In this series of Blogs I plan to review and possibly reevaluate older game titles. Why? Well there are plenty of old games that are still definitely worth playing that you might have missed the first time around, some others, well, they haven't aged so well... Other titles in this series of Blogs may include OpFlash: Red River, Brothers in Arms HH, Metal Gear Solid 3, Age of Empires and others.
So, Operation Flashpoint...
Just after released I heard many terrible things about this game, so
I avoided it like most of us avoided Brink.
The other
day I saw it in my local second hand game store for a couple of quid and my curiosity go the better of me. I think I'll get it; why not, how bad
can it be?
Even if it's absolutely diabolical it's £2; you can't even buy a
pint for that these days. So I stuck the disc in my PS3 and waited for this supposed nightmare of a
game to boot up.
Codemasters...
Wait, what!? Codemasters? I thought they only made racing games? To
be fair, GRID was the shit back in the day (2008 if you were wondering). I'd be
lying if I said this didn't pique my interest a little as CM usually turn out a pretty good product. Could it be as bad as the 3 star aggregate it gets on Amazon
(10/10 on IGN... of course), with most people giving it 3 starts or below?
Enter campaign mode, since the online servers are currently gathering about as much dust as that PS3 remote you bought but only ever used once.
OpFlash DR, in case you didn't know, boasts 220 square kilometers of
map. This is a first person shooter on a Skyrim scale. In fact, to be precise,
it's five times the size of Skyrim. For some comparison, most maps on Call of
Duty are barely half a square kilometer and the biggest of the big on
Battlefield 4 are barely 3 square kilometers. So firstly, let's take a look at
what this means in real terms.
The blurb on the back of the cover states you choose your path through brutal conflict with authentically
detailed USMC weapons, vehicles and tactics. What I noticed from playing is
that what this means is instead of running 75m to an objective you're running
750m. The objectives are largely the same as they would be in any other FPS -
blow this up, kill these guys, rescue these dudes, support this inadequate team
- but unlike other FPSs you have a truly massive map. What this means you can,
and absolutely should, plan ahead and use those "authentic tactics"
to give you the edge in battle.
Question is, have you actually got a huge map and
does OpFlash deliver on these claims? Simple answer; No. Allow me to explain.
You start with your regular 4 man fireteam comprised of whatever
troops the game chooses. Now this isn't a new concept, in fact it reminded me a
lot of games like the original Ghost Recon and the Conflict series on PS2, both
of which featured squad gameplay; you operate in a fireteam and you are its
leader. However, these two ancient titles do it better than OpFlash.
What's the problem then? The main problem is that the command
interface that the game relies on is flawed and the way the orders are organised
sometimes makes no sense - I was looking for the 'halt' order under 'movement'
commands because y’know, stopping is related to moving, when in fact it was filed
under ‘defense’. These commands are
also three levels deep; to get your men to fire
at will is four button presses; Radial menu > Tactical > ROE > Fire
at will. This is plain ridiculous in the heat of combat and one wrong press and
you’ll have to start all over again. Here's a picture of the expanded radial command menu, see what I mean? Navigate that in a hurry...
Secondly, with no pause game
> issue command > un-pause option this makes the squad command part
of the gameplay even more clumsy and slow. OpFlash uses a "Quick” Radial
Command UI (above) that is designed to enable the player to issue commands on-the-fly
but it stops your characters movements, so you can't continue any action while
engaging this menu. This becomes a big problem when you're in combat. Couple
this with possibly the slowest ever equipment/weapon selection menus and you
soon realise the reason why you got killed is because you were trying to issue
orders or were getting a piece of equipment out (usually the wrong piece thanks
to the equipment menu design), not because you are bad at FPS games.
 |
| This is a shot (no pun intended) from OpFlash Red River I plan to review this as well, but it shows quite well what happens in Dragon Rising in battle - you tend to end up with the wrong thing in your hand while you team gets wiped out. |
There is no quick throw grenade for instance; grenades gave to be
selected manually from the equipment menus as a held weapon then thrown – with
no arc indicator, I still haven’t figured out exactly how far they go. So if
you're caught in a tight spot and want to cover a retreat with a grenade or
two, good luck with that. When using the SMAW, for instance, if you're hoping
you can select the launcher and just fire it on the fly you're going to be both
disappointed and dead. You have to select it and then wait a good 6 seconds for
your character to load the thing and be ready to fire including a one second
animation freeze after shouldering the weapon (clearly another un-patched bug).
6 seconds is a complete age when you're taking fire. You can't move while
you're in this animation either. The second you un-equip the weapon you have to
repeat this process again if you select it again, so you can't get it ready in
advance.
