Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising [360] Review



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It's been a long while, but it's finally here. And no, this is not an intro to one of our war diaries, nor is it the transcript of our video interviews. It's not even a news piece (unless you clicked through from our news feeds). No, we're finally going to be giving you the lowdown on one of our most anticipated games of this year.

It all begins on a small island just off the main island of Skira at dusk. You've been inserted to penetrate and eliminate the enemy so as to be able to reinforce and assault from this position. Consider it Australia in a Risk game. Capture it, and the military have a stream of reinforcements and are able to push the main forces out.

You have a fire team too, four men including yourself, and you're the fire team leader. Now, we've played this co-operatively in abundance, and you can check out our diaries for the co-operative games, but this review will assume you're playing this alone. With that in mind, then, there are three guys that you have to issue directions, orders and movements to. Orders can be issued to the whole team or to specific members of your team through the radial dial, which can be accessed by holding down the right bumper. This radial dial gives you options for movement, rules of engagement, fire orders, formations and the like. At first it's quite daunting going through the radial dials, but before long you're issuing orders rather quickly, sending your squad team to their deaths. Doing that on Hardcore mode doesn't help you much, but more on that later.

For those of you that know Operation Flashpoint, you'll know the first game on the PC was hugely successful. It changed the way realistic first person shooters were played, and added a dimension of realism which hadn't been seen before. Not only that, but the game still defies PCs today and I'm yet to find a PC that can run it at full whack. What makes Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising so interesting is that it's been designed with consoles in mind this time and it really does push them to their limits. Also, it's not being developed by Bohemia Interactive Studios but by Codemasters, who only published the game last time around. This, however, is not a history lesson, but nevertheless, Codies took on a huge undertaking to keep the core gameplay as engaging as the first title. Coincidently, Bohemia Interactive are now pumping out ArmA titles, very good titles.

But the biggest problem facing the latest Operation Flashpoint would have been giving console players the same depth as PC players, as without a keyboard, things can get slightly complicated. There is just so much depth to this game it's hard to imagine being able to comprehensively map the buttons and commands. Fortunately, other than getting used to things such as radial dials and its different layers, it's pretty much a straight first person shooter. This is a good thing, but I can see it being daunting for a new player, especially with the lack of a tutorial. We know it's a simulator, but an option in the menu for weapons training, fire team commands and tactical manouvers at least would help new players get into the game and build their confidence before they're unleashed into the world of Skira and its surrounding islands.

Shooting is assigned to the old chestnut that is the right trigger, while changing weapons falls to B. Holding B brings up your menu inventory, whereas tapping it cycles through it all. The A button is the interaction button, allowing you pick up ammo, jump over walls and the like, while the X button reloads. Holding the X button, if you're carrying the right weapon, brings up the attachment menu, so if you're a grenadier, you can add your grenade-launching attachment to your assault rifle.

The Y button calls in support in the shape of artillery, howitzers, airstrikes... you get the idea. You'll only have access to these in certain parts of certain missions, and you won't always need to use them. The left trigger aims down the sights while the left bumper allows you to sprint for a period of time. As you run out of stamina, your heartbeat pumps, becoming more violent until you just can't run anymore. Movement is standard, and by clicking the left analogue button you can either stand, crouch or go prone, which has never been more important in a game.

The D-pad does a variety of things. While the radial menu is on screen, the D-pad selects the order, but when you're not using that different directions provide a torch for your weapon, and night vision goggles. Push to the right and, if you're playing at night, you get an IR pointer, and left changes the fire rate of your weapon.

It's the back button I want to talk about though, and you'll need to use this constantly to be successful in this game. The back button takes you into the command map, a real-time map which outlines your objectives, waypoints, enemies (or their last known location which fades away if there isn't more activity), the location of your squad, support teams, vehicles and buildings. Because it's real-time, you can issue orders to your team directly from this view, giving you a whole new game in the shape of an RTS. Technically, and with the right orders, you could play this game entirely from the command map even though you always assume the role fire team leader. So you always have to flick back to the first person view to move your character along to progress. If one of your team leave your circle of influence, or command, they automatically die. Don't worry though, this circle is outlined in the command map.