Arma 3

The game's main island is modeled on the Greek island of Lemnos. Bohemia Interactive CEO Marek Španěl picked it after a vacation there.

In September 2012 two of the studio's employees were arrested on Lemnos and charged with espionage over alleged filming of military sites. Bohemia insisted they were there on holiday. They spent 129 days in custody, and afterwards the in-game island was renamed from Lemnos to Altis.

The realism worked almost too well. Clips from Arma 3 have been passed off again and again in news and on social media as footage of real combat, and in 2022 Bohemia published a guide on how to tell the game from an actual war.

Reviewers praised the realism and the islands but criticized the steep learning curve and complex controls, along with the lack of a campaign at launch. Players leave 90% positive out of 229,589 reviews, and critics give it 74 on Metacritic. In our Recommended Score it ranks 1,062 of 4,736 games.

Liked it? Try Arma Reforger, a 2022 spin-off where Bohemia tested the Enfusion Engine for Arma 4, and Arma: Cold War Assault Remastered, a technical remaster of 2001's Operation Flashpoint, the forerunner of Arma.