Listen to me now. This game is unbelievably awesome. Most of these reviews - if you take care to read them, are from when the game first came out. It has come a long way - and so has the hardware to support it. Buy the game - even better if you buy combined ops - or buy ArmA II and Operation Arrowhead and combine them. It's not that expensive. Join a clan - a good one - one without ridiculous requirements to maintain membership. Play with the crew. Get to know them. And run some of the most immersive, realistic, expansive, open-ended, tactical, fun, glorious missions you have ever seen. ArmA vets laugh about CoD. We mock CoD. Because CoD doesn't have anything on ArmA. Seriously. Buy it and play it. Learn it. It's tough - we know. But good things come to those who wait - and put in the effort - to learn a real game. And if you can't figure it out - after just a few hours of applied effort - a look or two through the controls menu - and maybe even asking a question or two on multiplayer - then go away - we don't want you here anyway. Go back to your CoD where enemies throw themselves into your bullets and you are virtually invincible. We will be busy fighting serious **** enemies - human or AI - and trying not to get shot even once - because this game does not f*ck around.… Expand

Arma II and its expansion do require a powerful PC, but that's because its high graphical fidelity. Xalex mentioned in their review: "Other sandbox games do not have this issue at all, for example farcry2 and fallout3. Those game I can run on max settings with atleast 40 fps, ArmA i am glad if I get 15 fps"

The above quote is ridiculous because it's akin to saying "I can run the original DOOM on max and get 400 FPS, but on Far Cry 2 I only get 40 FPS." Obviously, games with lower graphical quality are going to run better. It doesn't mean that a game is horribly unoptimized because it doesn't give you the same FPS that much visually simpler games give you. Xalex' request to "Optimize the game and make it playable on normal computers" suggests they don't understand what optimizing is. Making it playable on "normal" (aka middleware) computers would have nothing to do with optimizing it, it would instead require reducing the graphical quality. Or, they could play the game on low graphics settings and let those with powerful computers enjoy the great graphics that games like Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 aren't in the realm of providing.… Expand

A great addition to the already great ARMA 2. It adds multicore support to ARMA 2. The game finally comes to life. Online play is a joy with the right company... Watch out for British Armed Forces and Private Military Company. Also watch out for the community addons. Bohemia Interactive is a great little company that cares about it's customers - it deserves our support. EA/Activision take notice! You don't care about your customers!… Expand

Speaking as someone who was pressured into the game by friends I was expecting a very boring game because lets be honest. We play games to escape reality instead of portray it. My expectations dropped when I found several bugs in one scenario. Framerate drops when zooming in, optimization is very poor and the controls are very hard to learn. I gave up on it for a while. It wasn't until my friends invited me into a clan did fun start to appear. A local clan filled with ex British army veterans taught me real life tactics and shared some extremely interesting stories. We then started to do events where bullets flied over our heads, A-10's screamed in a ball of fire and friends screamed into the microphone while dragging injured teammates out of the explosive battlefield. We did stealth missions, air drop missions, all kinds of different scenarios.

To sum it up Operation Arrowhead is a game which repays effort and determination with fun times. If your willing to put yourself through the buggy interface and the rubbish netcode then you will have alot of great times. Its a great game if your interested in joining the military as its the closest you can get to real life warfare. Come with friends and your bound to have a good time.… Expand

Best mil sim to date. Most people dont like it because its not a run and gun game like COD. If you want to make the game better get ACE mod, JSRS, and find a group to play with.

Great expansion pack. Nice change to Afghanistan/Iraq environment. New vehicles ,weapons, maps and good old ARMA II gameplay. The best thing of all is that this expansion pack brings some new experience and tactics , its not the same fighting in the woods and fields of Chernogorsk and fighting in the desert and rocky terrain of Takistan.

Whilst Operation Arrowhead may technically be an expansion for Arma 2, it can run as a standalone game and has enough contents to make doing so worthwhile, if you were to wish to do so. It does take quite a bit of getting used to, even if you don't play CoD or similar games, because there is quite a steep learning curve, but persistence is worthwhile as this game really is one of the most immersive on the market. This is a game which keeps you on your toes at all times, makes you actually feel afraid as gives you a sense of accomplishment even if all you do is survive. If you can run it on maximum graphic settings, this game looks great, and it still looks pretty good on lower settings. However, playing it does give the impression that the engine isn't particularly well optimized. The campaign mode won't ever win any awards for originality in terms of plot, but it's a lot of fun and lets you try out several different types of combat, as do the equally enjoyable scenarios which loosely link in with the campaign. The mission editors (both instant-action-style and more advanced) will provide you with almost limitless fun and I would say that it is this sandbox aspect that really shines. If you can find a dedicated team for online play, the experience is simply incredible, though doing so can be difficult.

