Recent reviews by O'Neill

Keys....

What if zombie apocalypse, but instead of killing zombies we just got freaky instead with weird horny freaky energy? Also, ugly bastard final boss

What if zombie apocalypse, but freaky?

Angle shifts...

Didn't realize I played on a Playstation... wait, what's that? I don't? I play on a PC? Through Steam? Then why do I need a Playstation account?

Oh... I don't need a PSN account? Why didn't you say so? Anyway, let's get back to killing commie robots and squashing bugs in the name of managed democracy.

TL;DR: It's a $30 test demo for BI to see what people think about their new direction. Not Arma 4. Their description even says as much. Refunded because I'd prefer to have spent money on a game that will be supported longer than a year.

Arma Reforger is a bit of a letdown with the direction and style of gameplay that is currently being shown. It honestly feels more akin to a Cold War-era, early build Squad than an Arma game. With it being designed to be more console-friendly, that's also a bit of a turnoff for me as I quite liked Arma 3 with how its UI and controls were established. I will give credit where credit is due regarding the UI and control functions, though, as I do kind of like how you can interact by looking at what you want to do, like changing from driver to gunner, versus performing a scroll-wheel action like you would have to do in base Arma 3; although even that lost its charm to me after the first half-hour or so.

I will also give Reforger credit regarding its terrain generation. The terrain looks beautiful. I find the character models (particularly the faces) to be jank this early on, but the terrain is a marked improvement over what Arma 3 could provide. Weapon models, vehicles, and equipment such as clothing also seem high quality, so the graphical improvement is certainly there.

However, as mentioned previously, the gameplay is not there for me. I own Squad and if I wanted to play Squad then I would play Squad, not Arma. The Arma franchise has always had its own appeal to me that separated it from other games. It felt unique. Maybe I'm simply trying to cope with the fact that I put way too much damn time and effort into Arma 3 than I should have, but the direction that Arma Reforger is showing with its gameplay for its future Arma 4 release just doesn't feel like it has the same uniqueness for me that the previous Arma titles held. I may simply be ill-informed and this is just the gameplay they have as a test bed while focusing on the engine itself, but if this is the style of gameplay intended for future releases... why not just play Squad?

My biggest gripe with the game is that it's a $30 test demo for a game that will come out later on. I personally feel that with the features provided and the minimal capability the game has in its current state, it should be a public demo for people to download and play for free. I think BI would certainly have gotten better marketing that way versus having their "new direction" currently sitting at 61% positive reviews out of 4,221. Add on top of that the server issues that many are reporting and game performance issues, and it really becomes difficult to justify $30 for a consumer when that money could be better spent buying something else. Admittedly, it's an early access test game and server problems are to be expected as much as game performance problems. I also seem to be in the minority as I experienced no technical problems other than the game crashing when I went to exit to main menu. Then again, I only played as much as the Steam refund policy would allow.

In conclusion, I don't think Arma Reforger is completely terrible without any redeeming qualities, but I also don't think it has enough going for it to make it worth $30. And if this is the gameplay direction for the future of the Arma franchise, then that's a bigger nail in the coffin that is my Arma career than my last Arma 3 unit has been.

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