Friday, October 23, 2009

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising



This is another game made by Codemasters and published by EGO. The game is a very realistic squad-based tactical FPS. Bullets are affected by gravity. Most of the time only one hit means one kill/death. If you do happen to survive, you’ll bleed to death, unless you fix yourself or get a medic.

This game has been released on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. There are some differences between the Xbox 360/PS3 version and the PC version. The PC version features a Map Editor and you can play with more people online.

The story of the game is that in the near future there'll be an insufficient amount of oil to supply every country in the world and the reserves have ran out, so Russia claims the island Skira, because a large oilfield has been discovered on that island. For your information, the name Skira doesn't exist, the real name of the island is Kiska. When China discovers the oilfield, the government annexates Skira. Russia isn't pleased by this and asks the NATO and the U.S for military assistance on Skira. This is the beginning of the biggest invasion on Skira ever.

The game has three difficulty levels: Normal, Experienced and Hardcore. The difficulty levels don’t affect your enemies, but it will affect your HUD (Head-Up Display) . On Normal you have a full HUD: You can see the status of your squad, your status, you can see where your mission objective is without looking at your map and you can see all details of your weapons and ammo. You can also see where your enemies are, if you spotted them and you’ll get aim-assist. When you hit an enemy the indicator flashes white and when you kill an enemy it flashes red.
On Experienced you’ll lose your aim-assist and the hit indicator is gone. On Hardcore you almost lose all support stated above. Sometimes you won’t even notice that one of your squad-members is down, unless he’s still alive and is screaming for a medic. On Normal and Experienced you've got the possibility to load from the last checkpoint you've passed before you died and on Hardcore this option is gone, so that makes the game a lot harder.

You're able to give your squad orders easily via the quick command radial. You can change your tactics (Rules of Engagement, squad-spread or formation), coordinate an artillery bombardment or air strike, tell your squad where to move next or to engage an enemy. You can also tell your squad to assault or defend certain coordinates. Be advised: Don’t use your squad-members as cannon-fodder, because you’re not going to make it on your own. At least make sure that your medic survives, because most of the time he’s the key to victory.

In some missions you’re able to call in artillery or an air strike. First you’ll have to choose a location and then how they'll shoot: Tight, Scattered, Barrage or Harassing. Some of these options work better against vehicles than against infantry and the other way around. When you’re able to call in an air strike you also have to choose the bomb that they’ll use, unless you only have one option. You can also use vehicles to help you accomplish your missions.

There are 11 levels that you have to complete in order to finish the game. You can choose to play them in singleplayer or call for some help in co-op. In co-op you don’t have a checkpoint-function on Normal and Experienced, but you're able to respawn when at least one of your human team-mates is still alive and not in combat. When you die on Hardcore you’re forced to watch the session until it’s over.

Besides co-op you can also play against human players, in two game-modes: Annihilation and Infiltration. Annihilation is the same as Team Deathmatch. Each team exists of 16 players (PC version features more players!) , 4 human players and 12 bots. Just shoot as much enemies as you can and use your squad-members well. In Infiltration there are two teams as well, a big team (the Chinese) and a small team (U.S). The small team has to destroy or capture an objective, while the big team has to defend the objective.The big team exists of 5 human players and 15 bots and the small team exists of 3 human players and 9 bots.

The graphics of this game are done very nice. Unlike other games, like Vietnam: Black Ops, in this game your character holds his weapon realistically. There is no in-game music, but the title-screen does have music and it gets a little annoying after hearing it over and over again.

This is a very cool game and if you love the genre you must definitely get this title. Even if you don’t like the genre, I recommend you to at least check the game out.



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