My advice to anybody who is willing to invest quite a bit of time for a truly rewarding experience would be to buy this right away.… Expand

Great gameplay , perfect AI , outstanding simulation , everything is pure awesome except the physics. I hoping Bohemia improves throughout the year. Also, Bohemia is a great and experienced developer group that greatly cares about it's customers

Arma II as a whole offers a unique experience of sandbox gameplay and a military shooter/simulation. It has it's flaws, being generally a very buggy and clunky game, but aside from that I believe the game is very underrated. It is a very modifiable game, with most of the big mods working fairly well in multiplayer, which in my opinion is the only way to play the game, even if it's just with one other person playing Warfare with the ACE mod installed.… Expand

ArmA II in general is a game for a smaller audience. This game won't give you the hollywood style single player that many gamers have come to expect from FPS's. This game won't give you the run 'n gun style multiplayer that most FPS's give you today. This is a hardcore, tactical military simulator. If you expect fast gameplay and instant gratification, this game is not for you.

If you can get used to the gameplay and get past the huge learning curve, though, this is a very fun game to play. ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead improves some points of the game and does what it was designed to do. It's not supposed to be a completely new game, just a standalone expansion (Thus the Combined Ops feature). This is a heavy hitter on your system, though, so make sure your computer is up to snuff before purchasing. All in all, it is a terrific expansion to a terrific game, it just requires more effort to get into then the usual game.… Expand

This game is one of the most realistic military stimulations I have ever played. I love the way wind effects sniper fire, and how you don't have to get hit by 2,000 bullets to die like on call of duty. I will have to say that the singleplayer isn't the best, but it's a blast if a buddy joins you in co-op, same with the multiplayer. I find this game most enjoyable due to it's editor, its easy to create your own bombing mission, or make a custom SF night operation. Unlike most of the other people that have been stupid enough to dislike this game, it is easy to make a descent mission or firefight without learning the scripting, they are just a bunch of trolls. There are many weapons to choose from too, better yet, if you get the expansion packs, it's even better. I will give this game a 10, and Arma II OA rocks!!!… Collapse

That has been said so many times already. Arma series is more to consider as a simulation than a game. There are bugs, glitches, the movements, some animations and the weapon balancing are weird but compared to the satisfaction on point of view of war simulation, realism and content Arma is simply the best in its category.

very good reality military simulation game.
real world pyshical bulletin use and cannon using this game.
and modfier game design tool presented. custom mod and C & C++ Programing language used mission create or more functional envirment present

This game is another example of a game that could have had so much potential but didn't. At first, the game charms you with its introduction to a high level of combat realism and expansive environments.
However, the game is still covered in bugs and you also need a beast of machine to play it. Even with a quad core and ati 4800 series, it was lagging consistently throughout the missions on medium settings. Further, the multiplayer is not set up in a way that makes it fun and easily approachable. The environments look great and realistic, but the AI of the computer severely dents any sense of realism you may take in from the scenery alone. My advice to the developers would be to spend a bit more time making this product, put a bit more polish on it, and get some more feedback from other gamers (perhaps by releasing a beta/message board) because if it was done right, this could be an awesome game… Expand

Where to begin, ill start like everyone else and say that you need a pretty decent computer to run this game. im running an i5 650, hd 6870, 6gb of ram and i have to turn settings down to medium to get 40fps. Now on to the game, ArmA 2 and operation arrowhead has great potential to be a great game, unfortunately its it plagued by things like bugs, mentally retarded AI, terrible sound effects, a terrible physics engine and clunky controls. The addition of an artillery computer changed artillery and mortars from completely unusable to overpowered destruction(yes the aforementioned could be fixed by mods but this a ArmA review not an ACE review). The single player story line is absolutely terrible but it serves its purpose. Most public servers are filled with hackers or people who have no idea what they are doing and end up blowing everything up or killing them selves. But lets say you install ACE and JSRS, ignore the bugs, bad AI, find a clan server that has dedicated members. Once you do this, Arma 2 will be the best gaming experience you will ever come across ever. The rush you feel when you strafe an enemy convoy with an A-10 or the satisfaction you get when you snipe an enemy officer from 2000 meters away is unmatched it any game. ArmA 2 could have been a great game but sometimes the bugs make it almost unplayable. This is why im giving it a 7 instead of a 10. Hopefully Arma 3 will be better… Expand

