In a time when military first-person shooters have gone the route of stylish arcade action, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising looks to offer something to military sim purists.  Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was a PC game developed by Bohemia Interactive Studio and  published by Codemasters in the early 2000′s on PC and later on for the original XBOX.  Back then it was easily one of the better realism based first-person shooters on the market.  Now all of these years later, and after a falling out between developer and publisher, Codemasters themselves developed and release Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising utilizing a different game engine and promising more immersion.  Does this new Operation Flashpoint game rise to the occasion or will it sink to the depths of obscurity?

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising’s story is a mixture of fact and fiction much like most other military shooters today.  The game is set on an island called Skira, which is based on an actual island called Kiska, but more on that later.  In-game, Skira is  set off of the coast of Japan and is a Russian territory.  Once a previously unknown vastness of gas and oil resources are discovered it becomes a point of contention between Russia and China.  Fighting breaks out over these resources and of rightful ownership of the territory causing Russia to request assistance from America.  The Chinese take over the island and it is the American allies job to retake Skira while Russia forces are busy defending their own borders from Chinese forces.

Daring to be different in a marketplace of arcade-like action games is a bold step for Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.  Make no mistakes, there will be no successful running and gunning tactics to be had in this game.  At it’s core operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a simulation of war.  Tactics, dishing out the proper squad commands, recon, and lots of sneaking from point A to B are the keys to success here.  Or maybe the better way to put it is the key to not dying multiple times.  Unlike other military based games out now all it takes is one good shot to kill you.  You are not a Super Soldier or some action hero here.  Get shot in the head, you’re restarting at the last checkpoint.  Get shot in the leg, forget about sprinting.  And there’s even a dynamic in which players must dress wounds to save themselves from bleeding to death.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising puts a decent amount of  features on the plate for gamers, some executed well and some not so well.  Squad tactics are accessed via a branching command ring.  Proper use of the command ring takes a little time getting used to for those not up on military lingo.  There’s the usual Rules of Engagement, Defend, Assault, and other useful commands.    They work good and fine most of the time, but there are a few A.I. flubs that occur from time to time.  But once players get the hanf of it all they will be flanking enemies and taking objectives with ease.  Objectives come in the form of primary and secondary objectives, the latter not necessary to be completed to pass a mission.  With the massive landscape of Skira to traverse during missions players will be tempted to wander about the island trying to see if they can find invisible walls.  Unfortunately, such exploration brings forth no fruit as enemies only seen to appear in areas specific to the current mission being played.  This takes away from the idea that Skira is a persistent game world that’s alive without the player’s interaction.  Weapons come in a good variety and all have a different and realistic feel to them.  Unfortunately, players cannot tweak or modify their weapon loadouts prior to a mission.  Instead the player is left to their default loadout unless they can find the other weapons on dead bodies of weapon’s caches found on the island terrain.  The lack of options like these are somewhat of a no-no in today’s gaming and hopefully Codemasters’ recently announced patch will fix this among other issues.  Vehicles are plentiful in Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and come in 50 varieties of land, water, and air.  Jump in a vehicle and squadmates will all pile in as well for the ride.  Vehicles are fun to use, but tend to have awkward control physics.  This may be part due to the fact that the game run on the Ego engine, an enhanced version of the Neon engine which ran Colin Mcrae: DiRT.  Not a bad transition for a racing game engine to a military sim.

As before mentioned, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising was developed on the Ego engine.  Graphically, the game looks good and runs pretty smoothly.  Character models are well made, but textures could use some work in places.  Vehicles out of everything could stand some visual polish.  Soldiers look authentic and animate well, but when seen up close it’s very noticeable that most models look exactly alike.  A truckload of Marines will have twins sitting beside one another.  The same goes for NPCs in the villages on the island.  There’s really no good reason for this type of thing by today’s gaming standards.  Guns and the reloading animations are authentic as they are not quick and will make the player wary of reloading with half a clip in the middle of a firefight.  Explosions and fire effects do look good in-game.  But the real star of the Ego engine is the island of Skira itself.  Codemasters took the actual island of Kirska and recreated its topology in-game for Skira.  So this fictional island share the exact same landscape as it’s real-life counterpart.  Lighting effects are really good and random weather effects also come into play.  Sound effects for the soldiers, guns, and environments are all topnotch.  Firing off the weapons or the sound of a bullet entering and exiting a skull never sounded so good.  At the end of the day Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising’s audio and visual presentation is a mixed bag that’s way more good than bad.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a bold effort in a market of military games based solely on bang-for-the-buck action.  It’s a good game that will have it’s dedicated fanbase at the end of the day, but with more popular military shooters out it will have to put up a strong fight.  The random bugs that do occur from time to time are not game breakers as much as they are minor annoyances.  Multiplayer could stand some revamping as it does not feature any form of matchmaking at all.  Also, there is only 4-on-4 deathmatch, assault, or co-op in multiplayer.  With such a large terrain one would expect no less than a 16 player cap in this game.  Even with the gripes previously stated about the game, players will not find another tactical military shooter, at least on consoles, that offer the amount of realism offered in Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.  Obviously, this game isn’t for everyone as casual gamers may turn their noses up to it for a more explosion action-fest of a game.  But for those who love realism, tactics, careful planning to complete objectives, and have the patience to play the game the way intended Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising might just be the military sim they’ve long waited for.