often got very frustrated by PR
I think that games such as PR and ArmA take a different type of play and set of expectations to make them successful. I believe that a big thing that can help is the expectation that there'll be a fair bit of "downtime" or quiet periods between the brutal (and sometimes too short) combat. It's expecting the element of simulation that helps me at those points, even looking for that.
I treat these games as being a sort of airsoft-on-steroids; I get to jump out of helicopters, carrying the best guns I can get, in the coolest environments, and all from the comfort of my home. But just like airsofting, there's a bunch of simulation that goes with the game that changes it from being vBF2 where rushing around and blasting everything that moves was the basis of the game to being largely slower paced punctuated by brief periods of intense and bloody violence.
In that same vein, in-simulation radio chatter helps. It's all part of the experience of the game. Not deadly serious all the time, necessarily, but certainly focused when it counts. And I'm not talking about role-playing the simulation -- I find the whole "Yes sir" business pretty off-putting -- but getting into the spirit of the simulation with "Roger" and "Contact NW, enemy armour, heading this way!" The quality of radio comms makes or breaks a PR game for me, I find.
But there's a bunch of "oh fuck, they saw me and now I'm dead" respawning to be done in some maps in PR and I imagine ArmA can play at the same level of brutality, and PR still has some stupid bugs here and there that can mar your enjoyment if they turn up. But most of the time, PR plays fine for me and as long as I can find a squad that talks on voice and at least largely pays attention to me as Squad Leader (which is most of the time, I find) then PR works well for me.
But I expect what it gives me and don't expect anything else from it. PR is a war simulator first, shooter second, I think (albeit with a whole bunch of game-oriented aspects to it). ArmA even more so.
