[Western Sahara CDLC] My Steam Review (March 2022)

[LSValmont 789]

Original review Link: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197977203759/recommended/1681170/

 

This CDLC is inspired and in fact made by the same guy who created the Hunter Six Campaign Mission. It was one of the most immersive missions/scenarios/campaigns you could get on the steam workshop even surpassing some if not most of the official missions/scenarios.

But Hunter Six was 100% vanilla (just a mission file) so it did not introduce any new content besides some cool custom UI elements and it was all about immersive gameplay just by using the content already inside of Arma 3. (In fact one of the reasons why it was so popular was because it did not require 20+ Mods to be fun and immersive).

That is where this CDLC comes into play as it is a more feature complete version of Hunter Six (It is called Extraction now).

In terms of new content:

1) A single new map (Western Sahara): There is not much going for it in comparison to other workshop maps and it is below the quality of all the other CDLCs but it is good enough (for the asking price) and it fits the needs of the game mode (Extraction) perfectly. It just gets boring fast due to most locations looking kinda the same and even thou the map is huge it ends up feeling small because of that.

2) A few new weapons, barely any new attachments and/or equipment for them. Nothing you can't get from mods really.

3) Factions and their uniforms are quite basic but good enough to immerse you in the CDLC's theme.

4) Game Modes (Gameplay): This is were the CDLC was supposed to shine (Its main strong point). You see, EVERYONE loved Hunter Six and everyone wanted and would pay any amount money for... a MULTIPLAYER COOP version of it!

And yes, this CDLC features what WE ALL wanted! We finally got our Hunter Six MP COOP Campaign after like 5+ years of waiting and we gladly paid the USD 6+ for it.

Yet sadly the MP version of Extraction, as it stands now, comes with an unforgettable flaw!

And that huge flaw is that in Extraction's SIX/EIGHT hours Campaign it is IMPOSSIBLE for the players playing in Multiplayer COOP to SAVE THEIR PROGRESS!!!

Yes, you heard me right... that means that you need to somehow have all four of your friends (and this is how you will test their friendship!) to play uninterruptedly with you for SIX/EIGHT hours straight!

Of course all of them unemployed and without families and/or duties living on their parent's basements!!!

What is worst is that there are a number of Multiplayer saving scripts and mods out there that could've been used or at least inspired the devs of this CDLC or the remaining A3 Devs (Because BI gets half the earnings from this and all CDLCS) to make a decent Multiplayer compatible saving system.

Was that so hard to do? Was that feature so impossible to do over the years that you had to release this CDLC with its MAIN SELLING POINT (The MP COOP Campaign), the whole reason for this CDLC to exist in the first place in a crippled half baked state due to players not even able to save their game mid campaign in Multiplayer?

Other than that inexcusable omission that hopefully gets patched in the future I can still recommend this CLDC but as a single player experience and for those who never played HUNTER SIX to experience just how good it was.

As a personal side note, this CDLC would have been much better released under the ART OF WAR DLC model, which was paying for a year or two of exclusive access and then be made available for everyone (who owns the base game) because this CDLCs content just fits the vanilla lore perfectly and the size of the content is pretty minuscule anyway.

Just put the map and the extraction game mode behind a paywall but add everything else to vanilla Arma 3. (That would've been the best move for the players!)