I’ve barely dented Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising since opting for the little-hyped title as my December game (I usually only buy one a month).  I popped it in on the heels of a marathon MW2 session.  Talk about going from 60 to zero in nothing flat.  Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising seems to be the anti-Modern Warfare 2, staying very close to the franchise’s tactical roots.  It’s a thinkin-man’s shooter.  In some ways, I think Codemasters kinda screwed the pooch.

Here are the highs and lows in two easy-to-read parts:

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising takes place on a tiny island with a huge oil reserve that the Russians and Chinese are fighting over.  Russia asks the US to help them secure the island and keep it out of China’s control.  Of course, we oblige and find out forces up against some pretty stupid Chinese troops.  The AI in OF:DR is dopey, but deadly.  The game doesn’t play nice when it comes to getting shot.  As in real life, simply holding still and taking cover does not magically heal your bullet wounds.  So, it only takes one or two shots to take you out.  If you get shot in the face, you’re just dead.  If you’re wounded, you’ll need a teammate to come and patch you up, which merely stops your bleeding.  There is no way to reverse the damage done to you on the battlefield.  You can only hope to contain the bleeding.

HIGHS:

The game gives you and awesome selection of aircraft and ground vehicles that you can control, with your whole squad fighting over who gets to to be the gunner.  My favorite way to play the campaign is in 4-player Co-Op mode.  As the team leader you can issue waypoints to your human or computer teamates, which makes coordinating an elaborate attack, a couple of simple clicks away.  The AI generally follow your orders, but often too literally (See Lows).

Operation Flashpoint is gorgeous.  I’d put the visuals and audio up against anything else that’s come this year.

LOWS:

Quite simply, the AI on both sides hurts this game.  Your guys are always following orders so unrealistically literally, so as to get themselves killed.  Tell them to go from point A to point B, and they’ll do exactly that, even if it means walking right up to an enemy and standing face to face with them, firing mindlessly at each other like some sort of Monty Python-inspired bank standoff.

The controls are just too deep and true to the PC version.  Often, commands you need to issue in a hurry are 4-deep in dialogue menus that zaps you back out of the game and into a desperate mauling of your controller, while you’re very bullet-sensitive character is getting turned to Swiss Cheese.  You’ll need to spend a lot of time at the beginning of the game memorizing the route to the various commands.  If you have to read the categories in the heat of battle, forget it.

I could have lived with all of this, had Codemasters NOT omitted the ONE part of Operation Flashpoint that I personally lived for.  They nixed the Mission Editor.  In the original Operation Flashpoint, when you got bored with OF missions, you could experiment with all sorts of cruel experiments, like discovering the bloddy outcome of pitting 200 light infantry against a squadron of fast-moving migs.  Trust me, it was a lot more fun that you think.  Being able to create and live out your own detailed battlefield situations was a big reason that hardcore fans of Operation Flashpoint were so committed.  In my personal opinion, the biggest mistake in Operation Flashpoint was leaving out this editor.

VERDICT:

I just don’t know how to feel about the game yet. I have a lot of time that I still need to spend with this game.

On one hand, NOTHING compares to the Co-Op experience on these intense missions, where you find yourself using all kinds of official-sounding language to communicate with your squad mates.  It can get tense.  Plus there’s nothing quite like a well formed ambush strategy that goes according to plan.  It’s also a welcome departure from Modern Warfare 2′s hectic insanity.

But the single player experience is just so damned frustating.. and I want to make missions dammit.

Have you played this game?  We’d love to hear your thoughts below.