This game could've had soooo much more put into it, but unfortunately, it didn't. For me, it's the small things that make a game an enjoyable experience. Some things I noticed that annoyed me was the medic healing...you see something happening when you heal someone, but apparently all of the band-aids are invisible or something. Some other things is if you actually saw your men get in and out of tanks, boats, helo's, etc...it would be much better, but as most FPS games "insta-pop" you into Vehicles, it's not a big deal. Although these small flaws, along with the sometimes idiotic AI, poped at first to me, It was over shunned by the pure "awesomeness" that the editor holds. For the longest time, I was ignorant to about 95% of the editors features. After discovering them, making some kickass missions, and pretty much enjoying my self, I learned that this game was a definitive good buy.… Expand

Whether or not this game is worth picking up depends on what you are looking for in an FPS. If you want a fast-paced interactive Michael Bay movie that holds your hand every step of the way, turn back now. If you want a true challenge that is as close to reality as possibly, give this a whirl. I'll start with this: This game does NOT hold your hand, everything takes patience and getting used to. The Single-Player, while short, was fun while it lasted, and while it was buggy at points (In the Vanilla, thanks to the games modding community I managed to fix the AI bugs mostly.) it was still a nice campaign. Your actions in the campaign influence what missions you get and how the game ends. For example: There is a mission where you pilot an AH-64D to take out AA Nests. If your chopper gets shot down and you pull off a proper crash landing (And survive the crash), instead of a game-over screen, you get a mission to rescue that pilot. Most of the fun, however, lies in Multiplayer. Thanks to mods like ACE and DayZ, there is hundreds of hours of fun to be had. If you get into a decent clan and are good with teamwork, this game seriously kicks ass. Lone Wolfs do not last long at all, however. The Editor is probably what gives the most value, you have these insanely large maps, and you can do pretty much ANYTHING. Want to HALO Jump with a four man team in the middle of pitch-black night and slowly pick off insurgents one-by one? You can do that. Want to launch a full-scale invasion with UH-60s full of ground troups and AH-64s ripping armor to shreds? You can do that. Want to JDAM an entire town just for the hell of it? You can do that. If you have patience, this game could be the death of your Social Life. If you are the everyday CoD player and have no interest in making a swap from Arcade to Milsim, this is not your game.… Expand

This is simply the most realistic military simulator I have ever played. ARMA II: OA is a standalone expansion pack to ARMA 2. In Operation Arrowhead, the player can assume the role of various military duties from simple infantry man to tank commander or pilot of a combat helicopter. Also in some scenarios the player is allowed to command units like a real-time strategy game. The team commands are a little bit tricky but with some practice they offer a great strategic layer to the game. The game can be played with 1st person or 3rd person view. The weapons in the game are modelled after real weapons, and they feel and sound like their real world counterparts. There is basically one huge, and two smaller maps in the game. The game offers a campaign, some single player missions, multiplayer and a -easy to use-game editor, and moddability. With mods the game can offer hundreds of hours of gameplay. BE ADVISED the game is very difficult (one shot one kill), and is not for impatient gamers.… Expand

Where to start... Well first of all you need a very powerful computer to run this game if you want to play it on normal settings or higher. It seems that the game is very badly optimized to perform well on normal computers. Ingame even 1 tree or a bush immediately makes you lose 10 fps let alone going in to a village with buildings and props. Other sandbox games do not have this issue at all, for example farcry2 and fallout3. Those game I can run on max settings with atleast 40 fps, ArmA i am glad if I get 15 fps. Going in to a village or an area with vegitation I get maybe 5 fps at times (dualcore,3gb ram, 500mb Gcard). So yeah, this game is for the elites that own a NASA computer. ______Single player missions are buggy and boring_____Multiplayer mode is not that much fun either to be honest, but it can be great if you play it with some guys you know on a closed server. The public servers are a mess in general, and 9 out of 10 servers play missions where you fight against NPC's, not pvp. The NPC's are rubberbanding when they move, making it very unrealistic. There are also some annoying bugs where you keep bouncing on rocks and stuff___ Now what I do like is the editor where you can create your own missions. But unfortunately the editor is very user unfriendly, because it requires you to learn a whole script language first before you can create a nice and complete mission. If you are up for that challenge to learn the scripting then you will be disapointed even more, because all the tutorials and guides are all over the place on many different websites. So you will have to spend many hours searching on how to script specific stuff, and you have to spend a ton of hours reading the guides before you can even do the basic stuff. And not to mention that a lot of the script coding you can find are mission examples of how to use the code, so you are left clueless and have to figure it out on your own._______This game has the potential to be the best ever, but currently fails at so many points that I can not give it more then a 6.____ Optimize the game and make it playable on normal computers instead of the lagfest slideshow it is now. It ruins the experience completely.______ps, the rating system is messed up here. If my rating shows as a 10 or something, it should be a 6.… Expand

