Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Review page 2

08 Oct 2009 at 15:44:11 by
Systems used to review this title: (360)

Because each of your fire team members have different weapons, you have to always make sure you're using them to full advantage. If you have a machine gunner and you need to get close to a building, then get him and another one of your squad to flank the position and lay down some suppressing fire. And never underestimate the enemy AI, as they will constantly surprise you.

We've played this game enough now to know that no two missions (even the same mission played again) will ever be the same, and the way you approach the mission can change the way the game plays out. The variables are endless, and it's amazing to see a mission you thought couldn't get any harder, get a lot harder. It's scary to see the reinforcements being dropped in by helicopter or leaving building and posts with your death their sole objecitve. It scares several shades of sh** out of you when the enemy knows you're there and has sent choppers to shoot at you from above. You feel unbelievably exposed in the open, wondering if someone is going to mortar you and your team. It's engaging, immersive and, most of the time, intense and quite scary. Equally, it's amazing to see the enemy retreat, fall back and put up smoke screens to hide their movements, just as much as it's fun to execute (in the nicest possible way) a cowering enemy who has either lost his squad, or the will to fight. This puts you in the mindset of a soldier, and there is no room here for sympathy.

This is no ordinary first person shooter. One bullet in the right place can instantly kill you. Once shot, don't expect to regenerate your health. Oh no, you need to scarper back and find a suitable place to apply your field dressing before you bleed out. That's right: depending on how badly you've been hit, there is a time limit to apply your field dressing before you lose your eight pints of blood. If you don't apply it in time, or no one applies it, you die. Equally, applying a field dressing doesn't mean you're healed, it just stops you from bleeding. Once you've stopped bleeding the team medic can heal you completely by administrating a syringe. This is why it's so important to keep your team alive. If you've been hit in the legs, you won't be able to sprint or move fast; if you've been hit in the arms, your aim will be compromised. Take a knock to the head and your vision will blur. And it goes on.

And don't expect your checkpoints to save you either, because sometimes they don't kick in if you do a mission your way and not the way the game expects you to. This is a little frustrating at times as there aren't many checkpoints in the game, and none at all when you're playing co-operatively... which leads me to one of the annoying aspects of the game.

In a bid to make the game more engaging, the devs decided that the opening to every mission should be done so that you're glued to the spot listening to High Command briefing you. It's a good way of doing it, but when you've got to go through the whole thing again (usually around 30 seconds of waiting) it becomes tedious, and there is no way to skip it.  

Another bugbear is that the game is set in this wonderfully massive environment, but half the time you're battling to do a mission within a time limit, and so this expansive world is not explored.  This, coupled with the occasional lack of vehicle is disappointing, especially when console versions don't have mission editors to exploit that.

That aside, this game is best played in co-op, purely because it's all about the team play and communication. With players possibly finding it hard to master I reckon we'll see more real human squad-based action. The game also gets exponentially more difficult as you up the difficulty from Normal to Experienced to Hardcore, with the latter being as realistic as you can get. Here you have no hud (in Normal and Experienced you have a compass and red dots on the compass indicating enemies) to help, and no checkpoints. Lose a man, and they don't respawn like in the other difficulties where you can expect to see your team supporting your rear after you reach a checkpoint.

I'm going to stop myself here because, frankly, I could go on forever. We still have vehicles and weapons to talk about, but I can't go into that. All you need to know is that the weapons are as realistic as you can get (reloading times, sounds) and you can find out more about that from our video, and that not all vehicles can be driven like in the first game, but still, who cares?! I think you get the idea. I've not even discussed how brilliant it looks on screen, but what Codemasters has done here is great. It's a game that will keep old school Op Flash players happy and, more importantly, has retained and kept intact the heart of what made this game great. Yeah, there are a few niggles, but nothing to stop you from enjoying it. If you were already a fan, or become one from this, then you'll find yourself coming back to this game again and again and again. It's just a shame there's no mission editor on the console version...

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