Why I play Arma 3

OK, this doesn't really show why I play Arma 3. This is just a neat video trailer for one of the many user-created missions in the game - and a mission I've not actually played myself, at that.

I play Arma 3 with the friendly group of fellow fans at Not-Quite-Dead-Yet, most of us older than the average gamer and none of us overly serious about the game. And we play cooperatively, us against the computer AI, with as much teamwork as we can muster without pretending that we're actually in the military.

I mean, the explosions are great, and I'm continually enthralled by the lighting in the game, but those are still secondary. Or maybe even tertiary. :)

Of course, you can play the game on public servers with random people if you want. But I don't think that's much fun. You can play PvP (player vs player) or TvT (team vs team) if you want. You can play it like every other first-person shooter - just run and gun, with instant respawns - if you want.

But none of those play-styles interest me. Yet being overly serious about the game doesn't interest me, either. Most of us at NQDY are newbies, and none of us are experts - especially not me! We laugh at things like this:



There are more videos and screenshots here, if you're curious. I was going to pick out a more typical video clip of our gameplay, but I'm not sure there is one. We're always trying different missions with different leaders, different equipment, and different outcomes.

Frequently we're confused, often a bit disorganized, and sometimes even frustrated (the game is still being updated, and missions often have bugs), but we always have fun. (If you want to see expert gameplay, that's not us. Check out Dslyecxi or Jester814, maybe.)

I don't usually play multiplayer games. In fact, except for this, I stick entirely to single-player games. I even bought this game expecting to play it by myself. But after playing Arma 3 with these guys,... well, there's just no comparison.

Given that some of us are retired and others live in timezones 6 or 7 hours ahead of mine, I'm always being tempted into a game of Arma 3 - or doing the tempting, myself. :)

___
Note: Check out my other game-related posts here.