What makes this experience more frustrating is that there is no
tutorial to guide new players through the complex and often confusing command
interfaces, squad tactics or the map interface, you are just dumped on the
battlefield and expected to just know what to do with the help of about 5 very brief
onscreen messages. The game emphasises the use of your squad tactics and battle
strategies to get an edge but unless you've actually done any military training
you'll probably have no idea how to do this and if you do know how to do this
your team will let you down repeatedly. What compounds this is that your squad - modeled around the venerable United States Marine Corps - are complete Bolos¹. We’re not talking the odd AI hiccup as is to ne expected; we’re talking repeated mission failure because your team is so unbelievable fricken retarded.
On more than one occasion I've set them to return fire only, then
notice them start shooting at someone 150m away who wasn't even looking in
their direction. On other occasions I had set them up ‘weapons free’ and then
they have missed a guy 30m away who has then shot us all because
apparently “seeing enemies who are f**king
next to you” wasn't part of those "authentic" USMC tactics included
in the game.
Most missions have gone full-on Charlie-foxtrot² because of this. They
can’t use cover – they will crouch or more usually, stand, out in the open when
there is a piece of hard cover less than 10m away. They are happy to call out
enemy positions before you’ve seen them with incredible accuracy, the same accuracy
is not reflected in their shooting however and your Grandpa could clear a building
quicker than these guys. They cannot maintain any of the formations and end up
as a jumble of idiots who continually cross your line of fire in combat – I’ve
actually lost count of how many times I’ve accidentally mowed one of my team
members down.
For additional “support” you have a real time map as well to aid you
in navigating and squad commands but the map is sadly lacking, and like the
other game commands, clumsy to use. As I said previously, squad commands can be
issued via the map but if you want to split your team into a 2 man flanking
formation it's practicality impossible to make this work on the fly as you have
to keep going into the map, deselecting one unit, then moving them with you,
then reselecting the desired flanking team and giving them orders. Under fire
this is just plain fatal and usually you just end up calling 'weapons free' and
waiting for your team to get killed followed closely behind by you because they
couldn’t hit a barn door at 10m with a shotgun.
The game map is also a complete lie as well; 220km2 may
sound like a lot but realistically you’ll never even see any of it because the
missions are always restricted by some arbitrary factor to keep you on
objective; such as unrealistic time limitations that leave you no choice but to
just barrel in and try and clear the objectives as fast as you can. The command,
“Capone”, will constantly force you into these situations by calling in air support
or armoured divisions before you have
cleared the area of any AA or AT troops causing you to constantly fail the
missions either by being killed or by failing the random time margins set by
the game. 
The game will also restrict you between invisible barriers by simply
killing you and your team if you stray too far – at one point I was taking the
long way round to an objective because I wanted to explore a bit and the
vehicle we were in just blew up, there were no enemy troops around. Though the game
was sold under this banner of “huge sandbox combat” it actively stops you exploring
the map.
Now I get that if you were a real fireteam as part of a platoon you
wouldn’t just be able to bugger off exploring but don’t advertise it if you’re
not going to deliver the goods.
The game seems to be aiming to be a military simulator but it skimps
on far too much to qualify. So it somewhat falls into a grey area between being
a serious milsim and being a more casual FPS. Because of this it does neither
very well; it's not slick enough in its handling and game mechanics to compete
with FPS games like CoD, Battlefield and Medal of Honour (remember
that one?) but it's not detailed enough to be considered a simulation.
Which brings us to the question of what this game is supposed to be and who is its target audience??
If you're into casual shooters that you can pick up and play and
have some fast paced fun then this isn't for you. The missions are long, not
particularly interesting because most of the fun is sucked out by trying to
control your trained chimps and the gameplay mechanics are slow and clunky. Should
you want a detailed first person military simulator heavy on tactics and
strategy this will disappoint you because of its lack of detail, such as no
load-outs, rubbish battle map, terrible squad AI and again its clumsy gameplay
mechanics. I gotta be honest here; I literally have no clue who this game is
aimed at.
Although it might be hard to believe from this review, I don't all-out
hate this game. I actually like it a lot; the concept at least. The game is a fantastic
concept; the massive map, the squad commands, the feeling like you're part of a
military campaign. But it’s lack of immersion, replay value and restrictiveness
coupled with terrible mechanics just ruin all that.
The FPS genre as a whole needs more tactical approaches and less run and gun. We have enough run and gun already. OpFlash had so much potential in its concept; it could have been the FPS that all others were measured by. Sadly, the concept was the only good thing about Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.
Next in Spekter Gaming's Dusty Relics series; DOOM 3
~
¹Bolo; A derogatory remark
for recruits who cannot pass marksmanship training.
² Charlie-foxtrot; from the phonetic alphabet for C and F meaning
Cluster F**k.
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