Platform: PC
Price: $59.99
ARMA 3, developed by Bohemia Interactive, is a military simulation sandbox game. It is a game that gives you the tools to build whatever experience you can imagine using a mil-sim skill set.
Its experience is truly what you make of it. You can dive into the campaign with friends or you can join various multiplayer servers which host a crazy amount of missions that vary based on every changeable value in the game. Some servers will have you randomly spawn in the massive islands of the smaller Stratis 20km^2 or the gigantic Altis map of 270km^2.
You are equipped with no supplies and no way to communicate with other players. Weapons may be found in towns or in vehicles spread across the game world and the only rule is to survive.
Other servers will have you deep in the midst of a long military operation. They will either have you at base, waiting for your team to request an airstrike, or have you in the field fighting with the other players. However, these are just a few examples as the game’s editor allows you to do much, much more.
It is important to note that ARMA 3’s controls are a bit daunting at first. The amount in which you can manipulate your player character, weapons and vehicles is very expansive. The game allows you to adjust your character’s posture more than the usual prone, crouch or stand. It can be frustrating to accidentally press a key and have your character be stuck in a certain way, but it is really just the game’s complex controls.
ARMA 3 is not like Call of Duty or Battlefield — it must be played slowly and much thought must be given to each situation that you enter. Sprinting blind into any situation is likely to get you killed.
Because ARMA 3 models its ballistics to the real world counterparts, your weapons are much more effective, deadly and can hit targets from much longer ranges than a game like Call of Duty. Hearing the bullets whiz by you and hearing the ground snap from all the bullets really drives home that somebody wants you dead and also gives each weapon an outstanding amount of force. It makes it clear that you are being shot at by effective killing machines.
Collegian Entertainment Reporter Diego Carrera can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com.
