A very immersive military simulator for the gamer with patience
This Company created serious Military Sims for several Armed Forces through the World, including the US. That means, they are focused in the development of a game which recreate with realism how is to be close to a real war, where the tactics are the key to achieve objectives and the common run and gun behavior in so popular games doesn't work in Operation Arrowhead, as like in a real war.
Some of the characteristics which OA have and the another Shooters doesn't:
a) Immersive environment: Operation Arrowhead is closely inspired on the current Events on the Middle East wars and you will hear NPC's speaking in Arabic, doing daily activities like walking on the streets, talking with themselves, driving cars or motorcycles. Also they react positively or negatively depending how you gain their "hearts and minds". For example if during a mission on a village accidentally you kill civilians, the community there will not provide you the necessary intel for the following missions Walking in the desert or on the streets you can almost feel the heat of the environment. This is the kind of reality which the average FPS's doesn't provide it.
b) Replayability: Operation Arrowhead have a total replayability and this is because the lack of tight linear scripts, let the gamer to use different strategies during the missions on the campaign.
Also the powerful Mission Editor let you create any mission with just a couple of mouse clicks .
c) Graphics: The myth of a ubercomputer required to play it is is not so true, because the game let you configure the graphics according to your hardware capacity. However if you are lucky enough to have a powerful computer, you will appreciate the high end graphics configuration capable to create an almost photo-realistic environment, highly detailed objects and huge maps without "invisible walls" or narrow corridors.
d) Multiple games in just one Box: Arma games series, including Operation Arrowhead is the Swiss Army knife of the games, because It include a tank simulator, a flight simulator a FPS, a strategy game, a RPG, a free roaming and a sandbox. By this way for example you can ride in a helicopter, flight to a village in the middle of the desert get out, talk with the people there, enter to a house and then take a car to ride back, like you do in games like Grand Theft Auto series,or you can control entires armies in real time like you do in C&C.
The combinations are almost infinite.
e) DLC for everyone and full support from the developers: Thanks to the big community related with Arma games and the open code which Bohemia Interactive provided to the gamers, we have the possibility to expand even more the capacity of the game by adding new campaigns, missions, libraries (vehicles, soldiers, weapons), maps and sounds. This downloadable contents are ALL FREE and the skilled members are continuously adding more and more features. Also if you have the basic programming knowledge, you can create you own mods and then post it or use it in the game.
f) Multi-players with dedicated servers: The game can be played in single or multi player. The last option let you enjoy on different communities focused in tactical games, where the strategy, the planning and the coordination is the key to achieve successfully missions as like cooperative of full multi-player.
On cooperative, the online players have to beat risky missions working like a professional team against non scripted NPC's and on full multi-players, the gamers have to challenge another humans using military tactics. So if you are going to go running and bouncing like an headless chicken, you probably will be killed after just 5 minutes of game, also you don't have health pack or endless rounds of ammo. The bullets are affected by the physics laws and the enemies thankfully doesn't have Superman sight (Did you hear "Sniper Ghost Warrior"?).
I recognize Operation Arrowhead and Arma series is not for everyone, is for the kind of serious gamers who likes military stuff and are tired of unlimited spawning enemies, narrow maps, zero re-playability and a very linear script witch don't let the gamer the needed freedom, also bombastic cinematographic effects but nonsense reality.
This is the kind of game which you will discover more and more features and become one of your favorites for several years to come.
Personally I give it the score of 10