I never finished the original Operation Flashpoint. I got to a mission where I had to escort some convoy of trucks over a large distance, and singularly failed to do so. Believe me, I tried to protect my AI companions, but they just kept getting blown up. I can't even remember how they bought it - mines, rockets or merely plain old bullets - but they died, again and again. Again and again and again.
There was also that mission where you're told to escape to the beach. You start in a forest, bereft of allies and have to make it past the entire enemy army without getting spotted once, because if they saw you, BAM! you were dead. One shot to the face from a tiny set of pixels that had just appeared on the horizon sent you right back to the beginning. Or to the solitary save point you were allowed.
Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
Official trailer
1:54Out on October 6
Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
Official trailer
1:54Out on October 6
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Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising doesn't have save points, it uses checkpoints. Whoa there, hold on a minute. Don't go slouching off, grumbling about consoles and whatnot. It's not that bad. These checkpoints actually work. They don't always work, but they do the job better than the solitary save game in the first game did allowed. This is one game you'll actually finish before your hair falls out and you start looking longingly at cardigans in shop windows. If you want to keep it real and are into masochism, you can always just the game on Hardcore mode and not have any saves at all.
For those of you who are baffled by the words I've just written, let me elucidate. Dragon Rising is a game where you get to play as a US soldier in the liberation of the fictional island of Skira. The people you're booting out are the Chinese People's Liberation Army, who've decided that the oil reserves contained underneath Skira are worth killing for. They plonk their troops in, Russia gets angry, the US is called in, and Uncle Sam proceeds to kick some PLA ass.
Your first mission is essentially a tutorial, although it never once drags you by the pubes down certain routes. There's also no patronising "Press W to move forward, left-click to fire" either. It errs too much on the 'let the player get on with it' side of things, telling you the name of the command you need to issue, but not which key that corresponds to. A quick scan through the key commands list will sort you out, but it does interrupt the flow a little. This doesn't happen a lot, though, so it's more a minor little quirk than anything else. Nearly everything in the game is intuitive and easy to get to grips with, except perhaps the radial command menu.
This will probably get the most attention from irate fanboys. The deal is that you press Q and a radial menu appears. You then press one of the WSAD keys to pick a subsection, and so on. It's clearly designed for an analogue stick and can be a bit clunky, especially when you're bogged down in combat and all you want to do is tell your guys to defend a position or engage an enemy. A small number of commands can be issued on the map, but generally, if you want to tell your guys what to do, you'll use the radials. It takes time to get used to where certain commands are and how to get to them quickly, but once you do getting your comrades to do what you want is easy. Usually.
This is a game that relies heavily on AI, but sometimes it'll fall over. However, it's nowhere near as bug-ridden as its rival ArmA II was on release. There aren't amusing/frustrating moments like finding your CO's mangled corpse under his desk at the beginning of a mission for no reason. What'll happen instead is that maybe one of your guys won't duck down quick enough behind a wall and get his head blown off by a lucky shot.
Certainly, it's annoying, but unless you're playing on Hardcore mode, they'll get revived when you pass through the next checkpoint. Unrealistic this might be, but it does mean your frustration levels won't boil over if your guys do something a bit dumb. It might offend some people's sensibilities, but it sure beats going back miles back to the last checkpoint.
Perhaps the best thing about Dragon Rising is how you feel challenged by a difficult game, yet never so frustrated that you throw the mouse down in anger and hurry for the uninstall button. Sometimes you'll get killed by a great shot from an enemy soldier, which'll force you to repeat a significant section of a mission. Yet instead of frustrating you, it makes you think of new ways of approaching that mission. If you're getting pinned down by tanks or vast numbers of soldiers, perhaps when you do it again you'll approach the situation from a different angle to see if that makes a difference.
This is a game of exploration and options, where the solution isn't just "go this way or not at all". It's challenging and hardcore, but always accessible. You'll almost certainly make mistakes and be cursing either luck or ineptitude (either your own or your allies') but you'll also be learning all the time, thinking about new ways to achieve the goal, and because it's virtually all driven dynamically with very few scripted events, each time the outcome will be slightly different.
This is probably true of most open-world games, but I don't think I've ever felt it as strongly, as innately, as I did when playing Dragon Rising. This same freedom of expression continues into the night missions, not all of which involve special operation types and silenced weapons. Indeed, the first one you embark upon is particularly tricky due to the fact you really have to keep that trigger finger in check. One shot and the whole place lights up and, given that the area is swarming with PLA troops, not to mention the deadly threat of patrolling gunships, it is crucial to be sensible in your choices. Going in all guns blazing will not only make you fail your secondary objective (don't be seen) but will result in your quick demise.
