Rate the first episode!

[WarfighterOne 10]

*possible SPOILERS present*

- pretty good voice acting (though there seems to be some audio positioning issue, where depending on your angle towards the speaker the audio gets muted)

That is an issue with your sound device, your setting is at 5.1 or 7.1 surround while your headset or sound system only supports stereo. You need to go into your control panel find your default sound playback device and click "configure sound" and set it to stereo.

---------- Post added at 21:00 ---------- Previous post was at 20:54 ----------

8/10, really enjoyed the campaign but it was too linear, I was really hoping for a mission like Razor Two.

[Wiki 1558]

]8/10, really enjoyed the campaign but it was too linear, I was really hoping for a mission like Razor Two.

lol, that's exactly what I didn't want to see.

Linear? Just like OFP was, so IMO it's pretty good.

[ProfTournesol 956]

lol, that's exactly what I didn't want to see.

Linear? Just like OFP was, so IMO it's pretty good.

Same for me. Down with Razor things

[NeuroFunker 11]

i think, missions like "search 2 guys on entire map", could be in there, but could be skiped, and this would affect the story abit. So if you skip this, by saying no can't do sir etc. Later in the story you could feel the consequences, maybe not huge, but so you could have motivation, maybe next time, to complete this mission. Especially with new drones and thermal vision, this task could be done much faster.

[ceeeb 147]

7/10

Good

• Simpler, shorter missions with clear objectives and course of action makes campaign much more approachable than Harvest Red.
  
• Good voice acting.
  
• Nice separation of game mechanics/tasks for new players.
  
• Nice props, ambience and intro missions.
  
• More reasonable ratio of friendly to enemies than showcase missions.
  
• Excellent timing and method of leaving player alone in forest.
  
• Cliff hanger ending, looking forward to more :)
  

Could be better

• All missions are near identical gameplay wise - charge at enemy and attack! (no recon, patrol, stealth, ambush, scavenging weapons, civilian interaction, or defence).
  
• More missions would be good given they are all very short and linear.
  
• Blufor strategy and tactics seem very aggressive and careless throughout.
  
• AI leaders run between every waypoint throughout all missions, very rushed!
  
• Obvious invulnerability of AI leader in early missions.
  
• Too many missions take place in/near Girna.
  
• Calling for more instruction/info via the support menu is not very intuitive, nor are info items clearly labelled. New players may struggle.
  
• No apparent variation in missions on separate playthroughs. Low replay value.
  
• No apparent consequence of losing men through the campaign.
  
• No mention or sighting of any civilians on the island. Why are NATO even on Stratis?
  
• AAN intro was insufficient or at least too fast. Why are the NATO peacekeeping forces movements controlled by the local military?
  
• "Blackfoot Down" - briefing mentions 1km high smoke from wreck, but it's not there in the mission.
  
• "Blackfoot Down" - Mine laying task is a bit of a token effort, since play only has 3 mines, and enemy attack from multiple directions.
  
• "Wet Work" - Fun sub ride, but completely pointless as final destination is easily accessed through forest (as the other friendly squad in the mission does).
  
• "Camp Maxwell" - Weapons, ammo and gear disappears both from player and crates every time the player goes to briefing. False sense of freedom and persistence!
  
• "Camp Maxwell" - No real sense of isolation/danger, especially in ambient dialogues. Everyone seems rather relaxed and upbeat given their situation.
  
• "Camp Maxwell" - Completely implausible that the camp would be lit up by so many lights at night!
  
• "Camp Maxwell" - These missions are mostly pointless. There are no real choices other than mission order, and no consequence of doing things in different order anyway. Very little benefit compared to static cutscenes.
  
• "Radio Silence" - I could not successfully hit any of the guard towers with the mortars.
  
• "Radio Silence" - The hill the player calls mortars from would be an excellent location for the player to use their MG from, but they are ordered to attack from point blank range with the others.
  
• "Death Valley" - why does all the briefing and radio comms talk about ridgelines and maintaining the high ground, then from the very start of the mission the AI leader follows the valley?
  
• "Tipping Point" - briefing was held during at midnight, yet "immediate attack" does not start until sunset the next day. The entire campaign up to this point takes less than a day so why wait so long to launch the immediate attack?
  
• "Tipping Point" - Harmless MI-48 seems very strange.
  
• Campaign summary "win victory" is tautology, "achieve victory" would be better.
  

