The Saga of Operation Flashpoint back again with another episode that may well mark a small turning point in the series. Indeed, developers are now trying to democratize their ultra-realistic military shooter by offering an opening to a broader audience through several biases. The gender war is in full swing in consoles with stable quality titles more or less proven. The action and excitement of the Call of Duty, Battlefield or Medal of Honor continuous, with other slower and cruel war that Codemasters will rescue with a new installment in the saga Operation Flashpoint.
The debut of this series is produced exclusively for PC in May 2001 and is one of the few games that have the honor of wearing a 10 in this publication. The cold war of the 80 moved with all its determined realism to a sort of “simulator” in which action takes priority over tactics and teamwork was essential. Things get twisted whereas Codemasters and Bohemia Interactive created a new series, ArmA that has left us a couple of high-quality supplies exclusively for PC. In the meantime, Codemasters, retained the license and published Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising in October 2009, created by its internal development studios.
After Operation Flashpoint and its two add-on, Red Hammer and Resistance, Dragon Rising also released on consoles, and now the series takes a new direction. The developers have not only planned to correct any concerns encountered but also offering a gameplay a bit more accessible. First, in addition to completely revised animations and corrected from the previous panel, the game now enjoys much more appealing graphics, brilliantly detailed with soldiers who all have special tackle and unique weapons. Similarly, an effort has been made on the light effects and shadow that offers an additional impression of realism on sets, even if we notice a little clipping on the horizon.
Anyway, Tajikistan, Central Asia and unique backdrop represented in this new episode has never been so well with its valleys, mountains, deserts and villages. Casually, of which vary somewhat according visual pleasures of the ten major tasks contained in the Campaign mode. War is cool, smart, calculator, slow and devastating to the errors. The objective of this game is to feel the fear of the unknown, to be exposed moving slowly, and always fight for the team, and that intelligence and experience of the soldiers are more important than the arms and the amount thereof.
Red River follows the usual path of the games in the genre and is close to current times. Exactly we should be on 2013 in the Republic of Tajikistan, a country located between Afghanistan and China becomes a new magazine when insurgents grouped under the People’s Liberation Army attempt to enter the government. It is then that the U.S. intervene through its popular marines USMC (United States Marine Corps) for among other reasons, sure some humanitarian maintain its presence in this complicated area. And now we know little about the plot of this new military adventure or if such is going to try a full invasion, or is apparently small inroads with very concrete objectives. The campaign mode will be divided into 3 acts of argument, and ensures that the script will be raw and real, not Hollywood-style superheroes.
In addition, the campaign consists of 10 missions that are separated into three major acts, playable solo or cooperatively online up to four players. The game offers 4 modes for multi frames. Every mission will have to take into account the environment that we’re going to find as it seems Tajikistan occupies a large area ranging from large to huge snow-capped mountains and green river deltas through an arid desert. The background of this area is unsafe in reality and in fiction, the development team has built hundreds of photos with which to design the style and architecture of these areas and their rustic towns and deserted villages. Therefore, Fighting Sweep focuses on the assault of a particular place; Rolling Thunder requires escorting a convoy during a defined time, while CSAR proposes to seek individuals to save them.
Finally, Last Stand is based on the defense of a specific place. Only the latter, containing 4 courses each with 4 waves of enemies, was available during the demo. Before entering the battlefield, we must first select a character class from among four (but you can change whenever you die): Rifleman (soldier versatile base), Grenadier (explosives expert), Scout (equivalent to the sniper) or Auto Rifleman (the kind with a big squad firepower). Each has strengths and weaknesses and has weapons and skills to improve through experience points awarded in victory or symbolic actions (enemy killed, destroyed vehicle …). Once on the ground, it is best to position themselves safely behind a barricade to deploy better then the men’s team. Good surprise: the gameplay is rather instinctive.
Assume control of a square formed by four men who may be one of the four main roles of the Marines. Grenadier, scout, rifleman or automatic rifleman (names obtained from the official website of the game) are the classes among which we select our partners in mission and main features still do not know, but will be as faithful as possible to the actual units Marines in terms of equipment and characteristics. As we gain experience we can go and customize our squad taking more licenses than in real life when equipping weapons, accessories and increase the skills of our soldiers already seen much improvement in Dragon Rising. Still not clear we can make use of different vehicles that may appear throughout the game, but we do know for sure is that we will have air support by helicopters AH-1Z, A-10 spy planes or intelligent attacks.
