TLDR; The uncaring, unpolished, unapologetically unique and broken mess of bugs that I simply can't stop coming back to. 4/5.

My relationship with ArmA 3 is very much a love-hate affair. I could spend hours talking about this game, as I've played this game inside and out (if you couldn't already tell by my time played). But I'll keep it brief.

ArmA 3 is a military sandbox where you can basically do whatever you want. It's really less of a game and more of a military-themed platform on which players are allowed to build essentially anything. You're given a huge sandbox and told: "do with this as you please". Whether you're into hardcore military simulation with a dedicated community of LARPers who get frustrated whenever you don't address their player character by the proper rank, or just like vibing and dying repeatedly in more casual games of King of the Hill, or prefer to test your survival skills in Exile - there's literally something for everyone. I don't think I'm mincing words when I say that ArmA has perhaps one of the most expansive and developed modding communities of any game I've ever seen. Few other titles can claim to have literally been the starting point for titans like PUBG and DayZ.

Of course, it's far from perfect. What I said in the TLDR is absolutely true - this game is, quite frankly, a broken mess. The movement is stiff and unintuitive, the inventory system is archaic, the AI is a continual enigma that has researchers befuddled to this very day, and physics system is... well... let's just say it was likely made by someone who didn't do very well in their high-school science classes.

All this can sometimes give the game a feeling of being "wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle". I don't think that that's an inaccurate way to describe this game. But the beauty of it lies in the ability of the community to deepen the puddle themselves, and even if they don't - an ocean is still fun to play around in, even if it's only ankle-high.

Quite simply put - there is really no other game like ArmA out there today, and something tells me there never will be. Some people will hate it, some will love it, other will regard it with both contempt and affection (like myself), but it's undeniable that ArmA is something truly special and unique.

4/5 - the ocean is endless.