ArmA 2

If the CallofDuty & BattleField series leave you hungry for something much more realistic, try ARMA. However, it does have many flaws, including an overly complex difficult interface, advanced but very inconsistent and cheating AI, and a lot of serious bugs. The singleplayer is somewhat broken (if only they would do it like in the original Operation Flashpoint). Multiplayer was once the main appeal, but now few people play online, and it was always very vulnerable to hacking. But there is still nothing quite like ARMA. Graphics are excellent, but you need a very powerful PC for smooth gameplay.

As for the expansion Operation Arrowhead: The only real improvement over the original ARMA2 is that there are slightly less bugs. Otherwise, it still has the same bad or broken mechanics, slow cumbersome interface, bad singleplayer campaign, and inconsistent or cheating AI (my favourite: AI tanks that seem to wall hack you). The only reason to ever play ARMA is because it is more realistic than other series like Battlefield, and it mostly is, but some parts are not realistic at all, which creates a bad bipolar mixture. The DLC campaigns are marginally better but far too short. Sadly, the ARMA series can still feel more like a good tech-demo than a properly polished game. If only ARMA's scale and realism were combined with Battlefield's accessibility and polish, it would be amazing.

I'm laying on my belly in the dirt, picks up my binocular, opens up the pretty huge control scheme and order my men to stand up, hold their fire, and keep quiet as we approach the village we're about to attack. One false move can erase my 40 minutes of planning the whole approach. Most people beg for realism in games but when it actually happen, many people simply find it to hard and complex.

Realism in arma means that your enemies are developed to kill you and not to amuse you. If you get shot in the leg you might have to crawl the rest of the mission if you don't get medical attention. You wounds never heal. Bullets drops and do not go straight. You can only take as much damage as your extremely smart enemies. Barely nothing is scripted.

There's no Run'N Gun heroics here. Enemies can shot you down with precision laying 400-500 meters away, hidden behind a bush. If you don't like the concept of totall military realism, and if you don't have the patience to learn the fairly complex control scheme, don't go for this game. Arma 2 requires a lot of patience and the game has a very long learning curve. When you learn how to play the game, all about the controls, and how to act in combat and set up tactics, you will probably enjoy it. The graphics and the game physics is amazing, as well as the seize of the map, the freedom to complete your objective almost however you want, the multiplayer mode, and the incredible ability to mod the game: there are thousands of mods for it out there.

The game also feature a Map Editor, which let you create your own missions and campaigns. It's pretty easy if you want to do it on the basic level - and really, really fun! One of the downhills with the game is that you'll need a pretty good computer to even run the game on normal settings. Buggs is also something you that is a problem - however- most of it has been fixed after release with patches.

It's really, really worth to try out in case you have a powerful computer, and of course, if you want a game that requires pure skill and tactical thinking. Forget about everything you've learned in battlefield or call of duty. This is as close to reality you can get in form of a video game. Arma 2 is finally an outstanding combat simulation game.