before going crazy with the commander thing bullshit, even though it's a shame that they CoDified some aspects of it and for example made your squad mates almost immortal, added some heavily scripted scenes and all but abandoned the infantry warfare thing that was originally the highlight of the series.

Operation Flashpoint is really the only one that's worth it for the single-player campaign (not counting fan-made ones), and it should be mandatory for anyone who's even a bit into tactical shooters. With the Arma games you can just skip to the newest one and maybe check out the second one and its expansions if you're starved for more single-player action. Fan campaigns and missions are still probably your best bet, though.
 
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TripJack

Hedonist
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Aug 9, 2008
Messages
5,132
for official singleplayer campaigns, Cold War Crisis and Resistance look like dogshit and some of the missions are infuriating but they are still the best by far

Arma 2 has many usermade campaigns that I am in the process of checking out, but the official campaigns are pretty bad except for the British Armed Forces addon which is unfortunately very short
 

potatojohn

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Arma 1 campaign was total shit, they didn't even bother to have proper mission briefings at times and most missions made no sense and seemed like they were put together in fifteen minutes without any playtesting. Arma 2 at least had a bit more effort put into it and had a bunch of nice non-linear special forces missions at the start before going crazy with the commander thing bullshit, even though it's a shame that they CoDified some aspects of it and for example made your squad mates almost immortal, added some heavily scripted scenes and all but abandoned the infantry warfare thing that was originally the highlight of the series.
Yeah, no.

ArmA 1 had a long campaign, something like 40 missions. Like OFP, you did a bit of everything, from spec ops to flying, commanding tanks, etc. It also had the best map of any of the games.

ArmA 2 ... I don't even know where to begin. Like you said, they tried to make a CoD in the ArmA engine and failed so hard that if Pascal were alive he'd become an atheist.

Some of the standalone missions were cool though. What they should've done is triple the number of them and call it a campaign.
 

Carrion

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ArmA 1 had a long campaign, something like 40 missions. Like OFP, you did a bit of everything, from spec ops to flying, commanding tanks, etc. It also had the best map of any of the games.
It was lengthy, but it ran out of steam after like five missions. There were literally missions where they didn't even bother to give your character a name, just dropped you on the map as Sgt. Carrion or Cpt. potatojohn or whatever with a few dozen randomly placed enemies and some goal that didn't even make any sense in the context. There was no consistency in the way the campaign was built, it was just a collection of missions that were obviously made by different people with no one attempting to turn it into a coherent whole, and many of the missions wouldn't have been good enough for mediocre fan-made campaigns, let alone official ones. I did like the map, though.

ArmA 2 ... I don't even know where to begin. Like you said, they tried to make a CoD in the ArmA engine and failed so hard that if Pascal were alive he'd become an atheist.
That was not all it had, though, as it had big missions that had multiple objectives all over the map, some of them involving some pretty interesting choices (with consequences) and objectives, like that one misison where you were tracking down a guy that could be almost anywhere on the map and kept moving around, and you tried to gather clues about his whereabouts by exploring the map and interrogating people. The Arma 1 campaign was kind of like OFP except that it was worse in every single way and felt like even the people who made it couldn't have cared less about it, whereas the Arma 2 campaign tried a bunch of new things, succeeded on some areas and failed on others. I can understand preferring the Arma 1 campaign, but after having played OFP to death and fooling around with the mission editor for hundreds of hours, Arma 1 didn't really offer anything interesting whereas Arma 2 at least had some fresh elements to it.
 

milsiming

Literate
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An ArmA thread.. it made me make an account and stop the lurking. I'm a real ArmA fanatic (it's even an understatement really, here is my arma 3 alpha 1st impression to get an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDLLIjuGac ) so I have to contribute :).

