Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

I’m usually afraid to say a game sucks especially when there are many good reviews out but for this one, as bad as it makes me look I have to say my personal opinion. I love FPS games and I like war games but I did not enjoy even one minute of my time while playing this game! Keep in mind, this is not a run and gun game, it is sort of a war simulator. Sure, it looks great and the sound is amazing, but it doesn’t offer smooth or fun gameplay.  As always feel free to post if you disagree,  we’re totally open for comments.

Personally I found this game confusing as hell with many design flaws and glitches! When I saw the trailers I saw a first person shooter that you get to command your squad, call for airstrike, etc. How cool is that? It only sounds cool till you start playing it!

First of all if you miss what your objective is, there is no way to find it again in the menus. There is no log of the radio communications. For primary objectives there are marks on the page and map but once you finish them there are certain commands like “Stay at that area and clear the village” which you can easily miss and head toward your second marked objective.

The AI players in your squad are dumb as a box of rocks. They mostly follow you around unless you give them command. If an AI player is in the driver seat of a vehicle you better switch seats ‘cause you’re not going anywhere!

Unlike AI players in your team, the ones in the opposite team are smart and can shoot you from hundreds of meters away even if you’re hiding between bushes.

This game is all about team work and strategy. You won’t engage with enemy alone because you die in no time. You have to lead your squad and use them to clear your way to victory. (Wow, it sounds awesome, when I say it that way!) To issue commands to your squad, you use the so called “Quick Commands” menu! That menu is anything but “quick”! To issue a simple “suppressive fire” you need to hold R1, press right (“Orders”), left (“Fire”) and left (“Suppress”) again or something like that. Keep in mind the game does not pause while you’re issuing an order and you may end up calling for a Medic instead, by the time you finish these steps!

Unlike many other games, there is no indicator, showing you the direction you’re getting shot at, even when you’re hit. Your squad report something like, “Rifleman, southwest, 300 meters.” but that doesn’t help much. There is no indicator on enemies’ head so they are really hard to spot, even with scope.

The jeep driving experience is nowhere as good as most other similar games. While driving as first-person, there is no way to look around. Bumping to a solid object like a rock will seriously damage the jeep to the point that it stops.

While left stick is for movements, L3 is used to toggle between sitting and standing so you may press it by mistake while trying to move.

I believe this game sacrificed fun factor in favour of realism but even from that point of view it lacks functionalities. The environment is mostly non-destructible. The glass breaks but that’s about it. You can shoot enemy’s sandbags with a grenade launcher and it remains good as new, throw a grenade between trees and bushes and they remain untouched. Many games do not have these but I believe they are necessary for a game that is being claimed as “Simulation”.

mikestrifecloseAuthor: mikestrife Name: Mike
Email: mike@gameplayreviews.com
Site: http://www.gameplayreviews.com
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I like the name of this game. It makes it sound like you get to play Ryu or Ken from Street Fighter in a Counterstrike game, and shryuken terrorists.

Seriously though, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a very different kind of FPS. It’s a realistic, tactical, squad based, fps. Which isn’t the type of game that can appeal to a lot of gamers. The fact is with any game, the more real you make it, the more you scare gamers off. Game series that started off going for the realistic approach like Rainbow Six or Swat eventually toned down the realism because the game was just too overpowering for newcomers. That’s pretty much how I feel about Operation Flashpoint. Overall, it’s a solid game with its own pros and cons, but has a complexity that most gamers, myself included, just won’t get into.

So what makes OF:DR different from other FPS games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. The biggest difference is the realism. You can only hold limited ammo, and you don’t regenerate health. You’ll die in 1-3 shots. If you’re lucky to survive a gunshot wound you can dress your wounds with a first aid bandage, but it’s time consuming and doesn’t help as much as in other games. If you are downed but not totally killed (also pretty rare) you can call for a medic to heal you.

The battlefields are large and open, and very well designed. You can move about freely and take up combat positions where ever you like. The battles are mostly small skirmishes between squads so you’re never running up against a huge gauntlet of enemies. The levels have several mandatory and optional objectives to complete, and there are ground and air vehicles as well as air strikes which you can call in.

Close combat usually leads to mission failure, so it’s best to try and pinpoint enemy locations and take them out from a distance. I find the rifles to be very inconsistent in their accuracy, sometimes I can take out an entire squad with only a couple shots. Other times I can empty a full clip into an exposed enemy and not a single shot seems to connect.

The key to this game is squad leadership; the problem is that your squad is dumb. In a game that relies of perfect execution of a strategy you can’t really direct them on what to do. You can try to get them to do what you want, but in my case they were always killed, and I had to run in and single handedly kill all the enemies (which is exactly what this game DOESN’T want you to do!). The quick menu that you have access to is anything but easy to navigate. You better memorize every single option on that thing and know what they all do, because you’ll be using it a lot, and it’s easy to get lost in all those menus. Just to perform a single action can require 5 or 6 button presses.

I can admit that my squad always getting killed could be that I’m not a good squad leader. But the squad AI when you don’t give it a command is basically telling them to go have a picnic. They rarely engage nearby enemies on their own, and will often do nothing while they run between you and an enemy you’re exchanging shots with.

At the end of the first mission they just hung around where the last skirmish happened, even after I got into the evac chopper. I understand I previous told them to attack that area, but when the fights over you’d think they’d just reform or at least automatically go for the chopper at the end of the mission. Instead I had to get out of the chopper and tell them to come over then get back in.

I love the level design of this game, and I can even get used to the combat. It’s babysitting the squad that I don’t think I have the patience for. I like to run and gun my way through FPS games, and that’s not possible here.

So Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a good game, if you crave realism. If you’re the kind of gamer who wishes the Tom Clancy games were even MORE realistic, this is the game for you. If you’re a casual FPS player, stay away.

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