Arma II

The Good
The graphics are often very good. ArmA 2 has a very pronounced simulation of dynamic range that often renders gorgeous scenes. Props to BIS for again and again making the most realistic and natural graphics and worlds of any game ever.

Performance seems to be a bit smoother than ArmA 1 (which I could never get to run well), probably because it's now programmed to (sorta, kinda) use all four cores instead of just one.

The Bad
You might think that since it's so similar to ArmA 1 the game would at least be polished and streamlined. For some reason though (which might be explained but not excused by pressure from publishers), this is a very unfinished, untested game that's just teeming with all kinds of obvious bugs.

It's as if BIS contracted a bunch of people, gave them API documentation and told them to made certain parts of the game, then combined whatever they came up with into a whole without any sort of testing. BIS has a "bug tracker" (something you'd expect from a free open source development, not a commercial game) where customers are expected to spend hours diagnosing, tracking down and reproducing each of the thousands of bugs BIS' shoddy programming and testing let through and then hoping a developer takes pity and gives it some attention. But how are they going to mail me the check when they didn't even ask for my address...?

The Bottom Line
I've spent over three weeks playing the game and I never had one game session that didn't have serious glitches and didn't end because of some fatal bug. I must've done everything in the campaign at least five times because the game broke so often, and this was after a 120mb patch. Let me tell you an anecdote: I complained that you can't run over infantry in 1.00, so they fixed it, then I got repeatedly run over in the campaign by my own allies. Some battles you just can't win.

As it stands, ArmA 2 patch version 1.02 is an unplayable mess and BIS and their publishers should be ashamed of themselves.