Recent reviews by Dave

Let’s get the inevitable comparison to SOG out of the way. The quality of what’s here is on the same level, everything in Spearhead is really well made and the attention to detail is excellent. In terms of quantity of content, yes SOG has a fair bit more and Spearhead has a few omissions that I was slightly surprised by, but remember that SOG has had a two year head start and three major content updates in that time. In SOG, 2 of the 3 maps, 9 of the 13 factions, and nearly half of the weapons and vehicles were not there at launch. Really you should compare what Spearhead has now to what SOG had on launch day and in that respect it holds up much better, especially as SOG was and still is 33% more expensive.

The map: Easily the best WW2 themed map I’ve seen in Arma. Among the best maps I’ve seen in Arma in general, for any era or setting. Loads of new buildings, almost all enterable and with part and fully destroyed models, plenty of hasty dugouts and shallow trenches built into the map, hedgerows that can stop a tank but are destructible if your tank has a rhino device on it, and rivers and streams of a quality that I didn’t think could be done in Arma. The water visibly flows, but no weird textures or trickery going on with it being an object you can walk through, it’s still very much water. Only slight criticism would be that the performance isn’t amazing, roughly on a par with Livonia, but I can live with it.

Weapons and gear: Really nice quality again, and enough variety for the setting without going overboard. If you’re expecting 12 different rank variants each for 20 different uniforms you won’t find it here, but there’s plenty to be getting on with. A couple of weapons you might expect to see are absent in that there’s no P-38 pistol and no Panzerschreck, but you do have the Luger and a couple of Panzerfausts. There are also a few things I wouldn’t necessarily expect like flamethrowers and a couple of Sten variants and French weapons, plus functioning bayonets. Custom reloading animations on everything are really nice, I’m particularly impressed by the Garand animation for reloading halfway through a clip, where you can see the old clip with the correct number of rounds remaining in it, and MG ammo belts that run down their last few rounds properly at the end of the belt. Iron sights have been modeled very well and recoil is manageable so everything feels good to use. Excellent frag and smoke grenade effects.

Vehicles: Similar to the weapons, there are a few things absent that you might expect to see, but also a few things included that aren’t so obvious. The store page lists what is included so if you buy it expecting anything else, that’s on you. Let’s start with the obvious things that aren’t here (at least not yet): No Willys Jeep, no US truck besides the M3 halftracks, no Kubelwagen, no Sdkfz 251 (but there is the smaller 250), no Panther, no Stugs. On the other hand you do have a Sherman Calliope, M10 and M18 tank destroyers, functioning rhino attachments, a few Panzer IIIs, and the Nashorn. First person views are excellent, some quality of life features like tank ammo counters showing for all ammo types and for all crew, and good destruction and cook-off effects. Wheeled AT and artillery can be towed behind vehicles or pushed by infantry.

Missions: Very limited for single player. A good selection for multiplayer, the obvious major official game modes plus a very well made campaign for a decent sized group. Each of the missions has a choice of 2 or 3 different approaches as well which totally changes the way the mission is played, so it feels like more than 7 missions. It would benefit hugely from a sort of killer USP mission in the way that SOG has Mike Force, as good as the campaign is the replayability is still going to be slightly limited.

I imagine more content will arrive over the next few months but for me it’s absolutely worth the money in its current state.