If we are talking about vanilla single player, then yes Operation Flashpoint (later renamed ArmA: Cold War Crisis with patch 1.99) it's the best one. If you get a proper up-to-date version you should have 3 awesome campaigns to play: 1 for each faction that it's involved in the conflict. Like all ArmA games, OFP had an awesome modding scene (I had 150 gigs of mod, nerdly organized, but lost it all in a failed linux installation ), so obviously there also some epic user made campaigns for you to play, like Nominesine's Blue Skies which is considered to be AT LEAST on the same level of quality with the vanilla campaigns. Another user made campaign that is highly praised in the community is Revolt, but sadly I don't remember it though, what I remember is playing the shit out of a campaign (don't remember then name) that came with the user made Tonali Island and also try the campaign that came with FDF mod. The problem with user made campaigns though is that most of them are dependent on other unit mods/maps etc and they can be a pain the ass to find (some sites that hosted OFP mods are down).

Also you might have some problems running mods with 1.99, because of the executable names, a problem easy to fix, BUT there might be other problems as well. I'm not very informed here because I preferred to play 1.98, since I didn't care much for the name change. Most mods were made for 1.98, since 1.99 came extremely late, 99% of the mod scene was dead when that patch came and you can't downgrade your 1.99 to 1.98 (this is random shit I remember, but you should google stuff like this yourself to be certain). I would try to own 1.98 and 1.99 if I were you. There are reasons to own 1.99, like the mod binmod for example that is exclusive for 1.99 and brings a lot of cool shit to the table, like real iron sights something that most thought it was impossible to do with this engine.

The big problem is that for you to enjoy the game you must tolerate the graphics ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F96w7p-Z1KY ), it didn't age well. For me or other people who loved the game back in the day it's not a big problem, but for someone who it's going to play it for the first time in 2015... I don't know what to say. If you can't get past this, you can use some mods, replace the sky, replace the weapons/units (make sure it doesn't fuck with the AI though so that it doesn't affect the campaigns), HD variants of the islands, Kegetys DXDLL. Another thing from what I remember the view distance affects the AI and the vanilla campaigns were designed to be played with 600m or 800m view distance (memory again, google to be sure).


The truth is now this series all about the multiplayer, very few care about the singleplayer. IMO to properly enjoy ArmA and to witness this series full potential you need to get ArmA 3 and join a big milsim clan that properly simulate military operations (ex 16aa). Stay away from public servers, but if you dont want to join a clan google unitedoperations, they function as a community who tries to play properly. They don't always succeed, but it's still a decent ArmA experience. If you are interested in this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzZqpuJMC38 .

But then again this is what I like about this series, since it's more of a sandbox experience ArmA means a lot of difference things to different people, I enjoy realistic military operations, but you might not enjoy them. Maybe you like stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpljei6wrgw .


In theory, Operation Flashpoint -> single player, ArmA3 -> multiplayer, BUT there could be some astonishing user made campaigns/missions for Arma1/2/3, and knowing the modding community that this series has, there is a 99.9% they exist, so you should be good with just ArmA3 for single player and multiplayer.


P.S.: But buy OFP as well even if you can stomach the way it looks, you are not buying just an ugly game, you are being a piece of history.
 

Silva

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Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Singleplayer-wise, the campaigns in Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis and ARMA 2 are among the best, most realistic, and most open-ended ever portrayed in a first-person shooter game. Also, ARMA 2 fan-made content is top-notch, going from whole new campaigns, to single-missions, to story-driven to dynamicaly generated content.

Avoid ARMA 1 at all costs, as its silly in all respects. (one of the first missions of the campaign has you as a sniper facing like 40 enemies alone like in a CoD game Lol )

Get ARMA 3 if you want multiplayer.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I loved making random missions / scenarios in Arma 2, but can't get into Arma 3 at all. Have tried so many times, but that game just feels off to me in every single way. Weapons, animations, movement, damage, setting etc. Flashpoint and Arma 2 was the high-points for me. Flashpoint for single-player (remember that mission you were left behind and had to make it back to your own line? Holy hell, what a mission) and Arma 2 for modding.
 

potatojohn

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Jan 2, 2012
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Avoid ARMA 1 at all costs, as its silly in all respects. (one of the first missions of the campaign has you as a sniper facing like 40 enemies alone like in a CoD game Lol )

Get ARMA 3 if you want multiplayer.

At least the missions had some difficulty to them.

In ArmA 2 the aimbot AI kills everything for you (since if they die the game is over, so they just made them super strong).