You might be able to bandage your wounds if you take a non-lethal hit, but that's not easy to do in the middle of a field with bullets kicking up dirt around your prone body. Speaking of healing, you've also got a medic as part of your squad, someone who can help in patching up your AI squad mates or just giving you a shot from a magic syringe. This replenishes the blood you've lost and is another attempt to make the non-hardcore experience a little less unforgiving. Again, if you crave realism, stick it on the Hardcore mode.
Missions themselves are reasonably varied, both from the start of the game and in how they develop. There are the aforementioned stealth missions where you'll have to secretly blow up a fuel dump or some anti-aircraft guns, plus you've also got rescue, beach assault and capture-and-hold-location missions. They all involve shooting a load of PLA troops, of course, but often you'll be sufficiently intrigued by the objectives of the next mission to bring in the whole "one more go" factor.
The military fetishists out there are going to be a little disappointed with the range of guns, weapons and so on that are available. While there are enough different types of gun or vehicle to keep a layman like myself satisfied, those who have an interest in military ordnance, ArmA II has the edge.
And you can't be a sheep or a cow in Dragon Rising either. The mission editor won't be as comprehensive as the ArmA II modding toolset Bohemia recently released (which is on this issue's DVD, in case you're interested), but there's certainly sufficient depth, especially when you start getting involved with the LUA scripting language to create elaborate scenarios. Whether you'll be able to create those amazing night battles so prevalent on YouTube, we'll just have to see.
Another direct point of comparison with ArmA II is performance and issues thereof. Because Dragon Rising is, to be blunt, more of an game than Bohemia's effort, it also runs a hell of a lot better. Let's face it, awe-inspiring in terms of depth and complexity ArmA II might be, it sometimes forgets it's actually a piece of entertainment, not a military training simulator. Dragon Rising never once forgets that it's ultimately meant to be fun, but any issue of it being dumbed down can be dismissed by all but the most obsessive realism nuts. Indeed, it's actually difficult to see how this game will succeed on the consoles.
Concessions are made to the use of pads - radial menus, checkpoints that revive your comrades, and so on - but if you're willing to look past these things, it's a difficult game. This is a game that requires patience, a quality most console gamers, it's fair to say, don't have in abundance. This isn't just your PC snob talking here: Dragon Rising never really feels like it has been co-developed for any armchair gamer - whether on the PC or a console - unlike so many big-name games released nowadays. It's a great relief to be able to write those words as so often we're left pandering to the perhaps-unfair belief that console gamers can't handle anything remotely complex, having to suffer the lukewarm button-mashing tedium-fests that are sloppily ported over.
Also Dragon Rising doesn't crash (at least, it didn't for us). Even running on maximum graphics setting - one gripe would be the lack of advanced graphics settings to tweak - we never ran into any frame rate or performance issues. The graphics are good without being anything spectacular, so it should run well on the majority of reasonably specced machines. The original Operation Flashpoint had a reasonable multiplayer element. While it wasn't great, it was fun for a while. It was also bollockingly hard. Dragon Rising's take on this should be better. As we're playing the game before the game goes out on sale, nobody else has a copy of it, so trying out the multiplayer function is effectively out of the question. We'll take another look at it in a future issue, once the game is out on general release and the multiplayer servers are populated.
What we can tell you about is the campaign co-op. This is superb fun. We all know playing with other people is great and Dragon Rising doesn't buck the excellence trend. It's pretty much exactly the same as the single-player experience, just with the added bonus of idiot human players mucking about.
While ArmA II had the potential to be superb Dragon Rising actually is, because it doesn't suffer from all the technical issues of the former game. Helicopters don't land on your head, they don't refuse to land if you to do something a little out of the ordinary, and you don't have to chase important NPCs over several kilometres because they got spooked by a bit of gunfire. (All of which we've seen happen when we've played ArmA II.) The only problem you might have is an AI driver (of any vehicle) not having great pathfinding if you're in the commander's seat giving move orders. Usually they're fine, and this applies to the single-player as well. But sometimes trees can confuse drivers a bit, so they ignore the plants and plough through.
