Operation Flashpoint : Dragon Rising Review

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a first person tactical military game for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 developed by British game developer Codemasters. Codemasters have advertised the game as a tactical shooter designed to realistically represent modern infantry combat. It is a follow-up to Bohemia Interactive's Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, but was developed entirely by Codemasters due to a falling out between the two companies.

It is a very realistic shooter. Ive only played the first two missions but I have already gotten my impressions from the game. It has many exciting features such as free roaming style open warfare missions, drivable vehicles, 70 weapons in game, all supported by a realistic ballistics system. Even simple animations such as reloading a weapon, placing it to the shoulder, and other combat animations have been motion captured using soldiers who have been trained to use the equipment in real life.

I have started the game on normal which is the easiest difficulty and I would say that is equivalent to veteran difficulty on MW2 or MW1 because it is a very challenging experience, after normal it goes experienced then hardcore (not even gonna try hardcore), after about 3 minutes into it I got shot and the game ended, which leads me onto the health system, you get shot once and your pretty much dead unless the bullet just scrapes your limbs, if so you have about a minute to apply a field dressing before you lose too much blood and die. But to fully heal yourself you have to be treated by a medic.

So same applies for enemies also, you shoot them their injured and can be healed by enemy medics but you need to shoot them again to make sure their dead. If you sprint for too long you hear heart beats and controller shakes until you take a break, if your injured you can’t sprint. Weapons are good as I said above and good selection of equipment, binoculars, knife, field dressings, c4, etc. Just tried the vehicles and managed to get into a jeep for 4 seconds and reversed until it got destroyed by enemy RPG, so very realistic vehicle damage also and fires burn for a realistic time as well. There are 50 different land, air and sea vehicles including helicopters, tanks, boats and APCs along with a few vehicles/weapons which cannot be used directly, but which can be called in a support role, such as fighter jets and artillery.

The visual effects of the game are quite stunning for example; the game has a terrain draw distance of 35 kilometers, with vehicles, soldiers and other objects being culled from render at approximately 1600m. Fire, smoke and dust are simulated based on effects of each weapon. A 2,000 pound bomb will throw up dust which will make it difficult to see, and fires created will burn for some time when set. Although there is day and night cycle along with weather conditions, rain won't be included for reasons that are currently unknown.

The controls for the game are like stepping into a spaceship, you will need a good few hours to get used to the basic controls, before you learn the team commands, etc, which are as complicated as hell. (would be good If it includes headset compatibility in future update).

On the game box it says it is the closest thing to war you will ever want to get and I believe it. for summary, very realistic open warfare map type game with lots of cool features but controls are very confusing and complicated and on some missions you have to run 2.5 km (real life measurements) to get to your objectives unless you find a vehicle.

I have now played a bit of online and isn't bad, but there are some issues that need to be sorted out such as it only has by default, 2 multiplayer maps and 2 game modes (unless you buy the dlc) and also the servers aren't that good as you get disconnected most games, and you can only have 8 players in one game and if you saw the size of the maps it take about 10 minutes to find somebody (yes it actually does!) but good points are that there are vehicles you can use which are fun and many weapons and equipment and can have a good tactical war. The other main online attraction is co op where up to 4 players in one squad can play in one mission which are the same as the campaign missions, so if you get stuck on a mission offline just play it online with other people using tactics and strategies.

The online hasn't changed my opinion of the game, if I was comparing it to say MW2, the offline on OF DR blows MW2 campaign out of the water, not for story but for pure realism and I’m sorry but you can't deny that if you have played this game. As for online, MW2 wins that one, but if Codemasters the game developers really tried then the game has a lot of potential to be better than it is online.

Review by : Sam Atkin