Counterpoint: Operation Flashpoint – Dragon Rising

My colleague Florian Totu has posted a review of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, the military simulation developed and published by Codemasters, giving it mostly high marks and praising the way the title puts you in the middle of intense firefights with a squad of other three guys taking on the might of the People's Liberation Army.

As the United States tries to liberate the island of Skira, the game offers just a few tactical aids on the lowest difficulty levels and playing on the higher ones can test the most hardcore of players. I recently finished the single player element of the game and I find it lacking in a critical department, that of variety.

The premise and the mechanics of Operation Flashpoint certainly deserve high marks. Most of the time the game feels right, the guns weighty, the enemies pretty smart and the action satisfying. The problem is that the game feels depopulated throughout and the scale is all wrong. When playing as a Special Forces operative deep behind enemy lines, it's OK to only have your squad and face maybe 50 enemies in one mission. But when landing on a beach as part of the USMC or pushing deeper inland with tanks and air support the limitations of the engine are visible.

Only three tanks are the main assault force? AA units need to be cleared out when naval guns could probably hit most points on the island? Codemasters would have done well to make sure that most of the missions were set in instances where the presence of a small number of units is justifiable, with the assassination mission being a perfect example of how to do that.

The game also fails to introduce a variety of roles to the player. The vehicles look good and adding some in a scenario created with the editor can show anyone that they handle well and could have added some variety to the infantry-based action. Even helicopters handle well and a few search and destroy Vietnam-like scenarios would have been nice. Unfortunately, the game settled on delivering small scale infantry battles, some of them frustratingly hard (the Monte Cassino-like mission) rather than aiming for some changes of pace and of atmosphere.

Operation Flashpoint could also have done with some better placed waypoints and maybe the lack of gameplay aids in the higher difficulties could have been introduced as standard in the campaign, but the main failing is one of ambition. Codemasters had the chance to make a great game and it settled, in my opinion, for a good one.