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has achieved the singular feat of being a military simulator that's actually fun to play on more than just a "Look how much stuff is here!" way. Codemasters have remembered that the most important thing for a game to be is fun. At the end of the day, if your CO disintegrates for no reason and you can't proceed with the mission, it doesn't matter how accurate the spark plugs are on the vehicle you're driving, you'll get fed up and sack it off. What you want to do is be given an objective, go there and shoot some baddies, without any weirdness occurring.
Dragon Rising makes this activity challenging but always pleasurable. It might be helping you out a bit too much at times with its life-giving checkpoints and magic syringes, but sometimes a bit of assistance isn't a bad thing. Some people will doubtless hate it, saying it's not a par on ArmA II, moaning about how it isn't realistic enough or that the PLA don't have accurate uniforms, but I advise you to ignore the naysayers and play the game. It's not perfect, there are little problems and niggles that can be found if you look for them, but none of them spoil the game or ruin the playing experience.
This might not be the proper successor to the original Operation Flashpoint, but as a game in its own right, it's a stormer.
As a dedicated console lad who likes to give PC boys the respect they deserve, I do get a little bit annoyed with comments like "console touches" - as if this is a bad thing. If this game has console touches, then why don't you just play it with a console controller - or is this just not on?
Thank the heavens this got a good review, I hadn't heard much about it and had begun to fear the worst.
I'm a little annoyed by the suggestion that we console gamers don't have any patience, I've been waiting for a more tactically minded game like this for a long time to reach a console. We're not all 13 year olds who get cranky when we haven't shot an alien in the head in the last 30 seconds you know.
didnt think (or at least hoped) codemasters would build the PC version like the console versions. Checkpoint systems will infuriate the hardcore PC gamers and a PC game tht doesnt have advanced gfx/sound settings is a defo console port.
You can say all you want abt it being more fun but less of a sim and all tht crap but the real fans will just say stop playing and go back to smthg like cod because you certainly dont understand how its meant to be.
I was going straight into hardcore mode (which actually should be its normal mode) but you cant save at all? I dont want all this hud and arcady things attached to the normal mode but I would appreciate some sort of proper save system.... guess I'll get some kind of trainer for this.
Had it on preorder but ive lost a bit of excitement (not enough to cancel) and will probably not take friday and sat off as i was planning. Arma is buggy as hell but at least it does what its meant to.
....I prefer consoles to PC...my reasoning..because they dont feckin break down (generally) and I dont have to upgrade as often, I agree with the posts we console players aren't always 13.
"If you want to keep it real and are into masochism, you can always just the game on Hardcore mode and not have any saves at all."
Don't you proof read your reviews.
I've got a pre-order from Shopto for £28.99 for the 360 cant wait the only thing that is a let down is there is no mission editor on the consoles even the original on the xbox had it as my PC would die if I tried to play this on it.
I'd love to pick up a copy of this. If I thought it'd run on my PC I'd much sooner take this than MW2. But sadly my machine is really showing its age right now, so console gaming is the only way I can play new stuff.
I'd take a copy of this if it appeared on 360 or PS3 though, in a heartbeat.
Seems like a good review but the thing I liked especially is that he said it runs better than Arma 2, I was afraid my PC couldn't play this but since it can play Arma 2 on normal/high then i'll be able to play DR.
I'd love to pick up a copy of this. If I thought it'd run on my PC I'd much sooner take this than MW2. But sadly my machine is really showing its age right now, so console gaming is the only way I can play new stuff.
I'd take a copy of this if it appeared on 360 or PS3 though, in a heartbeat.
Its coming out for both consoles, I think its out on the 6th October.
Sounds promising...but the meat of the game will always be the multiplayer, and there is no mention of it in the review (difficult I know before release)
The only downer is that I'm hearing that the multiplayer is limited to 2KM square and 32 players.
Shame the reviewer couldn't just stick to the actual review instead of a few anti-console aimed comments like 'some console touches'(as if thats a bad thing)and console gamers lack of patience, which is totally untrue and just laugthable really.
Anyway I was a bit skeptical about this one as I havn't heard anything about it for a while and was also worried it will be more of a simulation than a game. I'd still like to try a demo though before buying, although I think Codies are reluctant to make one going by what they said in an earlier interview, which is daft as it would only cause more people to make up their minds and maybe buy a game they otherwise wouldn't have bothered with.
Shame the reviewer couldn't just stick to the actual review instead of a few anti-console aimed comments like 'some console touches'(as if thats a bad thing)and console gamers lack of patience, which is totally untrue and just laugthable really.
