Hardcore PC Military Simulator Arma Has Finally Come To Consoles

thegamer.com:

If you play games exclusively on console, chances are you've never encountered the Arma series. These hardcore military shooters have been around on PC for years, beloved for their massive scale, sprawling maps, deep simulation, immersive multiplayer, and rich support for user created content. They're notoriously unforgiving, taking a much more realistic approach to modern warfare than the likes of Call of Duty. But that's precisely why they have such a devoted following. In these games war is serious business, down to the physics of bullet trajectories.

Today, series creator Bohemia Interactive has launched a new game in the series—although it's not the hotly anticipated Arma 4, which is still currently in development. Arma Reforger is available now via Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview, making it the first time an Arma game has appeared on a console. It's a more self-contained Arma experience than the mainline sequels, with an initial focus on multiplayer. But, as ever, Bohemia is encouraging mod makers to get stuck in immediately—and, brilliantly, anything people make on PC will be playable on Xbox.

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Reforger is also a showcase for the dev's new Enfusion engine, which features, among other features, realistic light simulation—an important factor in Arma, where light and shadow feed directly into the tactical first-person shooting. In Arma, night is night. If clouds cover the moon, and there are no man-made light sources nearby, you're plunged into total darkness. This is an example of the series' hardcore approach to the FPS genre. Enfusion is also the same engine being used to create Arma 4, so Reforger is something of a testbed for this