At a glance...

Operation Flashpoint: Red River review

In 2009, Codemasters brought us Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, a tactical first person shooter based on the fictional island of Skira. This time around in Operation Flashpoint: Red River, they are taking us to the very real middle-eastern country of Tajikistan, but in a fictional conflict not dissimilar to modern warfare. We take a look at this new 'military sim' along with its macho military vocals and determine if a tactical first person game still stands up strong in a world of vanilla shooters.

Welcome to Tajikistan; a sandy, typical Central Asian country suffering from a conflict with terrorist group ETIM. The US send the Marine Corps to eliminate the insurgent threat to the nation following attacks on Afghanistan. We follow Bravo squad, a band of four marines amongst other fireteam squads in Outlaw-2, just as they touch down in west Tajikistan ready to clear out the insurgent threat to local villages.

Take your pick to fill the boots of one of the four Bravo marines, each having their own weapon class; rifleman, auto-rifleman, grenadier and marksman. Each has their own separate weapon loadout, with choices which expand throughout the campaign. Only before each of the ten missions can we make loadout customisations, such as additional weapons and attachments which are unlocked by a very loose experience point system. There's no point dwelling on the selection here as the choices are a little limited; the main choice is the class itself. Marksmen get a sniper rifle, riflemen get a semi-automatic rifle, auto-riflemen get an automatic machine gun (perfect for suppressing enemy fire) and grenadiers get the grenade launcher (what else?!). Marksman wins for me, providing the best weapons that cover medium to large distances.

We follow Bravo squad through Tajikistan laying out justice one bullet at a time, with severe instructions from Staff Sergeant Knox along the way. All of the over-masculine, testosterone-fueled, over-the-top, inane barking of US Marine lingo and profanity-laced put-downs come from Knox, more so than the story-driving mission briefs. This extremely salty dialogue plagues everyone's ears (everyone complains) but is unavoidable, and haunts me constantly alongside the other fireteam's order-barking and cries for help when they persistently find themselves under fire. If you can tolerate Knox's voice, then the story should be a breeze, albeit simple. The game spans 10 missions ranging from fourty minutes to an hour and a half each, depending on the difficulty setting you have, and however many times you die and have to restart.

Operation Flashpoint is all about realism. One shot can quickly kill an insurgent enemy, or at least severely debilitate him. The bad news about this fact is that the same rules apply to you too; it is very easy to be shot and killed, if not badly wounded, even from incredibly long distances with AK-47s. Being shot leaves you injured and probably bleeding. Applying bandages to stop the bleeding has been simplified since Dragon Rising thanks to a dedicated button, and the same button applies to healing. Pressing and holding A on the Xbox 360 controller quickly fixes you (or a teammate) up from a seemingly infinite supply. If you don't care for persistent patching then get used to being patient.

This isn't Medal of Honor or Call of Duty, there's no place here for a "Rambo"-style one man army. You must rely on your squad, human or computer-controlled alike, to assist you throughout the campaign. Red River revolves around the ability to play the entire campaign with three friends, all adopting a class each. This is a fantastic and rewarding way to play the game, especially when microphones are involved. Coordination is key and easily achieved with people behind the controller. Attempt the campaign alone, however, and you will have to make friends with the AI, and take lead using the Quick Radial Command menu. This menu is a simplification of Dragon Rising's command menu system and allows you to send your squad forward, hold back, suppress, flank and more. Unfortunately, your squad are worse than incompetent. They are absolutely brainless and completely immune to all squad orders, inevitably dying and relying on you to run around playing doctor because somehow they don't feel it necessary to heal themselves or each other. This can be as frustrating as babysitting three ill-behaving children while trying to frantically fight the oncoming onslaught of insurgents. I'll be honest, the team is the most sorry-ass piece of crap ever to ever walk the earth (oh no, I think Knox's language has rubbed off on me). I've ended gaming sessions in sheer frustration from the inability of the team to follow a simple command such as 'stay still', 'please stay behind cover and at least aim your gun at one of the bad guys', or 'please heal me while I lay half-dead at your feet!'. If you are to play this game, you have to play with friends, or at least be very good at the game, even on the lowest difficulty. Rant over.

The three difficulties of the game have distinct differences. 'Normal' mode brings health replenishment and reincarnation of dead squad mates for each infrequent checkpoint. The 'experienced' difficulty reduces the number of checkpoints, but continues to bring the dead back to life, and finally the 'hardcore' difficulty has no checkpoints. The point is, even normal mode is a tough match to fight through, so be ready to spend a lot of time being careful, checking corners, and pushing up slowly trying not to die when one single insurgent from three miles away takes you out without a scope.

How does it all look? The game handles the very large dusty spaces in Tajikistan, rendering quite long distances. That would be impressive if it weren't such a sparse country, with seemingly few buildings to labour the updated EGO engine, which lags behind current generation of shooters. Sunlight bloom is over-emphasized, becoming dazzling whenever exiting any building as part of an overused HDR effect. However, Operation Flashpoint is certainly game that is much more about gameplay than visuals.

Does it compete with Call of Duty? No. It is a tactical shooter which seems to try and run with the casual market toppers by incorporating their elements such as checkpoint triggered enemy spawning, wacky characters and a simplified menu. However, Red Rising does stick to its roots by remaining a tactical shooter with a heavy note of realism that can take some skill and patience. A game that can be optionally played with three online players, however, should not have such a terrible single player system of computer-controlled squads, so be sure to have people on board before you even insert the disc; you will need them. This shouldn't detract you from the game itself though, which does it's job pretty well.

Ratings

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