ARMA: Cold War Assault

Arma: Cold War Assault is the re-released version of Operation Flashpoint originally developed by Bohemia Interactive back in 2001. It is an oldie but a goodie. From a 2023 standpoint, some of the game's mechanics look dated, but overall, Arma CWA has stood the test of time. The graphics are dated, but you stop caring after a couple of hours. What is harder to oversee is the clunkiness, the bugs, and the optimization issues, of which still plenty remain. For example, I found it impossible to run the game on its Highest settings on a 20- series RTX card and a 9th Gen Intel i7 CPU with 16Gb of RAM and an SSD some 24 years post-release! Some missions were outright broken and couldn't be finished without changing the settings because the game kept crashing (i.e., Maverick). At least it natively supports wider screen resolutions, which is a godsend. The FOV didn't bother me, but I think you can change that either in the game menu or with a command line. The physics engine is goofy and broken sometimes, but not to the point that it's distracting. Overall, Arma: Cold War Assault remains highly playable and addictive from start to finish, with a fantastic sense of freedom and a tactical approach to combat. The AI is stupid, but the friendly units can be very useful if used properly. The voice acting is solid across the board, and the radio commands are legendary at this point, so there is no reason not to use them. The game seemed crushingly difficult back in the day, and there is still a learning curve to it, but you can get good fairly quickly and enjoy the sandbox. By the way, if the game is too slow, with "+," you can enjoy it 2x or 4x faster;)

I never played Operation Flashpoint back in the day; however, when I bought ArmA, I heard ArmA was branched off from this game. Operation Flashpoint is essentially the exact same game as ArmA, except ArmA has better graphics and has poor performance on any computer. I bought Operation Flashpoint because I wanted to play a game like ArmA than ran better on my computer. I give a 4/5 star due to the fact that Operation Flashpoint still has some minor performance issues regarding distance viewing, but that is about it.

It even better than it successor, the Operation Flashpoint series, especially Red River, because the AI of OF:RR is dumb. I like better the predecessor, Arma.

I don't even play the regular game. I simply go to the editor, choose a massive map, and place soldiers and whatever else I feel like. Then I play. In this sense it is like the ultimate sandbox game. The worlds are enormous and you can place anything in them that you want. Arma Gold Edition is basically the same, but with much better graphics. The game itself is not for everybody. Imagine a sort of open-world Rainbow Six or Counter-Strike, only more realistic than both. Personally I prefer very fake first-person shooters like Doom and Quake. But since you can make your own missions, you can make the game to custom suit your tastes. I like to think, "What if I put these guys behind this building, with these guys helping me, and this tank here...?" and so forth. Then I play.

as the start of the famed arma or armed assault series known by hard-core fps gamers today, it makes for a great example of the way the games differ and compare, it has great controls, fairly good-for-the-time graphics, and smooth gameplay and combat. it also has a mission editor, full campaign spanning more than 10 hrs, and separate missions. try it out if you can, its all out simulation for only 10 bucks, it should be worth $30. 5/5 great game