Edited November 8, 2013 by ceeeb

[Private Evans 498]

8/10

2 or 3 missions more including a sniper/stealth mission around the airport and/or Agia Marina and something like the " night" showcase mission ( sabotage) giving the player at least in a few mission a bit more choices and tactical freedom and it would have been a 10/10

[Ramjali 10]

I'll say Meh....... especially the last mission, i couldn't get on the boat and it glitched out. When the last dialogue was going on, i was still at the beach lol

[paecmaker 23]

7/10

Pro

1 Great atmosphere and interesting story, in the beginning you truly feel f*cked.

2 Good voice actors, probably best so far.

3 Pretty varied, also like that camp Maxwell works as a hub.

Con(most if not all have probably been covered before)

1 Strange AI behaviour, most of the time they just rush into the enemy headlong.

2 To obvious in the beginning that the guy is invinsible.

3 Some things are not that balanced,(its impossible to hit those towers with mortar for example)

4 Strange mission design now and then(like the fact in death valley you assault at the worst place ever, or the Mi48 helicopters that never fire(perhaps understandable but it still looks pretty bad)).

5 A bit to small scale sometimes, for example in the last assault, no vehicle is used at all.

[yxman 90]

no coop,

mission bugged - blackhawk site, after defending the assault - set charge, medic doesnt move... mission impossible...

fixed with newest dev version.

but i truely hate this cheating ai/weapon sway compared to arma2...

Edited November 13, 2013 by yxman

[VioletJin 10]

I gave it an 8.

The feeling was like in Operation Flashpoint, but missions and the whole campaign were a little short.

[bvrettski 10]

I couldn't care less about episodes. I didn't buy Arma3 for the single player or the little coops. The sheer amount of missing content, lack of multiplayer gametypes/ missions , broken server browser and unoptimized or ineffiecient core code has just about killed my buzz. So when I see a lot of BIS hype around "episodes" or "beams of light being added" I just shake my head and have to wonder why BIS thinks these are the important things to be working on.

Its called "priorities" boys but maybe BIS thinks they are earning fans with single player campaigns. Maybe they can sell it as a single player game when the multiplayer base moves on to a true P vs P multiplayer game.

Judging from the lack of populated serves listed in A3 multiplayer browser maybe they already left for BF Bore(4) or CoDRedux...er I mean Ghosts.

And yes I wouldnt be complaining if Arma 3 wasn't the game I wanted to be playing but we all have to go where the energy is (and the players) and its not happening around single player episodes.

[ProfTournesol 956]

I couldn't care less about episodes.

So why are you even posting in this thread ? Not enough topics to complain ?

[NeuroFunker 11]

I couldn't care less about episodes. I didn't buy Arma3 for the single player or the little coops. The sheer amount of missing content, lack of multiplayer gametypes/ missions , broken server browser and unoptimized or ineffiecient core code has just about killed my buzz. So when I see a lot of BIS hype around "episodes" or "beams of light being added" I just shake my head and have to wonder why BIS thinks these are the important things to be working on.

Its called "priorities" boys but maybe BIS thinks they are earning fans with single player campaigns. Maybe they can sell it as a single player game when the multiplayer base moves on to a true P vs P multiplayer game.

Judging from the lack of populated serves listed in A3 multiplayer browser maybe they already left for BF Bore(4) or CoDRedux...er I mean Ghosts.

And yes I wouldnt be complaining if Arma 3 wasn't the game I wanted to be playing but we all have to go where the energy is (and the players) and its not happening around single player episodes.

So, you didn't even play the first episode, why you even bother to posting here then?

[chortles 263]

He's complaining that BI put any effort into a SP campaign to begin with.

[bvrettski 10]

He's complaining that BI put any effort into a SP campaign to begin with.

BINGO!!!

....at the expense of the part of the game I bought it for. Multiplayer! Not SP or Coops.

I'm fine with BIS doing a SP campaign but with the game so incomplete and barely playable in many respects its hard to get excited about shooting AI.

[ProfTournesol 956]

BINGO!!!

....at the expense of the part of the game I bought it for. Multiplayer! Not SP or Coops.

So it's completely offtopic.

[chortles 263]

....at the expense of the part of the game I bought it for.

And this is why Arma development is "damned if you do, damned if you don't," because going in any direction at all is going to set off somebody.

[mistyronin 1181]

BINGO!!!

....at the expense of the part of the game I bought it for. Multiplayer! Not SP or Coops.

I'm fine with BIS doing a SP campaign but with the game so incomplete and barely playable in many respects its hard to get excited about shooting AI.

Have you realized that Arma has never meant to be a MP focus series ( check any dev statement ). It's always been said by the devs, that they are making a complete sandbox that everyone can use as they please, from MP to SP, Coop... In fact the main feature has always been the editor, you have enough experience in the community to know that.

BTW today there were thousands of people playing in A3 MP, and although the game could be have been polished more on day one, it seems to be an standard to release games full of bugs nowadays ( I had to wait 4 months to be able to play an stable version of Company of Heroes 2 ). After all, and comparing to the latests Arma releases, we should be grateful that this time it was quite clean.

[wickerman 10]

2/10 I prefer multiplayer (even that is insufficient)

[chortles 263]

although the game could be have been polished more on day one, it seems to be an standard to release games full of bugs nowadays ( I had to wait 4 months to be able to play an stable version of Company of Heroes 2 ). After all, and comparing to the latests Arma releases, we should be grateful that this time it was quite clean.

