Operation Flashpoint 2 Review

It's fun to mess around in vehicles, although they don't show up too often.

As an added kick in the teeth, the checkpoint system will occasionally fail to kick in if you do something untoward. One mission tasks you with capturing a tower on an airfield, and it was only with hindsight that I realised that I was denied a save-point because I had entered the building in an unusual way - climbing up a side staircase and clearing it from the top down (hey, that's how I roll). On the whole, Dragon Rising is infinitely more stable and reliable than BIS' ArmA 2, but a bug such as this is undeniably concerning. More to the point, it would have been avoided if the player had been able to dictate their own saves. It's acceptable to limit saving at higher difficulty levels in a game like this, but do we really need to punish the newbies this way?

Indeed, one of Dragon Rising's biggest problems is that it really doesn't offer much help to newcomers. This game doesn't just throw you in at the deep end - it ties a rock to your foot, chucks you in the deep end, and then throws a jellyfish at you. Unbelievably, Codemasters has neglected to throw in a proper tutorial mode. Sure, there are a couple of bare-bones tips in the first mission - and we're talking Calista Flockhart bare-bones, here - but aside from that you're expected to work things out for yourself. The first time I used a SAM (surface-to-air missile launcher), I thought that the game was bugging because it wouldn't fire. As it turns out you need to hold your target in view for a long time, about 15 seconds or so, until you automatically get a lock-on. There's no indicator for this, and no-one explains this to you - you're just expected to know. On nocturnal missions you'll often be issued with IR Strobe grenades. These are clearly used for some form of communication, but I'm buggered if I know what, exactly. Clearly I didn't get the memo.

This same problem extends to the system used for commanding your troops. By holding the right bumper, you'll summon a radial menu that can be used for ordering about the rest of your squad, using the d-pad to skip several sub-menus. Here you can do everything from changing their formation to setting the team's rules of engagement (i.e. how and when they fire). Again, no-one ever walks you through any of this, so if you think that "combat spread" is some form of army-issue jam, you're probably never going to make the most of half the options.

Okay, let's cut the moaning for a second. From what I've written so far, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I dislike Dragon Rising, or that it's a bad game. This simply isn't the case. The truth is that I think it's extremely hard to make a military sim work on a console, but that Codemasters has given it a damn good shot. For my money, some things will always work better on a PC: when you're trying to take precise aim at a tiny enemy in the distance, a mouse is more useful than a pair of analogue sticks. When you're trying to issue complex commands to multiple troopers, it's useful to have a keyboard system where each soldier is assigned their own function key. While Dragon Rising's order system gets easier with practice, it's never up to the complex but infinitely flexible standards of ArmA. The contextual commands simply don't work: to order your men to target a specific enemy, you need to be staring right at him - which is kind of tricky if he's crouching in a forest 400 meters away. You'll soon learn that the map is your best friend when it comes to issuing orders, since here alone you get a decent overview of the situation. Even here there are a few problems - notably the fact that you can't order in artillery strikes while you're looking at the map, despite that clearly being the most sensible tactic.

So yes, Dragon Rising has problems. However, and this is one very big however, it also does an awful lot right. The atmosphere is brilliant: it may not be the prettiest game you've ever seen, particularly when you get close to certain textures, but the draw distance is impressive. When you stumble across a decent sight - a massive battle with smoking wrecks, perhaps, or the white outline of an enemy troop as you observe them through an infra-red scope - it's hard not to get sucked in. Your movement is far more restricted than in many other military sims - if you wander too far from the action, you'll fail the level - but the missions themselves are generally very well thought-out. I would also have liked to have seen more vehicles to use, since you're largely limited to the occasional Humvee or something a bit heavier. Unlike the original OpFlash (and ArmA), you can't commandeer any vehicle you find - so there's no riding into battle on a tractor, sadly.

Crouching to shoot is a good idea; crouching behind cover is a better one.

Still, the GTA-style ability to ride in anything was always a bit far-fetched. The important point is that the infantry-based action here is largely excellent, provided that you have the will-power to endure countless defeats. Death is never far away in Dragon Rising, and if you've not played a game like this before there's a good chance you'll love the lashings of tension that accompany each and every mission. I'd also wager that the game will work brilliantly in online co-op play (splitcreen isn't supported). You can work through the entire campaign with up to three other mates, or just attempt one of the eleven missions; the game will force you to stay within 275m of each other - so you can't snipe while a chum rushes a village - but even with this concession, I suspect that the game will gain a lot from being played in this way. (I say "suspect" because I've been unable to test this aspect of the game, nor the competitive multiplayer, since I'm playing pre-release and there's no-one to join me). In any case, know that the PC version supports 16 versus 16 matches, while consoles get four versus four matches with each player supported by three AI troops.

Dragon Rising will not be for everyone. Many gamers will try it and be put off by the relentless hardness; a few may be put off by the ways it deviates from the previous game, or by strange concessions that deviate from realism. Still, plenty of others will love what they find, and there's certainly a chance that this game will completely open up what has long been a niche genre. For all its stumbling blocks, much of the core Operation Flashpoint experience has survived the transition from PC to console. For this achievement alone, Codemasters deserves our respect.