Operation Flashpoint 2 Review

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (also known as Operation Flashpoint 2) is a “military simulation” first person shooter game released in October 2009 that was advertised as being a game that is “as close to war as you ever want to get.” Developers boasted of its assortment of real-life weaponry and vehicles, advanced combat system, and it’s extremely large island battleground.

The main premise of the game is a war between modern day superpowers in a fight over the island north of Japan, named Skira. The United States has teamed up with Russia to overtake the island from China. China has claimed the land as their own to hoard the natural resources that the island has to offer. The player finds themselves as a leader of a special operations marine squad on Skira. This game strives for realism, and is very unlike other common first person shooter war games, such as Call of Duty 4. In Operation Flashpoint, military style tactics are required for advancing in the game. The player needs to go slow, listen to commands being ordered via the radio, and think about where they are in their environment and where they need to go. Running around with your gun or knife, quickly amassing head shots does not work in this game. There is a very steep learning curve for players who are used to the popular first person shooter games.

One of the areas where Operation Flashpoint really shines is its environment. The sheer size of the maps is impressive, and the game’s graphics have a sort of dark, dingy look to them. The buildings are also able to be destroyed, which makes it satisfying to call in a howitzer cannon to demolish a small section of a town.

Other small details add to the realism of the game, making it feel like the player is actually fighting in a war. Just as in a real war, one shot can kill you making it that much more important to be aware of your surroundings. The trajectory of the bullets also adds to the realism. In the game, when shooting from a long distance, the player must shoot above the target so that the arc of the bullet is accounted for. The missions are well designed in that the route that is given to you, and commanding a squad adds an interesting element to the game that other first person shooters don’t usually have. Since strategy plays a key role in this game, every move needs to be given thought and be well executed.

Unfortunately, the features that could make this a great game do not work the way they were most likely intended. This review is for the PC version of the game, and one of the most frustrating problems is that the squad controls seem to be built for a console. Whenever the player opens the quick command menu to give their squad orders, it stops you in your tracks. The player is unable to move at all while fumbling through the menu trying to find the command they want. The same is true for even switching weapons. There is also yet another menu separate from the quick command, which is specifically for calling in air strikes and howitzer cannon shots, and is by default the right shift bar. It is obvious that the two menus were intended for a controller, because to navigate through these menus, the player must press the W, A, S, and D keys for up, down, left, and right; something that would be much easier with a joystick.

Another major problem that Operation Flashpoint has is a lack of useful artificial intelligence in the player’s computer controlled squad mates. The computer controlled military men are supposed to be able to follow commands given by the player, but often, they do not. This poses a huge problem, simply because the game’s main focus is using teamwork and strategies in order to accomplish missions. For example, if a player takes too much damage, they will become incapacitated on the ground, unable to do anything other than call out for help. Eventually they will die if a medic doesn’t come to their aid. The dying process can take quite awhile, leaving the player to yell out “medic!” over and over again, while the nearby medic obliviously carries on whatever task they were doing. This can be very frustrating, not only because the player can see the medic plainly ignoring a team mates urgent cries for help, but because it takes forever for the player to finally die. When you do die, you are re-spawned at a point in the game an hour or so earlier.

As mentioned earlier, this game has a huge environment, which really adds to the realism. The only problem with this is that the player spends most of their time running everywhere. Vehicles are hard to come by, which forces the player to spend the majority of their gameplay time running around. The game’s many weapons were also hyped up by the previews, but after the first few missions, the weapons that are given to the player are the same for a lot of the levels. Actually, one of the hardest parts of the game is trying not to run out of ammunition. Also, a few levels require you to use your best stealth to advance through the game, but it seems like the enemy can spot you no matter if you are hiding behind a tree or a brick wall. When using smoke grenades to hide your position, it actually does the opposite, because you can no longer see the enemies but they can somehow see you. They shoot you through the smoke, and you quickly die.

This game strives for realism, and the voice acting seems very authentic, at least to someone who has never been in an actual war. While adding to the realism of the game, it also makes the objectives of each level extremely confusing. Most of your orders are quickly barked over a crackling radio, using all sorts of military abbreviations and code words, most of which sound like Latin to a common civilian who has never experienced a real war. There are no translations of these words in the instruction manual, so the player either figures out what they are supposed to be doing via trial and error over several hours, or pauses the game to decipher a random word or phrase using Google.