I agree with the comments this is a review of the pc version if i wanted to play with a pad i would buy it on my 360.
the fact the menu uses the Q which in FPS is used for leaning and the WASD keys for the menu screws us over from the outset who the hell wants to be stuck with no movent because they are trying to bark an order.
as far as im concerned console qirks belong in a console pc in the pc and to be fair i play my 360 alot not as much as my pc but there are alot of console gamers who just trash it for everyone which is why i dont bother with a live sub anymore.
and anyway you want to cut it checkpoints magic healing syringes and dead comrades that respawn smacks of console design.
The original flashpoint was an amazing game if they decided to take a name and base a game around the original it should at least be like the original.
deffo no buy here until a demo at the least. arma 2 til then.
I've been gaming on a console for over ten years now, I'm very excited for Dragon Rising and yet I'm dissapointed to see the reviewer try and masquerade his own 'PC Snobbery' and yet proceeds to idiotically mark down a game due to it's console refinements, I guess this is just another factor which can be used to explain the steady decrease in PC gaming quality.
I'd just like to say i am 15, or at least will be by the time this game comes out, also i am an console gamer. As much fun as COD is, and believe me it is A LOT OF FUN! I find it kinda to easy. I am standing up for console gamers here. I play COD 4 on veteran for fun, because frankly i like doing things perfect. Now i have researched Op Flashpoint 2 a lot and have put my preorder in, because i would love to play a really hard game without re-spawning eniemes on my CONSOLE. So to hear this review say "it has been console-fide" offends me. Ok most kids play games on their consoles instead of on a pc, and most of them just like blowing a load of s**t up. that does not mean we all do, there is a minority of console gamers like myself who prefer the hardcore games (Op flashpoint and i would play Arma except my pc SUCKS!!!). I know i am kinda dragging on a bit, but i hope you see my point. We console gamers should have the same respect as PC gamers. If i could i would also buy a awesome PC, but frankly being 15 i can not afford a decent one. So yeah, anyway i hope this makes you think of console gamers in a different light, and I CAN'T WAIT FOR OP FLASHPOINT 2. One last thing, does anyone know why it is coming out on the 15th in Australia and why it is coming out on the 6th in the USA
I've been gaming on a console for over ten years now, I'm very excited for Dragon Rising and yet I'm dissapointed to see the reviewer try and masquerade his own 'PC Snobbery' and yet proceeds to idiotically mark down a game due to it's console refinements, I guess this is just another factor which can be used to explain the steady decrease in PC gaming quality.
Oh and
MegaMan > CSS.
you can play whatever you want man and tht doent matter, the big problem is that they (codemasters in this case) are not following traditional PC game design but are going down the console route. Do whatever you want to make the console version better but do not do the same for the PC version making it inferior for the PC platform in both terms of game design and control scheme. Now as they have been going down tht route I can imagine there isnt any button mapping either
i have been really excited for this game for a while now. but that it does not have save points comment has really worried me. if im spending hours redoing a part because i died this is going back to the stores day 1. i absolutely HATE!!!! that with games, gets kinda frustrating doing the same s**t over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. why cant consoles be like PCs and let us save a game wherever we want. best, most useful thing ever brought into video games!
@ blind fools: There r auto save points but thts only if u play the game in normal mode. If ur wanting hardcore mode though then u and i r both screwed man.
There have been console games tht allow any time saving such as chaos theory and alone in the dark (funny mention tht 1) so it can b done. Its inexcusable for pc though as practically every game can and has done this
now aside from this im wondering if bullet physics are altered by wind speed and direction. The reviewer did mention the need to compensate for bullet drag/gravity but thts it.
I may sound like a little b1tch but i have waited for this game for a very long time and i wanted it to b perfect.
To all those people attacking his opinions on console ports and consoles, please research your information before you start bitching. The plague of PC Gaming today is poor console ports, it shows poor effort by the developers as the PC is a more complex gaming system than consoles, yet gets the same treatment. In my opinion, console gaming is much more simple and less serious than PC Gaming. PC Gaming has always been more complex due to its multitasking nature. Don't get me wrong, console gaming can be fun, but it lacks the accuracy and skills you find in PC Gamers. Alot of people i know hate console ports, each system has a different control scheme, it just doesn't flow or work well when ported! The core reason why developers are aiming at consoles now is because they see them as aimless mindless customers who will buy anything for gamerpoints/trophies/action no matter how good or bad. If you release a poor game with good advertising on the pc and console, i bet you 90% of the time it will sell more on consoles. So when you start complaining about consoles being simple, well its because they are! And due to that PC gaming is suffering. Red Faction, good fps, originaly made for the pc. Latest one is fully console dedicated, poor pc port comes out 2 months later. This is beyond the stereotypes, sure the majority of console gamers are minors, but so is the WoW community on PCs. Age doesn't come into this. Consoles and PC's are different platforms, they need to be treated this way.