So many great ideas in this game but its just so damn buggy. I wish more games included this kind of shooting realism except with more polish. Required prone shooting at 300 yards, single shots required at +50 yards, necessary use of cover, 2 shots and your dead, I love this stuff but its just not polished at all. Why is the mouse so jittery? Why do the enemies sometimes run back and forth in the open? I think if the industry really wants to revitalize the FPS genre some developer should take some ideas from ARMA II and perfect them.… Expand

One of the best game of history. They are truly focusing on every aspect of realistic simulation and NOT how to make game for every retard out there. Add fact there is hundrets of mods and addons for free and here you have it - best FPS war simulator ever. Better can be only Arma 3 ;)

A fatally flawed genius of a game. Instead of fixing its fatal flaws, the developers have decided to concentrate their efforts on slick graphics and an increasingly confusing and over-designed interface. The singe-player missions are fewer than ever, each designed as if to frustrate the player in a new way. The vehicles keep driving off the road and into bits of rock, where they then get stuck, bumping and smashing into every piece of scenery, so you can't trust them to travel automatically. The way the UAV works in the helicopter mission is never explained and, trying to figure out how to use its targetting takes all the fun out of that mission. To show the user that they really don't understand what we want, one of the missions has an idiotic "puzzle" element added to it you're expected to write down some weird squiggles and punch them into a bomb defusing keypad. The game is already filled with frustrations why add another one!? It looks like the authors have lost their way and lack any basic common sense fix the horrible flaws that shouldn't be acceptable in a commercial release, rather than make the graphics more shiny and the interface a headache to figure out.… Expand

fails to fix the bugs and queer animations.
the laser sights are implemented in a horrible way (expect nothing like those wonderful cod4 PEQ's). flir is non-essential and mediocre.
all it does is add vehicles camouflages, and a dozen weapons. and 3 maps, two of which are tiny (really!)
most of the "new" stuff like the chinook, the army units, the scars, the m110,
had already been added by modders fo free and was of equal quality to this "new" stuff.
no new multiplayer modes
no AI improvements. in my opinion its not worht buying if you didnt particularly like A2.… Expand

Hate to see someone ratting this 3 because the laser sight doesn't look like COD4... really... The fixes are largely in the back-end of the game and allow for much more stable and in-depth moding. A great step to make... not there yet thogh. ARMA3 I hope!!! BTW... needed for Dayz All ARMA games deserve 8-10 rating for being the best in what they do, COD is not simulation. It is surprisingly hard to pioneer a genre and ARMA has done that in my eyes.… Expand

I didn't think very highly of the Arma 2 engine, due to it being quite user-unfriendly and buggy. I wasn't interested in the content of this mod, only in getting DayZ mod going. For the price I wouldn't have bought it otherwise, although I am happy with DayZ and do recommend it for that reason, at least until DayZ goes standalone.

A very nice and hardcore game, not for for your typical "OMG 360 noscope hardcore collateral" children. I myself enjoy spending time in the editor which has pretty much everything to create nice missions yourself, and if that is not enough, give yourself unlimited ammo fly with an A-10 across multiple enemies raining down terror from your GAU-8 cannon. But overall, it are the mods which really make the game to what it is - if you don't enjoy Day-Z because the lack of real action, you can still enjoy other mods like those in which you can capture and hold cities against wave of enemies.… Expand

ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead looks great. I have not played it but I want to and have seen trailers. This game looks entirely perfect and I definitely would want this game.

Love the game. This is not your average arcade shooter. This is not for the COD and Battlefield players. This is the real deal.

Do not buy this game for an EPIC storyline or on-rails shooter. This is a simulator. The graphics are over the top beautiful, but you need a very good graphics card to run it on high settings.

Thank you Bohemia. Cannot wait on Arma 3

Operation Arrowhead runs far smotther than the basic Arma II, it has better graphics, whole new island (although not as good as Chernarus), some nice missions etc. Great expansion! Although the campaign is really short (under 6 hours), but then there are also standalone missions which make up the price.