[Primaryman]

ArmA can be very frustrating indead. There is so much potential here but the game is constantly let down by bad design. I real struggle to believe the developers actually played the game because of some of the bad gameplay!! Major thing I hate is the fact that your fellow soldiers are useless idiots not crack trained troops. You constantly have to micro-manage them to keep them alive. In missions I have to tell them to disembark, go to this location, go prone, look in this direction, target enemy and when thats done I have to tell them to stand up and get back in the vehicle. My god thats stupid, all I should have to do is say "Squad on me", then when I jump out they do, they follow me in correct formation, they scan the horizon in the direction of the threat, when under fire they take cover and return fire, and then follow me back into the Hummer. Is that too much to ask?

Anyway enough of my rant and onto some helpfull stuff.

The Delivery Boy mission:
One good thing about ArmA is the ability to assign any function to any controller. If you have a joystick map steer left and right, forward and back to this. The truck (and any other vehicle for that matter) is so much easier to control with an anolog stick. When you finally pick up the soldiers you'll have 4 minutes to get back, it took me three attempts, you need to go full speed and make sure you don't go off the road, but it can be done. I don't think I could have done it without the stick though.
I think the decision about the slow speed over dirt as opposed to road is to highlight the importance of roads in strategic planning, but I agree uphill preformance has been totally porked and should be fixed.

Sniper Mission:
Enemy AI is notoriously omnipresent but not overly. There doesn't appear to be any modelling of camalflage or fatigue etc but I find that if you take precautions you can usually get by undetected.
1. Don't get silhouetted against an open sky, cross ridges crouching at low points with terrain behind you.
2. Don't fire in the open. The muzzle flash is dead give away.
3. Fire from cover using lean or crouch stance. After firing either duck back behind the cover by straightening up or dropping prone.
4. Don't expose yourself from the same location twice. Fire then Relocate, keep them guessing, hopefully they'll still be looking at the old location.

I don't have a problem with the accuracy which I think is realistic. If they engage you while they are standing and your moving they generally miss, if both of you are prone they get you first time which i think is real. So don't lay prone in the open, always engage behind cover, using the lean or kneel stance.

This is how I completed the Sniper mission. I got into a position with a slight rise infront of me, went into the kneel pose and edged forward slowly until I could just see the target, I was a few metres from the crest of the rise. Now I shot the general and quickly took out the guys manning the nearest mounted machine gun emplacements on the roof, then I dropped prone. With the rise acting as cover I turned around and crawled perpendicular for a few metres away from my original location, then turned to face the way I wanted to egress, then jumped up and sprinted like mad further down the slope. As I ran away the helicopter crashed into the ridge, this was probably a lucky fluke so I can't comment on what to do when the helicopter catches up to you.

Performance:
I have a similar system Core 2 Duo E6700, 2GB Ram, 8800GTX and I use the standard HIGH setting at 1024x768 and it looks really good with good FPS so I can't understand why your getting 2d elements, sorry.

I was feeling like you at the beginning ready to toss it out the window but I'm really getting into it now. The secondary objective missions in the campaign aren't that good because they generally can be difficult to complete successfully so now I don't get upset if I fail. The major battles where you are just one grunt in a company of grunts are really cool though and worth it.

Plus I can see alot of mods and patches coming out in the future that'll improve the game heaps. Besides I just like flying around in the little bird!!!