Overall, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has a lot of good things going for it. The attention paid to every small detail with the focus of making this a war simulation game is obvious. It is also obvious that so much time was spent on the small details that many key game play elements are broken or missing. The computer artificial intelligence is lacking, the controls are clunky and obviously made to be used with a console controller, and were later quickly modified to work with a keyboard and mouse. The island environment is huge and impressive, but a pain to traverse. The online play had so much lag that it was impossible to move. There are a wide variety of weapons, but most of them are revealed at the very beginning of the game, with nothing new or exciting to look forward to later. The gameplay in general has a very steep learning curve for someone who is used to playing first person shooter war games such as Call of Duty 4. The tactics required for Operation Flashpoint are totally different and take a lot of getting used to. After many hours of playing, the game did eventually start to make sense and objectives of each level became clearer, but it was not clear whether the amount of time and energy it took to figure the game out was worth it. Perhaps this game will appeal to a section of gamers who are looking for a realistic war simulation game, but for the average player who wants to run around and quickly kill other players, this game will be too confusing and slow.

Final Verdict: 6 out of 10.

New Games Journalism

We’ve all agreed that videogames should be considered forms of art, and with any form of art, there are many different approaches to explaining them. Since videogames are still developing as an art medium, new approaches are still being taken to describe them. The article "The New Games Journalism" stated that "The sign of a healthy artistic medium is not that it can be easily explained by one approach, but that it takes several and sometimes even dozens to really properly explain all the amazing things that a piece of art is doing. When it comes to New Games Journalism, it’s hopefully only the first of many."

Now, I’m not saying that New Games Journalism is better than the standard games journalism piece, but depending on the type of game it is used for, New Games Journalism can be more beneficial. Kieron Gillen said, "Part of the problem with games is that they contain everything. As such, what critical approach works best varies from game to game. Some games, taking primarily from film theory is pretty well justified. Others, a more music-inspired approach works." For some games, New Game Journalism is arguably the best approach to describing a game.

New Games Journalism is best used to portray (in first person) a unique experience of the reviewer, which goes beyond simply describing the mechanics of a game and instead placing the reader in that experience. This is best used for multiplayer experiences or games that are nonlinear in which no experience will be the same. New Games Journalism also provides a description of the gameplay a game has, but in first person narrative. "The New Games Journalism" article made a good point by saying: "Rattling off the details of your special powers in a game and claiming this is enough to describe what a game is about is just as absurd as describing the effect that a real gun will have on a live target: talking about it is not the same thing as being there." New Games Journalism gives you that feeling of "being there" with the use of first person narrative, which in my opinion is more interesting to read. This could also be a good approach to helping games journalism appeal to the non-gaming community.

Global Videogames

Technology has come a long way, and videogames have changed and grown with the technology. When I first started playing videogames, they were just a way for me to escape reality and relax. I hid by myself in my room in the basement, content with my single player games. A few years after that, I began playing with my friend Bryce, who lived down the road from me. Videogames became a social activity for me as well, as we would spend hours killing each other playing Super Smash Brothers. A few years after that, I finally was able to enter the 21st century, and I bought a computer and DSL, and was able to play with people all over the world. The new technology opened up a lot of doors for me, helping me to get a lot better. I was able to interact with people who were a lot better than me, and learned from them as they killed me.

My first real experience with a “global” game was World of Warcraft, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). Playing an MMO is an entirely different experience than playing a videogame alone in your basement. There are add-on programs that people download and use in order to talk to each other on headsets, so that they can coordinate their attacks, or just casually chat. People form and join large guilds of players, so that at any given time, there are people online, playing, chatting, and available.

World of Warcraft is very similar to MySpace or Facebook in a lot of ways. There is a huge emphasis on community, teamwork, and interaction. Some quests or events in World of Warcraft require that you be in a group of people in order to complete them, and your group has to work together in a coordinated way to accomplish a goal. In some ways, it is strange to be playing a game in my basement, and run across some mage from Australia, killing boars in the woods.

Computer technology is advancing at an incredible rate. We really do have a global community through the internet. It is crazy to think of all of the millions of people across the world that you might accidentally run into while playing a game in your home. For me, videogames have gone from being a solitary activity to being something I did with my friend at his house, to something that I can do with a person from Japan that I have never met before. The ability to play with people anywhere, at any time adds a lot of interesting aspects to videogames. Being in a “global” videogame means that there is always someone to interact with, always someone to help you accomplish a difficult task, or always someone lurking around the corner, waiting to kill you. One thing that I have noticed is that playing first person shooter games online is a very different experience than playing against the computer, even on the game’s hardest settings. Artificial intelligence technology is growing better each year, but it does not compare to the “real” intelligence of a seasoned player sneaking up behind you to shank you in the back. Playing games online with real people is the best way to get really good at a game really fast. The technology of being able to interact with people from all over the world has changed the ways people play games.