stylex i do believe your talking tripe,i have a PC and a 360 and play my console far more than my computer,PCs are only good for RTS and shooting games using a mouse+keyboard is easy enough but really unsatisfing not to mention nowhere near as comfortable as sitting on your sofa with a pad in front of your large screen TV,nothing beats pulling a trigger to shoot,as for console games lacking the skill and accuracy needed for PC gaming ho ho what daft statement,i have no doubt me and many of my friends on xlive would annihilate you playing on either
consoles are great fun man but they cant come close to the versatility of PC's. If you prefer a pad for shooters for whatever crazy reason then you can always use whatever pad you want with a PC. If you dont want to buy a nice chair but lay on the couch and play on a TV twice the size of most gaming monitors but have a lower resolution you can always hook it up to a TV, so what's all the fuss abt?
Exactly Sleepaphobic. I find playing on my computer much more entertaining and relaxing. If i want to i can buy mice that have triggers on them or other cool stuff like the Novent Falcon, yet 360 and the like are restricted. Why? PC = PERSONAL Computer. Console = Play games on a box. If you want to be your own person and play how you want to play, PC is the most versitile platform. Because its so versitile developers get lazy making games for an audience that 30% pirates their copies of games. That can be understandable if they don't release game demo's and such like they used to. Pre-360 and PS3 PC's had MUCH more dedicated developers, yet come the new generation and they just sell out. More profitable to sell their product to people who don't understand game mechanics. This is all pretty sad as 80% of console gamers don't know their game was actually made on a PC.
Exactly Sleepaphobic. I find playing on my computer much more entertaining and relaxing. If i want to i can buy mice that have triggers on them or other cool stuff like the Novent Falcon, yet 360 and the like are restricted. Why? PC = PERSONAL Computer. Console = Play games on a box. If you want to be your own person and play how you want to play, PC is the most versitile platform. Because its so versitile developers get lazy making games for an audience that 30% pirates their copies of games. That can be understandable if they don't release game demo's and such like they used to. Pre-360 and PS3 PC's had MUCH more dedicated developers, yet come the new generation and they just sell out. More profitable to sell their product to people who don't understand game mechanics. This is all pretty sad as 80% of console gamers don't know their game was actually made on a PC.
Ignoring the other inconveniences of power consumption, boot times etc. - you have to pay a substantial premium to get your PC to be able to play games in as comfortable an environment as that of an out-the-box console, let alone to customise it to how you want it to be.
And that's before we look at the time and effort of getting your set up "just so". When I buy a console, I spend a few hundred pounds and within 15 minutes of it being through the door I'm playing in HD and comfortably on my sofa.
I used to play games solely on the PC, so I can understand the appeal, but having seen the pros and cons of both sides I know which side suits me the best.
What if I want to go round a friend's house and play a co-op or multiplayer game with them I can just take my controller, sign in with my account and play split screen. Setting up LAN parties is a massive pain in the backside in packing it all up, finding space for people, setting it all up, network issues etc. Because it's so difficult, they rarely occur and as such PC gaming can be a fairly solitary pursuit, in my experience (playing with people over the internet doesn't count). As a student it was a bit easier when there's a few of you living in the same house all networked together, but once you move into the real world you realise it's a little bit lonely.
I find it quite difficult to believe that gaming will be so important in my life that I end up spending a thousand (or more) every 5 years or so and a decent chunk of my time setting it all up. It's just not worth it, in my opinion.
yes those can be real problems for some people but I actually like all tht tinkering and upgrade every year. Smthg tht does annoy me though is how devs just overlook key things and games crash all the time. Im not using hardware made by argos but top of the line stuff and it seems they still dont test for them. It doesnt happen all the time but enough tht I have a 2nd sound card always installed.
Btw any1 else get l4d crashing after launching it post crash course update?
i had COD4 and vegas2 on ps3. i now have them for my pc, and the console versions dont compare - as fun as they were.
the precision for aiming is what makes the pc so much more fun. you dont realise how horrendous the joypad is for shooters until you play the same game with a mouse.
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Great fun
and why it is coming out on the 6th in the USA 
