Recent reviews by Shadow Doctrine

Really fun game although the grind is real when trying to unlock weapons.. I only play it casually so it's super hard to unlock anything good unless you sink your entire life into the game as you get credits and stuff after each battle but you have to maintain your weapons and ammo by spending the credits you earned in battle.. so if you aren't very good you will spend years trying to unlock weapons lol.. I ended up buying parts for my sniper rifle with real money.. which brings me to the pay 2 win part of the game, you can technically buy everything with real money but effectively unless you're a millionaire you won't want to purchase much with real money here.. the prices are ridiculous especially if you're not using USD as an Australian it's cost me nearly $60 AUD just to unlock parts to upgrade my rifle because I only play casually lol.. But I love the game so its worth it. If you can afford to buy veteran membership do it (think premium on battlefield) it's worth it for the bonuses to credits and XP earned. Otherwise it's a massive grind to get any progress lol.. gameplay wise though I couldn't give it less than 7/10 really fun, once you get into it.. lots of customisation, lots of intense battles sometimes you even get a three way battle with USSR/Germany/USA all fighting over one town or airfield. Good Times.. in conclusion if you're into fun ww2 FPS games that cost nothing to play and just want something casual.. get into it.. it's good fun, but unless you're willing to put some money into it, don't expect to play as a general or have a scoped weapon anytime soon.. lol

What's not to love about any of the GTA titles.. Do whatever you want, complete the game as fast or as slow as you want, or just screw around running people over or beating up pedestrians.. rob stores whatever you want.. it's always fun. GTA online is no different even more fun doing the above with friends or complete strangers. Though most people will try to kill you online because it's just as fun to kill players as AI :)

Before downloading the primitive+ DLC I browsed the reviews - positive and negative; just to get a feel to what the general consensus was regarding the DLC. After reading approximately 30-40 reviews I decided to download it since it's free anyway. Firstly I just want to acknowledge that I was hilariously shocked at the amount of stupid people on steam.

When you first start the game after downloading the DLC, you need to select the primitive+ conversion.. which is easily located in the bottom right of the screen where it says "total conversions" or something to that effect so you select the 'primitive+' option which will require a restart of the client for obvious reasons (though it seems by the amount of complaints I read, it's not as obvious as I thought) If you select primitive+ and try to play it without restarting; it can't load the resources required for that conversion (simple right? you stupid monkeys). Anyway once the client has restarted you can get straight into it and start playing around with your newly downloaded DLC.

Good game, if you're into Project Reality kinda stuff.. Basically revamped PR. I never played PR but from what I've seen and heard this is the modern take on it. Devs are active and on forums regularly, updates are regular, new features appear every few months they're doing well. I've been playing Arma since operation flashpoint in 2001 and while this is no Arma, it's still good fun to jump into a random squad and kill some bastards. The one thing this has on public arma servers is teamwork; in order to win you need to work with your squad and other squads. The emphasis on teamwork is real, I just wish arma pub servers came with the same mentality lol.

Excellent game, if you're into Total War this one doesn't disappoint. Diplomacy is hard as I imagine it would be in those ages, people take time to trust you and relationships are fragile so when you decide to execute 472 Prisoners from a previous battle make sure its a foreign opponent and not a one sharing your own borders. I learned this the hard way; Playing as Mercia (Age of Charlemagne DLC) thought I'd send a message to my neighbours for declaring war and taking one of my settlements. I was the more powerful faction I had better tech and more numbers in my armies yet upon executing 472 prisoners I immediately became the most hated person in the North East former allies were disgusted and declared war, within a few turns I was surrounded and losing the campaign it was as the name suggested; "Total War".

The enemy acted with surgical precision capturing specific settlements that produced food and sent spies to incite unrest among my people.. One by one my settlements were erupting in rebellion and shortly after being captured by enemy forces, a few more turns passed and I was able to secure peace with one faction enabling me to rebuild my decimated forces. By this time I was seriously annoyed with what used to be a relatively successful campaign turned upside down into a losing streak I tried my hardest to recover my settlements but failed miserably, all because I executed a few hundred barbarians of the same blood lol.. Turns out they also don't respond well to you amassing a higher tech force of shock troops and raiding the newly captured settlements only to raze them one by one executing every prisoner you encounter. This is by far the hardest way to make friends in TW:Attila; BUT has to be one of the most fun at the same time, feeling like a king, taking a settlement and burning it to the ground has to be my new favourite method of uniting the tribes into one Kingdom. 10/10 would raze North-Eastern Europe again - Definitely worth it's price. I don't even have to mention the graphics but 10/10 physically burning a village to the ground with flaming arrows while in battle is priceless lol.. (fire lowers morale, why wouldn't you take advantage of burning every building) It's a beautiful game, one of the best releases if you're not a total historian and just like to watch the world burn, TW: Attila is what's missing in your life ☺

kinda like rust, but less entertaining.. unless you're into abusive communities, my first session I spawned in started to gather resources, got captured and thrown into a bear pit.. second spawn -> got called every nasty word i'd ever heard then speared to death 10/10 wish i got a refund..