SPF requires realistic, damage taken does not fade with time and your character can die slowly if it does not heal with Medik. It also takes some time because two gauges, symbolizing healing, must be met successively holding a key. Similarly, it is possible to treat his companions when in close, but also to order a teammate to go help another. Casually, the developers have done a great job on managing realistic damage. The result may indeed appear particularly gory, but it is above all to respect the horrible result of a grenade or shooting shotgun. Thus, on the battlefield, it is not unusual for members of your team are left with the face to a pulp, members reduced to shreds or even with half his body torn (fortunately, they reappeared at the end of some time). This attention to realism sometimes makes the action on the ground anti-dramatic.
However, despite these biases, we must recognize that immersion is still effective in the long term. Kill several opponents at the chain despite the large drop the weapon, use a mortar to set the ground for a bloodbath and even a helicopter to reach the horizon (true!), Save your men in extremis in the care between two bursts balls … No doubt, all this brings more satisfaction here than in other FPS, given the realistic conditions under which these achievements were made. Small downside, however: the AI does not seem quite yet developed. For example, a member of the squad remained stupidly exposed to the enemies trying to land, while a life-saving wall was right behind him. It is hoped that this kind of detail is resolved in the coming months.
As mentioned at the beginning, the saga Flashpoint has always tried to capture the maximum possible realism in their games coming to get the name of “war simulator.” Red River will mark a before and after the saga with the aim of reaching a wider audience, and that as a claim from your own developer based on its internal studies, the type of player and platform game has changed a lot since that great title of 2001. Today the preferred system of play games are PS3 and Xbox and a game in these environments as “real” is not as successful as we found with your previous title. For this purpose, we will implement a series of improvements to facilitate the game to who wants it as automatic pointing system, which may be enabled or disabled at any time, in addition to completely redesign the way of giving orders to our squad. So forget the whole complex system of menus from previous titles to have a direct button for common actions such as withdrawing, cover or attack.
Despite this, Red River will be further differentiated and much of the current FPS. First and primarily for freedom. It is clear that we will have targets and orders to perform in each mission, but the order and how to comply will be completely free, without having to follow any pattern “winger” that forces us play. Choose how and when to move, to approach, and to eliminate the enemies will be only our decision, keeping in mind that we will probably often outnumbered by the insurgents. Another feature that will give more realism to the game is our health, or rather the loss of it. Ran out of receiving five or six shots and just cover us until we recover miraculously. We are human, vulnerable, despite our life vests and other gadgets so yes they hurt us we have to be rescued and cured in a more real that has not yet been clarified.
No doubt the gameplay more fashionable today, in addition to online, collaborative and the Red River is going to give great importance to the point that the developers claim that “the whole game is built around coop. ” In fact this is a game for it because each square is formed by four soldiers, so each can be controlled by a player. Apart from being able to play all season in this way, we also find other stages specially designed to be played only between teams called “battles of the squadron” or “fire team engagements” with several game modes such as “last stand” or “search and rescue “that although we can imagine it works in broad strokes, we are eager to try.
For fans of FPS arcade, mini radar in the upper left indicates the position of enemies and teammates, while tutorials are scattered throughout the game and that assistance is available for sighting. By cons, for fans of hard-line simulation, there is a hardcore mode that eliminates all possible help and turns into a journey of adventure super immersive tactics. What therefore theoretically satisfy the greatest number and ensure true sustainability in the series!It’s time to start recruiting our best friends, soldiers and start preparing our squad. To avoid problems envy or each player can choose your class does not exist limitations in the cooperative mode, and can also enter and leave the items at any time.
Conclusion:
Although it is too early to comment about the graphics of the game, we cannot but have a high regard for the great variety of terrain and situations. I guess all these things will be equipped with amazing lighting. As conscious of their previous mistakes in Dragon Rising, developers have correct shooting bit more in Red River, offering a halfway war experience between simulation and arcade. The engine that moves the whole environment of Red River will be the Codemasters own engine, Ego. The cooperative multiplayer gameplay and effective immersive is to be accessible in this episode, and should be logically unifying if few small flaws are fixed. Operation Flashpoint: Red River is supposed to hit the market in the first half of 2011, well ahead of other highly anticipated war games this year is Battlefield 3, and surely a new Call of Duty.
