ARMA: Cold War Assault

What works

Downloaded the full game installer from the BIS community wiki, then entered my Operation Flashpoint serial key during installation -- no issues.

Played through most of the Cold War Crisis campaign, tried the Resistance campaign and a handful of the single missions. All worked just as well as Windows.

What does not

Multiplayer. Tried hosting and joining LAN servers, but the game kept activating its stupid FADE copy-protection. For those who don't know what FADE is, it's a copy-protection method which slowly degrades the gameplay over time, rendering it unplayable. It's a method used by BIS to punish people who pirate the game. Makes sense.

Except for one small thing; I didn't pirate the game. The installer is from their website and legally free to download for anyone who owns Operation Flashpoint. The CD-key I entered is from my retail purchased disc copy I have on my shelf. The installer accepted the key so it shouldn't be that. The installer download doesn't involve a disc at all, so it's not a failed CD-check. I can't figure it out.

Workarounds

• Do not run the game with the -nomap startup parameter or it will crash the game.
• Do not set view distance higher than 1300 and terrain detail above "high", or you will get poor performance.

What was not tested

Did not play through entire campaign and single missions.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

I'm rating my experience as silver because the multiplayer was a huge part of this game.