A broken promise
Let me tell you a little story. Trust me, it is relevant.
I was somewhat late to the party when I discovered Operation Flashpoint on PC. There was something magical about that game. In it, I crawled on my belly for an hour in some small village trying to maneuver around a sudden enemy APC, and I eventually set a charge on it and managed to blow it up. I never experienced such freedom, such risk, such danger and such dynamic combat in a game before. The problem was that by that time the graphics were really showing their age.
When Arma (the spiritual successor) was announced, I was on board right away. That was one of the first games I actually bought. However, I quickly discovered that my PC could not handle it. And the weird thing was that the level of the graphics I was seeing on my screen really did not justify the level of strain on my computer. On top of that, the game was crashing and glitching out the whole time. I upgraded my PC and even then could not play it on maximum graphics, and the bugs did not go away. Patch after patch came out and yet the game remained extremely unstable. This is a big problem because in Arma it takes a long time to get to the action. Due to the realism, the map is huge and there is no fast travel mechanic. So once you get to the action and you can't shoot the enemy because of the extreme lag or because your game crashes, it can get pretty annoying. However, something awesome was still there, just like it was in Operation Flashpoint. I kept trying to enjoy the awesome in spite of the bugs.
Soon Arma II was announced. It was a strange announcement because Arma had not been out for that long and a lot of its glitchiness was still there. Shouldn't you fix your last game first before you release another? Also, Arma II did not seem to add anything new. Yes, the single player campaign was different (which few people cared about) and there were a few more post-processing effects slapped onto the graphics, but the game still very much felt like the old Operation Flashpoint. Well, no matter. I was still hooked, so I bought Arma II...and it had the exact same problems that Arma I had! My PC could not handle it despite the fact that the game had the capability of showing very realistic lighting, the system you needed to run the game at high settings was some theoretical maximum that no normal person at the time had. On top of that, the game continued being buggy and suffering major lag issues. Lag issues are particularly detrimental to Arma because it insists on simulating real bullets and bullet paths, which is awesome in single player, but which in multiplayer means that the bullets will arrive to their destination the next morning. And the problem of time consumption continued as well. It takes about half an hour to get to a combat zone. By the time your teammates have picked their damn outfitting and by the time the team-killing griefer in the transport helicopter is finally voted off the server, it's been AN HOUR OF YOUR LIFE THAT YOU WILL NEVER GET BACK!
It took me until Arma III to understand that all Arma games are just one and the same broken-ass game that I paid 3 times + the costs for the upgrade of my PC. The worst part is that the third game will have decided to throw away the authentic setting and wrap itself in some fictional war cr*p that so that I can't even enjoy the most stable reiteration of the series. I spent so much time and money on this decade long scam. Did I have good moments in Arma II? Sure. It is unique in its approach to realism. However, I had to waste so much time and money and nerves that I don't think it was ever worth it. Arma III is probably better if you don't mind the futuristic setting, while Arma II is probably the best realistic version and its many mods can make it the most realistic shooter ever, but you must know what you're getting yourself into and how much time it will cost.
