Which ARMA is best for single-player? I, II, or III?

Although I've not tried it yet, I've heard people seem to like the Arma 3 campaign's first chapter so far.

The first 2 Arma's campaigns were pretty bug-filled and you often could get stuck by triggers that didn't go. Odd too as OFP's campaigns worked well enough. Probably Arma got too complex.

Anyway, while 3 has the least amount of content so far as it's brand new, it's probably got the best stock offerings. If you're going to include 3rd party stuff, A2 was around longest (the gap between 2 and 3 was much larger than between 1 and 2) so there's a ton of SP stuff for that you can DL.

Personally I think A3 is better, but you can get A2 for less and right now it has more. Oh, A3 is still being actively developed, too, so some things are still being worked out.



The Jedi Master

I don't even remember Arma 1's campaign...
Arma 2's campaign wasn't too bad, but like JM said it was more buggy, and towards the end I completely lost interest. Also, the performance in some missions was very poor (I was using older hardware when I played it however).
Arma 3's first episode kept me interested and was smooth and played out very well IMO. I think once all three episodes are released it will be a very good campaign

3 is by far the best for singleplayer

Thanks to all. I'll look into ARMA 3.

I think my gaming tastes and interests have changed a lot because while I absolutely loved the single player campaigns for OFP, I just couldn't get into the ones for the ArmA series. I think the crux of the issue is that ever since I started playing on the SimHQ Military Mondays, I discovered how much more I enjoyed that compared to single player. I started the Arma3 campaign recently but got bored after about an hour.

You recommend the Op Flashpoint games, then?

The graphics are really outdated now but the campaigns were very well made IMHO. Good story lines and interesting missions.

I enjoyed the Arma 1 campaign, but what detracts from the experience in every case is the clunky game mechanics. Even in the recent Arma 3 campaign I got stuck on a mission because of some script failure, so I don't have much faith in BIS producing a solid single player experience.

The co-op missions and multiplayer is where it is at for me. In terms of gameplay itself, you are probably better off with the Arma 3 single player; the engine is their best yet and well optimised.

Yeah, OFP and Resistance had great campaigns, but the engine is horribly dated now and there are some mechanics in use that have long since been improved that make it impossible for me to ever replay them.



The Jedi Master

Don't forget the MANY 3rd party SP missions/campaigns for each game; most are just as good if not better than the official ones

Panzer is right, OFP is pretty dated both graphically, and playing it now seems very clumsy with the engine advances made in the last decade. If you want to still try the campaigns (which are very good), you might want to try CWR2, which aims to be OFP in the Arma2 engine. They have or are recreating all of the old OFP models, and have ported over the old missions.

http://cwr2.arma2.fr/

Other than that, the Arma 3 campaign is shaping up to be pretty good as well.

Yeah, CWR2 is great.

I played it a while back. It's complete (as far as I could tell) and I ran into no bugs.

They are redoing the Resistance campaign as well.

Man Arma 1 campaign felt like a slapped together turd. Well it was slapped together. But COOP was pretty good as was warfare. But WAS being key words. I liked arma2's campaign mainly. But you could get a bug in it. I think it is still worth it IMO to play if you have not. OFP Resistance was IMO the best campaign ever done by BIS. Still waiting for the total completed campaigns to get released for Arma3 before I buy the thing. I learned my lessons with Arma 1 and 2 to wait a bit before buying. Although its getting hard to not buy 3. Maybe after the next bit of campaign is released.

There's one set in Takistan where you play as the British. Wish I could remember the name of it.

Fully voice acted and everything. Was probably the best campaign I've played.

Absolutely.

I think the ArmA 2 campaign was great in theory. I guess Bohemia just tried to paint a more complex picture of a modern conflict. Unfortunately, that complexity was exactly what killed the campaign in my opinion, technical wise as well as immersion wise.

That said I watched a couple of gameplay videos on YouTube when the first episode of the ArmA 3 campaign was released (I don�t own the game) and really like what I�ve seen so far. It is definitely an improvement over the ArmA 2 campaign. The voice acting alone is so much better and really adds to the atmosphere. But also the scripting seems to work better this time and the whole presentation made a far better impression on me.

To this day I still remember the end of the final mission in the Resistance campaign. I was quite shocked at the time.

You mean the leisurely flight in the Cessna to get some beers?



The Jedi Master

That's the epilogue so it doesn't count!

I don't think there is an accepted "epilogue" definition for games.



The Jedi Master