In the last mission even that's not necessary any more - you're just given 4x M1A2 TUSK, and the enemy doesn't have anything that can harm you.

ArmA 2 was such a fucking joke.
 

Silva

Arcane
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Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
The difficulty in ARMA 2 is customizable. I remember finding the game extremely difficult at first, then I've found the AI aim sliders and reach a good balance for my play style.
 

Surf Solar

cannot into womynz
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Jan 8, 2011
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Quite surprised so many people play this in singleplayer. Mp is where its at, as an avid squadleader I could never play with random AI
 

milsiming

Literate
Typical Modder
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Jul 28, 2015
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This thread made me reinstall OFP. Launched the game with single player in mind but went to multiplayer out of curiosity... server list empty. But then I remember the Gamespy shutdown, so I downloaded OFPMonitor and lo and behold... 2 populated servers,. So I joined, 5 players on the server, played, had a blast. And remember this game doesn't have join in progress, a huge problem for public gaming... but, despite this, here we are 14 fucking years later.
Of course DooM remains king of longevity, active multiplayer scene + active modding community after 22 years. But still, very impressive for OFP.
 

Makabb

Arcane
Shitposter Bethestard
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Sep 19, 2014
Messages
11,753
The first OFP (Arma cold war assault on steam) is now 0,79$ on steam and it was patched with aspect ratio for modern screens and new executable to make it work. No reason not to get it.

The SP campaign is still the best.
 

Dux

Arcane
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May 26, 2016
Messages
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Sweden
I played the ARMA campaign and found it to be quite bland and at times aggressively retarded. Some of the worst mission design I've ever seen. I also played the ARMA 2 and OA campaigns - found them to be lacking as well. I appreciated the freedom I got with some of the missions in ARMA 2, which meant I could approach my objectives however I wanted. I like that sort of thing and the forest setting was neat. I would've finished the campaign too if the final mission wasn't bugged to hell. Whereas ARMA 2 had some nice forests and open plains, OA had the sweet and varied Afghanistan desert. Oh, sorry - Takistan. What a bunch of shit. Then there's the voice acting. OFP never had stellar voice acting but it's like night and fucking day.

Funnily enough I have OFP installed right now, playing some Resistance. Still good. Remember that Red Hammer expansion? Holy shit was that dumb. The reason I play OFP is because it offers some vestige of realism, not the one man army nonsense.

One thing that always triggered me in these games were the - at times - almost invisible enemies. I know camo is a thing but there's limits. I hated moving up and all of the sudden my teammates spots enemies ahead - somewhere. I scan the horizon and I see jack shit. My teammates starts firing and I still can't see anything. "Enemy soldier 12 o'clock 200 metres!" Oh really? That's why binoculars are so important.

The first OFP (Arma cold war assault on steam) is now 0,79$ on steam and it was patched with aspect ratio for modern screens and new executable to make it work. No reason not to get it.

The SP campaign is still the best.

Yep, that it is.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
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Location
Massachusettes
The copy protection for Arma 2 was hilarious. You'd be playing and having a grand old time when suddenly you'd turn into a bird and start seeing everything from a bird's eye view - literally :hahano: I was doing the whole "try before you buy" thing, but decided Arma 2 & its expansions was decent enough to purchase from GamersGate when it was on sale. I don't regret that decision. I think they were, like $15 (USD). Can't beat that.
 

vean

Scholar
Joined
Jan 3, 2016
Messages
296
The ARMA 2 copy protection had another benefit for Bohemia - every time you complained about bugs in the game a squad of rabid fans would descend on you and accuse you of pirating the game because "obviously" only pirated versions had glitches.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The ARMA 2 copy protection had another benefit for Bohemia - every time you complained about bugs in the game a squad of rabid fans would descend on you and accuse you of pirating the game because "obviously" only pirated versions had glitches.

hehe, it is funny though when a pirate get busted.
 

vean

Scholar
Joined
Jan 3, 2016
Messages
296
How is it funny?

It's like you're in a world war 1 trench and a clown blows himself up with a nade. Sure, clowns doing stupid shit is funny but the tragedy of the entire situation outweighs its comedic value.
 

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