Welcome to the new normal... and I say this unironically.

[NeuroFunker 11]

And this is why Arma development is "damned if you do, damned if you don't," because going in any direction at all is going to set off somebody.

well said, thats what i was trying to say, to people, on 100s selfcopying "arma 3 is a bad game" threads!

[cjph 0]

9/10 for me. I would have started with a lower score, but the more I play it the more it felt like how OFP used to grab me, so am looking forward to the next installment. A few rough edges, but some potential for when you can't find an online game.

I believe you never stop learning, so having some of the 'basics' gone over is never a bad thing.

cj

[Alwarren 2767]

6/10

Pros:

+ good voice acting

+ good overall execution

+ few bugs

+ decent enemy placement

Cons:

- String of single player missions without any cohesive narrative

- Camp Maxwell hub sounds good on the paper but only offers to change the order of missions

- Some missions are illogical. Blow up a helo and replace the smoke plume by a loud bang? Attack the capital? Why are the AAF all of a sudden loosing?

- No sense of thread. For a supposed group of survivors, there is little to no sense of doom

- Bland, exchangeable characters.

Linearity is not an issue, a lot of good games are completely linear. However, in a campaign I expected more of an underlying narrative, a story that is told within the missions. Resistance had that, OFP had that, even Harvest Red had more of it (until those dratted Warfare missions at the end). There is no story to speak of.

Characters are pretty flat. Try to summarize the characters of Kerry or Miller to anybody that hasn't played the campaign. How many words can you find to describe any of them? I mean, yeah, this is the first episode only, but that is usually were you introduce the player to the characters, and at the end of it, we're one third through the "story" and have zero to say about any of the characters we are supposed to relate to.

[OMAC 254]

7/10

That is a little generous, but I'm generally pleased with Survive. I agree with AIwarren's and ProfTournesol's comments above, and would add that my score would have been higher if weapon transfers between missions worked properly, the missions were longer, the mortar accuracy fix had not broken first task of Radio Silence mission, medic had not gotten stuck at helo in Blackfoot Down, and importantly, there was better character development*. For me, there were never any weapons lying on the table at Maxwell after the first time there, only grenades. The weapon I had from previous mission would be replaced automatically anyway in next mission, so most of the time spent trying to re-equip was wasted.

Survive was tight and nearly bug-free, and sets the stage wonderfully for the next 2 episodes. I hope that the next episodes include MASSIVE AMOUNTS of varied vehicle and drone combat, using all vehicles available in the game, as in the CWC and OA campaigns. Also more missions involving stealth and/or SpecOps, high-value target elimination, snipers, civilian interaction, house-to-house urban combat with CQB, intel gathering, and large-scale armor/combined arms, plus twists and turns and surprises in plot. And try to recreate a sense of dread and desperation as in CWC's After Montignac.

Many people knock Harvest Red, mainly because of the numerous maddening bugs (:j:, but none game-breaking), but those missions were intensely immersive and long, with many difficult and varied tasks. HR had better character development than Survive, but obviously not as good as CWC and Resistance.

I rolled my eyes when I saw that Death Valley was an improved version of Infantry Showcase. I say scrap that showcase entirely and replace with some other infantry-focused mission.

There were no points in Survive that were unbelievable in terms of plot. Overall flow and length were good, as was difficulty (I played on Veteran). Dialog and voice acting between guys at Maxwell and in missions were excellent, but there are still a few times when spoken dialog does not match was is written on screen (but these are minor in scope).

My favorite point in Survive was in Situation Normal deep in the forest after the rendezvous with Bravo at the old outpost. Some nice tension and fear built up, aided by excellent spoken dialog, but what kicked it over the edge into awesomeness was the hints of the music from Eagle Wing. Blast of nostalgia. It was then I knew I was having fun. I wish that forest experience had lasted another 45 minutes! :cool:

* This could be solved by a few cutscenes highlighting Kerry and showing his personality interacting with others.

Edited December 12, 2013 by OMAC

[SnowSky 12]

I give a 6.

This six stands only for the story itself.

I didn't experience any bugs or so, technically, everything worked well and looked good.

The first mission was at least for me somewhat of a "*baam* - my hammer is this heavy!" mission.

In my opinion, I was not really bound to any character.

I do not know them, they were just caught like me on the island, but they don't tell me a story, or chat with me.

Everybody was professional all the time. No sentimental scenes. No civilians. No hint about what happened where and why.

Speaking about the single missions in the campaign, they were nice and different.

In relation to the OFP, ArmA 1, Queens Gambit, ArmA 2, PMC, BAF and OA Campaigns I'd have the following ranking (from best to "not best"):

A2: PMC,

OFP: CWC,

OFP: Res,

A1: QG,

A2,

A2: BAF,

A2: OA,

OFP: Red Hammer,

A3,

A1

I guess, or better said, I hope, the story will let me in more deeply in the next episode.