Arma Reforger Early Access Review
Arma Reforger is not Arma 4. Bohemia Interactive has made that abundantly clear during the slightly confusing rollout of the new entry in the storied military simulation series, which hit early access on Steam last week. Instead, it’s meant to be a "test bed" for features and design choices that may or may not be integrated in a future numbered franchise entry, which means that in every sense of the word, Reforger is unfinished. Textures flicker in and out of reality, flagrant bugs litter the battlefield, and nearly all of my matches ended in a sudden, anticlimactic disconnect from the server. In its current state, Bohemia's latest is a deeply frustrating experience. And yet, when everything comes together, Reforger is still totally capable of mustering that steely, one-of-a-kind Arma immersion.
Arma 3, the previous game in the series that launched almost a decade ago, is one of the most expansive video games ever made. The spirited Arma community has been blessed with countless expansion packs and a thriving mod scene, which has given rise to other PC classics like DayZ and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Reforger, on the other hand, effectively shipped with two modes: a capture-and-hold warfront on a grand scale, and a "Game Master" variant that allows one player to edit the action in real time like a D&D dungeon keeper. Both of these take place on the same map; an impressively gigantic fictional Atlantic island called Everon which originally appeared in Bohemia's Operation Flashpoint all the way back in 2001. And just like Flashpoint, Reforger takes place in 1989, with a fairly boilerplate US vs. Soviet gestalt.
Anyone coming to Reforger expecting the barest set of first-person shooter features — like say, any semblance
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