Love the game, Best in the series in my opinion.. possibly because I like the era in general but still It's my favourite total war game so far, Rome 2 and shogun 2 are ok and I haven't played Atila but Empire is just awesome, I'd rather play this than anything new.. Artillery is fun and the naval battles are cool too.. Not sure why they've gone back in time for the newer games as I was looking forward to a more modern total war, like the years leading up to world war 1 etc would make sense since they made Empire then Napolean you know.. then revisited ancient history with Atila?!? Anyway, the game never lacks entertainment, the ai puts up a good fight and the diplomacy ai is hilarious in their proposals (probably not intended to be funny at all, but when I'm at war and my enemy asks for $5000 and for me to give them my main production/income regions; I find that hilarious) just before you wipe them out. I highly recommend this game to anyone that's contemplating the purchase, it's worth whatever it's price is at the moment. If you're into building empires and destroying everything on the map, Empire: Total War is the game that allows you to do this, while the campaign may seem easy at first, eventually the challenge increases with new technologies and alliances being created with their sole purpose being to crush your growing empire. Good times are to be had..

I could tell you all about this game after near 800hrs (790hr at the time of writing).. but I won't because I don't want any Call of Duty or Battlefield Fanboys coming in and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up my game :) - I mean, really i should tell you to buy it because the only thing Arma shares with CoD and BF is that you shoot people..OK well CoD I haven't liked since Modern Warfare 2 and BF I grew out of as it was a good series that basically just got ♥♥♥♥ all over by big companies seeking quick profits. Anyway Arma on the otherhand has been around just as long as these two but perhaps didn't spend so much on its marketing campaign and put more of its budget into making their games? I can't say for sure, but if you're into realism (not photorealism, like you call of duty spastics) and Military Simulation types whether it be Tank Sims, Combat Flight Sims or just good old fashioned FPS types of games, you're probably going to enjoy some part of ArmA.. Thats one group of people that could enjoy this, then theres the creative types.. Have you ever wanted to drop a Fishing Trawler from 20,000ft onto an Airport runway filled with fuel trucks, planes, helicopters, tanks, cars whatever you fancy, just for fun.. to test your PC's capacity or performance? you can do this. Have you ever thought of a scenario and wanted to see how it might play out with two or more opposing factions in some kind of freaky multi-national royal rumble in the middle of nowhere with armour, air and infantry forces going at each other ? I know I never did until I played with the Mission editor in Arma 2, I played around making small missions in the previous games but not really until arma 3 did i experiment with weird ♥♥♥♥ like that.. it's quite fun for wasting time, and it looks great..

Anyway, you guys could keep reading or you could be downloading it as you read.. its worth whatever the price is at the moment.. I don't really care how much it is, it's worth it. I've been playing this series since 2001 in the very beginning back when it was called Operation Flashpoint.. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome game. If you're currently in the military, plan to enlist in the future or have previously served and want realism - buy Arma.. join a tactical realism clan or milsim group depending on your preference.. they're both the same to me.. immersive groups are best.

**Warning** Well not so much a warning, but if you have PTSD or Anxiety and are triggered easily, perhaps this isn't your thing having had C-PTSD myself for the past decade or I can safely say, this game can potentially trigger some stuff when I was first diagnosed I couldn't really play much because with mods it can get pretty realistic and I'd need a week or so away because I was a in a bad place.. anyway it's a sandbox you can make it as real or fake as you want - and uhh possibly not best storyline, I liked Arma 2's campaign better but everything else in Arma 3 is pretty awesome! - Don't take my word for it though, try it out.

2021 Edit: "You've played an additional 3829 hours, would you recommend this game to other players?" - Uh Yes, still good fun.. 100% recommend lol. Could've been optimized a little better but if you have a system built in the last few years you won't have any issues with it.. It's still a great game.

2025 edit: Yes if you want singleplayer PVE stuff, A3 is probably still the best option but I haven't played it since 2023, Arma Reforger is better in terms of graphics, performance and now that the modding community is thriving, we have some of the old Arma maps on the newer engine.. I've been having a great time playing on Chernarus (The Arma 2 map) lately. There's other maps like Fallujah, Anizay all working great in Reforger. RHS has their mod team working hard bringing content to the new engine, I will leave this review as a yes for recommending to play Arma 3 for the older content, but would 100% recommend that if you enjoy Arma 3, to join me / us in Reforger as rumour has it Arma 4 will be set in the cold war too so you might as well get into Reforger and learn the basics of the new engine before that comes along.