ARMA: Cold War Assault

Arma Cold War Assault is the final version of Operation Flashpoint and its Resistance expansion. At the time of its release two decades ago the game was revolutionary, offering the chance to play a squad shooter with the ability to use all kinds of vehicles on land, on sea and in the air on islands that were massive in scale. The unforgiving gameplay and grim nature of its Cold War campaigns made it an outstanding experience. Mod support extended its lifetime well beyond even its intended successor till Arma 2 took its place. The graphics may be outdated and the controls more clunky than current day releases, but replaying this classic once more is absolutely worth it. The adventures of Armstrong, Gastovski and Troska battling the evil empire on the battlefields of the Malden archipelago have proven to be as engrossing as when I played them back in the days and the editor allows one to expand the content with remarkable ease.

I could talk about this game for hours as I've been playing it since its release. Operation Flashpoint (or "Arma: Cold War Assault" as it's now called due to copyright issues between the developer and the publisher) is a mix between a first-person shooter and a real time strategy game. It pays homage to the military doctrine and focuses heavily on psychological realism: you'll be an ordinary grunt who has to stick close to his squad mates and listen to his commander in order to survive. Attack an enemy platoon guns ablaze and you'll be dead in seconds. Tactics and concentration are required in order to survive the unforgiving damage system and the realistic situations you'll have to deal with. The amount of freedom given to players is amazing: not only there are several ways to complete a mission but, besides fighting on foot, you'll also be able to drive a huge array of vehicles, such as APCs, tanks, fixed machine guns, boats, helicopters and planes. The game features an intuitive mission editor that'll allow you to craft complex missions. There are also official (and unofficial) tools to create your own units, provided that you're willing to invest some time figuring out how they work. Tutorials written by community members are plentiful however and with some dedication you'll manage to recreate any scenario your mind can think of. While the fan community shrank over the years, it's still alive and most of the countless mods grant hours of fun. Some of these change certain game aspects (graphics, sounds), some other alter the AI, add effects and innovate the main config (ECP is the pinnacle of this category) but there's total conversions too; they encompass all the aspects of the game and transpose it to alternative settings like WWII, Vietnam war, Falklands conflict and so on. They usually contain a whole lot of new units, campaign and missions. I can't recommend this game enough! Grab it and make sure to get its expansion "Red Hammer" too. Thank me later. ;)

It has all, being alone in the woods, securing a town with a small squad, tank fights on open grounds, mining streets, flying choppers and bombing AA batteries. All in one game. Its old, its graphics are no longer "good", but it is still the best military simulator I've ever played.

Having gone into this game without any nostalgia filter, I think I can easily say the game's milsim core has held up in a lot of ways. For sure it's flawed and clunky in a way that almost any old game is, but what kept it worthwhile for me was the fact that the game is seriously committed to making you feel like you're on a battlefield. This is probably it's greatest strength, AND it's biggest weakness. Right from the start you'll be thrown into the kind of unglamorous, long-range firefights that have you crawling from cover to cover, taking potshots at enemies you can barely see and clenching every time you hear a bullet land near you. Controls are built around you feeling like a real soldier on a battlefield, which helps with immersion but can really take quite a bit of adjustment. If you're a pervert for this kind of immersive difficulty and want to feel like just another grunt on a battlefield then you're on board already, but it has problems, most of which revolve around level design imo. An example: one particularly infamous level has you separated from your squad and forced to rapidly navigate your way over whole kilometres of open country filled with enemy patrols. This kind of slog can still have a certain kind of realistic appeal and it's certainly a memorable experience, but all too often levels ask you to invest a lot of time in slow-burning tension, only for you to repeat it because an angry dot on the horizon put a single bullet through your back from half a klik away. It's the kind of irritation that comes up when a game is prioritising realism over fun, and while that might be what people buy this kind of thing for (I know I do) It'd be so much better if they just gave you the option to save more than once per mission! I still have to recommend it, though. In spite of it's problems and graphical limitations, it manages to be surprisingly immersive when things heat up.

There are missions that are very difficult and can only be saved once per mission, so you will progress only through trial and error, but once you get the controls and everything you can do with it will be a little easier, not easy. This game has the best campaign I ever played in a game. And the two other official campaigns, Red Hammer and Resistance, are very, very good too. The immersion, the tension, the feeling of helplessness and the realism is incredible. Obviously time has passed and the graphics are completely out of date but believe me that will be the last thing you notice when you play this masterpiece.