Okay guys. Now I'm considering buying ARMA CO but I need someone to convince me. I wouldn't buy it just for DayZ because it looks kinda cool on it's own too but I would of course play DayZ too. Does anyone have some nice let's plays and reviews of ARMA?
Arma 2 CO is loving awesome especially with friends. Campaign and scenarios are OK but the game has a very good mission editor. It's more realistic than a lot of other games ( if not the most realistic ) but still fun.
You can either do tactical gameplay or just mess around with other people. Graphics are pretty good but the game needs a medicore good PC to handle it.
Multiplayer mostly consists of Teamplay missions where players play against the AI. A large potion of the servers however are either dayZ servers or some stuffty clan server with really stupid moderation. There are still enough servers to play on though. There are a few PVP missions / gamemodes in the game but I don't that they are as popular as player vs AI missions / gamemodes.
It has a bunch of different gamemodes like Warfare where you fight against the AI or other players over the whole map and try to locate and the destroy the enemy base. Another gamemode is patrol ops or domination where all players play against the AI and fulfill certain objectives from an air base.
The amount of missions / gamemodes is uncountable.
Arma 2 also has more good mods than just DayZ. For example ACE - a mod which increases realism in Arma 2 and adds a lot of content including vehicles , weapons and other equipment. Or I44 which turns Arma 2's modern setting into the good ol' WW2 days with accurate and fitting content. There are tons of mods for it.
The only real downsides of it are the sometimes weird AI and the Chernarus map (the one dayZ uses) as the map is poorly optimized and lags on most computers if you set the graphic settings too high.
Overall Arma 2 CO is worth the money and is very fun even though it's a simulator. Just buying it for DayZ would be kind of a waste in my opinion but you are not doing that.
We have a Steam group with forum Arma 2 players if you need someone to play with.