E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

[Matt Diesel]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

This game is getting crazy good reviews

[Candyman5]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

Cant wait.

[Flawless]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

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[Flawless]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

OXM UK Review - 8.0

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising doesn't have levels, it has AOs, each a vast "area of operation" that offers you (and up to three co-op mates) the chance to express yourself tactically in a way that no other shooter on Xbox 360 quite manages.

Faced with insurmountable odds during a frontal assault? You always have the space, if not necessarily the time, to stage a side-on or rear attack. When you fail a mission and end up face-down in the dirt, you don't just try again, you take a moment to adjust the plan. So while CoD and the like aim for Hollywood-inspired set-pieces, Op Flash feels like actually being a soldier.

The island of Skira is vast and often remarkably atmospheric. While the Ego engine can't replicate DiRT 2 levels of fidelity, with such a huge environment to decorate you'll still find breathtaking valleys, dense forests and thick grassland as you progress through the game.

The environment is also one of the thousands of variables that Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising throws at you during a firefight. Finding cover can be extremely tough, and vegetation often obscures your vision if you clatter to a prone position to avoid enemy fire. Then there's the sheer range involved in a battlefield this big - bullets don't travel in a straight line over hundreds of metres, so you have to account for the drop off.

There's also plenty of variety in the missions, and while there are recommended ways to solve all of them, as long as the objectives are completed, your commanding officer isn't going to complain. Broadly, they're split into two main flavours, stealth and infantry, but the pace with which you progress doesn't actually change much between the two - a sort of measured efficiency is best, with the odd frantic time-limited charge. Instead it's the suggested tactics, the supplied equipment and the nature of the objectives that keeps things spicy. Needless to say with such a realistic replication of warfare, there are going to be frustrating periods where you end up being repeatedly killed, but that can be argued away as par for the course.

What would help would be if Operation Flashpoint didn't compound the problem with confusing directions, a merciless checkpoint system and occasionally broken objectives. If you're particularly blunder-prone you can accidentally render a mission impossible, trigger a checkpoint that prevents you from backtracking to fix the problem and, worst of all, spend ages trying to work out what's going on because the game doesn't tell you what you did wrong. It's at these moments where the game's flexibility butts heads with the reliability we're used to from an Xbox 360 game. Perhaps it's a deliberate comment on how under-informed a standard infantry grunt is in a modern army, but somehow we doubt it. Things seem to get more broken the more freedom the game gives you.

In spite of all this, it never ruins the charm of a game that is ultimately about total freedom and glorious, barely contained ambition. Whatever you're up to, whether it's assaulting an airfield, disabling a fuel depot or legging it with a bunch of liberated POWs through the early morning mist, you feel like your contribution, whether direct or strategic, is making the difference between victory and defeat in a large-scale conflict. Even if that conflict occasionally goes slightly mad like a catnip-addled kitten. Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising isn't a game in the traditional, tightly structured sense. As a large-scale war sim it's more like an enormous clockwork toy that you can prod and fiddle with to your heart's content.

Every so often you'll tweak the wrong component and gears and springs will start pinging out all over the shop, but it's because there's so much interconnected stuff going on over the course of a single mission. The vast majority of the time, when everything's properly meshed and you're part of that machine, it's an exhilarating and terrifying experience. More than anything, it's a game that, even after completion, we want to keep returning to again and again, adding different ingredients to the freeform formula and seeing what kind of explosions we can create. We can guarantee you won't have played an FPS quite like this on Xbox 360 but, now that one's arrived, you certainly should.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

Holy ****! That video was great!

[Cusefan]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

The weapons look pretty good for the most part, a few complaints but it looks better than anything we have seen as far as weapon customization goes.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

This game looks the first real FPS Simulation. Very cool stuff. Don't know when I can pick it up, because Live is coming out on the same day, but I definitely will get it sometime this month.

[Eton Rifles]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

the toys r us sale comes starting next sunday.

[mudtiger]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

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Pre-ordered for 360.

[tyler289]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

The only thing I don't like is the "Target. Rifleman. Eliminated." after every kill. It's so robotic and I wish they did "Target Eliminated" instead of specifying the type of enemy.

[Eton Rifles]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

tyler it could be worse. It could be the real robot voices from the original game.

[Candyman5]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

Will have it Tuesday morning at 2am Eastern if anyone else will be on.

[Eton Rifles]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

I am getting it from Gamestop so I assume not until Wednesday for me. How are you getting it early Candy?

[Skerik]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

Getting this tomorrow. Hopefully some of the old guard will be playing it on the 360.

[nyisles16]

Re: E3 - Operation Flashpoint2 - hardcore fps

Getting this tomorrow. Hopefully some of the old guard will be playing it on the 360.

I will... loved the heck out of the old xbox version.. hopefully this will be just as good..