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An Arma III page? In 2024, have you lost your actual minds you may well be saying, and you might have a point if you have been playing the hardcore mil-sim for many a year, but, and this is for all the veterans as well, half a million people just bought Arma III in the Steam Summer Sale – that’s half a million Private Pyle’s running around the show with no clue what they are doing, and that is bad for all of us.
If you are new however to Arma III, hello. You are the future of the military and we are here to learn. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be ‘Sir.’ Do you maggots understand that?
Okay, enough of the Full Metal Jacket obsession – so you have bought Arma II because it is amazing, however, you have booted it up and do not have the first clue what to do.
The best way of thinking about ARMA is that it is a bit like a flight simulator. A ton of controls exist and your brain tricks you into thinking you need them all when in reality, at the start at least, you can get by just learning to take off and whizz about the sky a bit. You don’t need to know how to run an emergency landing pattern in Microsoft Flight Simulator to have fun, and the same rules apply here.
Get to Bootcamp
The ARMA 3 Bootcamp is – much like in Full Metal Jacket, the best place to learn to be a virtual soldier and you can find it via the Learn section in the in-game menu but basically you want to:
- Complete the Single Player Campaign – this will get you accustomed to the controls you need to know at the beginning, and also relieve the frustration of being wiped out almost immediately.
- VR Training – no, you don’t need to don a helmet here, you simply go through a series of training exercises in a Holodeck-type environment.
- Multi-player Bootcamp – here you will find real-world Arma vets willing to help out and train you in the ways of the world. Most people who do this are alright, so be nice to them and they will be nice back.
- Watch YouTube vids – ARMA III is not a new game so there are countless amazing tutorials you can watch when you get a minute and really get a feel for what you will be coming up against.
- Field manual – and when you are stuck, or just simply cannot remember a control, open the Field Manual from the main menu and you will get tips and control information as a refresher.
See you in country.
