First things first: This game was originally called Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, it was ranamed Arma due to legal problems between publishers and developers.

Now to the review:
I came across Operation Flashpoint way back on 2001. It was just mind blowing, at that point there simply were no game with such an broad scope and such a powerful imersion.

The story takes place in the good´n old 80´s, when there were real intenational tension and warfare wasn´t a matter of eletronics, laser targeting and remote vehicles.
A crazy russian general takes a nuke, a division of the red army and a lot of tanks and takes over some islands in the north atlantic, but those islands are under NATO protection, so the war begins.

During the game you take the role of 4 soldier with distinct roles in the army. A foot soldier, a tank pilot, a chopper pilot and a black ops expert. With all 4 you climb up in the ranks, starting as a grunt and ending up in commanding large groups of units on the battlefield. It also ends in delivering a very diverse experience, as you play on several unique missions and control an interesting variety of ground and air vehicles.

The gameplay is rather chunky, the movement is very limited, it all seems weird at first, but it is actually very immersive. There is one of the great virtues of the game, its realistic aproach to combined arms warfare. If you imagine that a soldier is carrying over 20kgs of equipment and ammo, it would be really hard to run and jump as you do in Call of Duty.
Without planning and the right resources, there´s nothing a squad of soldiers can do agains an armored vehicle, and the importance of air support is acurately shown.
The game is very unforgiving, the damage system works like this: Shot in the legs, and you can´t stand. Shot in the arms, you cant aim. Shot twice and you die. Shot in the head, game over.
This actually works out very well, as this system forces the player to play cautiously, and adopt real world strategies to stay alive. You are forced to take cover, to look around for enemies before moving, to pay attention to orders and intel in order to not fall in a trap or get flanked.

Another strong point from this game is the support developers gave to the community. The game was designed to be easily modded, and the developers were very active in the community, patching the game and implementing features that the players asked for.
The game also featured an mission editor mode, wich was the same used by the developers to create the main campaign, allowing players to create their own missions at will, sharing with other players or even creating awesome co-op or PvP missions.
It was a very new thing at the time, and the community was very solid. This philosophy is still kind of rare, but it was always part of the Arma series, and Arma 3 specifically targets for a relevant community participation in game developing and content creation.


Operation Flashpoint was improved in nearly every aspect along the Arma series, but still stands as the game that started it all.

Its vast open terrain, flexible and diverse gameplay, realistic aproach and some trully memorable events changed the landscape of the military games and still survives as an enjoiable game.

In it´s time it deserved a 10/10.

Today, we can see that it aged well, and still attracts attention as milestone in millitary simulation. 8/10

i ran into bush.jpg with a uaz and died

This game shows its age. The graphics are dated. The controls are clunky and sometimes illogical. Flight is difficult, as you can barely render in the ground without crashing. The AI is infuriatingly good at some times. Its freaking brilliant.

As you can see by the ammount of hours i've sunk into this game, its a damn good game that, if treated correctly, can be played for a long, long time. The AI makes the game an actual challange (something many modern mainstream shooters lack theese days) and, when you fall to the ground in a hail of AK-47 bullets, you know its probably because you did something wrong. The mission editor is one of the best features - it has allowed me and a small group based around this game to access hunderends of user-created mission for our multiplayer sessions, preventing us from getting bored of the same-old, same-old.

Modding is another great factor; its very simple to install mods (and, admittidly, break your game) which can range from a few extra units to a total conversion. I'm currently running with the WGL5 mod, which adds much improved animations, models, weapons and a rudimentry medical system.

Definatly worth a play. If you get bored, add a modpack or two.

it will always be called operation flashpoint

"TARGET! RIFLEMAN, 200 METRES! SOUTH-EAST!"

My childhood, rests right here. Don't let the title fool you, this is Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. One of the first milsims of it's time. A decently groundbreaking game back in it's day, with a strong cult following.

It has been renamed as such after the scummy devs from Codemasters fully acquired the rights to the title from Bohemia Interactive, and ruined the franchise to hell and back realising they don't have the "Czech touch" to games like this, spawning awful games such as Dragon Rising and Red River, which weren't QUITE generic cawadooty CQB shooters, but were basically casualised versions of the former games.

Naturally this game got later rebranded after Bohemia released ARMA, the spiritual successor to OpFlashpoint. It lacks one of the expansions, Red Hammer, due to it's partial ownership to Codemasters, but it's easily downloadable and works fine.

My childhood of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about in the world editor, spawning in yourself with jets and jeeps to roam the huge islands, and slavic inspired villages, brings a tear to my eye to this day. Naturally this game is even better on LAN or with something like Evolve w/ friends.

Sure, you could buy Arma 3 and tack on hundreds of mods and play in Zeus (which is pretty great by the way), but this is where it all began. Good for a laugh at the primitive graphics or if you want to take a trip down memory lane, and take it for granted.

10/10 buy it now, it's not even that expensive. Buy on sale, or you can buy a certain package with Arma 3 that gives you this game for free. (as a giftable copy, too!)

This game is so hard, youll die at the Menu.

This game came out in 2001. I played it in 2014. My computer wasn't good enough to run other games and when this game was free i decided to try it out. Honestly, this game was really amazing. I had a great time with the story and the multiplayer too. I met a lot of different people on it too. That year the multiplayer servers shut down and the only way to play online became using software that recorded the servers. If you wish to play this online I recommend using OFPmonitor. Its called that because the game was originally called Operation Flashpoint: Cold War crisis. I have much more hours on this game and even though I have a better pc now, I still recommend this game to anyone. I even was part of a clan called the 23rd. It was really great while it lasted. There should still be people playing it now though. Again, the price isn't that high and I recommend this game for both sp and mp. If you wish to play online download OFPmonitor, which is on Github. https://github.com/Poweruser/OFPMonitor/releases
I used to go by the name InSane-_-Army02 in the game. If anyone remembers me, feel free to add me

Bought and played when it originally came out, both single and multiplayer. Got it on steam on a sale recently and tried it again. Single player campaign is awesome (really!) and got me hooked again. Pretty hard though. Atm I'm lost in enemy land where you can try to be bold and get to primary pickup point quickly, or go alternate routes with more time and patience involved.

Many vehicles and helicopters can be driven/flown and houses entered for cover. Missions have countless ways to be executed. On one I remember veering completely off the logical path and ran out into the countryside where I after some time found an enemy team guarding a Mi-28 Havoc. I managed to overcome them and steal the chopper which resulted in a very interesting and different end to that part of the campaign. This is single player I'm talking about still. ;)

Only one save per mission even on standard difficulty so no run and gun in this military simulator. Needless to say, you have to be very patient, constantly on the move and very tactical or it's a quick game over.

Be prepared for pathing problems and the occasional AI getting stuck needing reload to continue. Trigger points to end the mission can also be troublesome sometimes.

Other than that, I still think it's one of the finest games ever released. Highly entertaining but also very challenging, as it should be.

So many years after its release, it can be funny when you look at the technical side. But if you're able to look past that, it's still a fantastic game that can amaze you with very realistic and open gameplay as well as brilliant atmosphere.

1. All, Move to, 0151
1. All, Form Line
1. Contact, 1 o'clock rifleman 300
1. 2, engage that rifleman 300
2. Engaging
2. Oh, no. 1 is down.
2. This is 2 taking command. I say again, This is 2 taking command.