I tried to play that game briefly back in the day, but it was extremely slow on my PC. Guess what, 13 years later, it’s still extremely slow even on the best PC. During an explosion, FPS can drop to single digits on my Ryzen 9 5900X.
This is still a super-impressive game. I started the Red Coast scenario. It seems that I played some other scenario before, because I remember some abandoned factory and camps, but I’m not sure, it was so long ago. At the beginning of the mission, you’re told to grab a laser designator. I couldn’t figure out how to do it with the controls in this game, and it got left in the helicopter. Your mission is to blow a radar truck. But on your way you encouter two militias beating a doctor. You can decide to save him or to ignore this. In a barn, there’s a woman militias raped. You again can decide to help her escape or ignore it.
If you help both the woman and the doctor, they have a dialog. You’re then told that designating the radar is to risky, and would you mind sneaking in and planting charges. Sure, although it took me an FAQ to figure out how to set them. You need to put the charge on the ground, then interact with it immediately and set the timer in 30 seconds increments, as it ticks. Anyway, then command asks if you’re willing to designate another target on the beach. You can agree and then tell them that you forgot the designator, and they’ll call you a shithead. This amount of variability in a game about shooting people is just mindblowing.
Another small surprise: building interiors. In ArmA 3 all the buildings are empty. But here, there are pictures on the walls, and even furniture. It’s quite rare than an older game in the series is more detailed than a newer one.
