The first part, Survive, is geared towards introducing players to Arma. Each chapter is a self-contained entity with its own story arc and theme combined, they tell the tale of the excitingly named Corporal Ben Kerry and his role in the war over the fictional Mediterranean island archipelago of Altis and Stratis, waged between four different factions. While Arma 3 was officially released back in September, the campaign has been portioned out in three substantial chunks over the last six months. The game can be remarkably cinematic at times, but it's the systems that drive it. It isn't completely successful, but I had an awful lot of fun watching it try. Indeed, taken as a whole, Arma 3 strives to make this deep and impenetrable military simulator series a more comprehensive, more engaging and more user-friendly experience. That Arma 3 uses half an island for just one of its twenty-odd missions is indicative of Bohemia's effort to resolve this ongoing issue. The first Arma's campaign was a hastily cobbled-together disappointment, while it took a certain zombie-survival mod to harness the austere and foreboding power of Arma 2's Chernarus. Alone, I rush to the southernmost tip of the island, where I blow up a fortified anti-air position before escaping by riding a quad bike back through the swarming enemy forces to the extraction point, where the boat takes me home.Īrguably the biggest complaint about Bohemia Interactive's post-Flashpoint games is that their campaigns haven't used the magnificent landscapes they create to their full potential. Yet before we can regroup, my entire team is killed by reinforcements descending from the north, and the British still need more time to complete their mission.

Then my squad suppresses an enemy encampment from a hillside near the centre of the island as I swoop in from the west to flank them.

Inserting by boat from the northwest coast, I head south and raid an ammo dump before cutting across to the eastern shore to destroy a heliport.

Over the next hour, that's precisely what I do. Our job is to cause as much trouble across the island as possible to distract the CSAT forces and give the British the opening they need. A British squad is in charge of the actual rescue. I'm leading one of two spec-ops teams on a mission to liberate the leader of a local guerrilla faction and return him to the much larger island of Altis. It's the dead of night on the CSAT-occupied island of Stratis, and the peaceful darkness is about to explode into chaos.

Arma 3 singleplayer survival mod