Customer Reviews

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

I had great expectations on this game. I loved the original Flashpoint, but this just doesn't cut it.
I'll keep myself real short. This game is not a 5-star game like its predecesor, because:

1. It's just not as exciting as FP1. You don't feel as much in controll and your AI co-players are stupid. I dont know if its because of bugs but often they'll end up just about anywhere when given the orders to form different formations, and when they end up going in front of you into the killing fields and not taking cover and getting killed, well then it becomes annoying.

2. Your AI co-players will spot enemies 400 meters away while you will unlikely spot any farther away than 50 (unless your co-players hadn't spotted them first or the enemy fired at you, which they will long before you would have noticed them).

3. Its difficult. Alot of missions are hard for the sake of being hard. Often giving orders and using tactics doesnt make any difference. You might be placed 300 meters away from your enemy who is lined up behind fortifications with machineguns. Perhaps you can flank them but that would take like 20 minutes, and although realism is often positive it just becomes tedious keeping your forward-movement key pressed for that long while sitting back in your chair. Videogames are not real life and never will be.
Anyway, your only choice, (if you dont have art-support, which is awsome to watch) is to lie there and shoot back. If you dont want to lie there forever waiting for your teammates to use up all their ammo, you better start killing. In FP1 your teammates were good shots. Not here.

4. Lots of bugs.

5. Driving vehicles SUCK. you're locked at looking straight ahead and cant use the mouse to free-view! And the stearing is so sensitive that any sudden turn will make your vehicle spin. Didn't the creators test-play this game before it was released???

6. Shooting the assultrifles is boring and thats the kind of weapon you'll use most of the time. It's difficult to hit, and I guess thats positive (its not a shoot-em-up game) but if it was "fun hard" it wouldve been great! but its just hard, and boring. the enemy AI usually just stand around doing nothing, even when they fire and get fired upon.

7. All missions are timed which forces you to rush decisions instead of planning and playing safe, which I prefer. Very stressfull.

8. Sometimes checkpoints are too far between, and the reason I think people would want to have them closer together is not just because it takes time to replay, it's because its pretty BORING to replay alot of parts, which is basically why I give this game only 3 stars.

ps. Battlesounds are REALLY good.

I have never written a review on Amazon before. But the frustration of this game compels me.

My biggest complaint against this game is that every missions I have played (4 hours, on mission 6) is timed. This means that you have to sprint from objective to objective, many times in the face of a hail of bullets.

Why bother creating a huge island sandbox when the missions require that you sprint in single lines to keep from failing? Military commanders do not send tanks in on arbitrary timelines only to rely on a small team to take out 30 ppl before they get there. Its absurd.

Major disappointment.

Pro's:
--Nice opening cinematic providing background of events leading up to game's present day
--Sounds of incoming fire is amazing

--Con's:
--Several timed missions
--Unable to change weapon loadout in single player (so far as I can tell)
--Relatively short
--Very small range of mission types (nearly all assault)

I've played the original Operation Flashpoint from Bohemia Interactive. Many, many times over. Far from perfect upon its initial release, it became much more playable over a few years of patches by the developer, and remains a favorite of hardcore PC wargame players.

This is not an Operation Flashpoint sequel.

The original game had very few timed missions, and massively large mission maps--which you usually could take advantage of, if you wished to do so. It truly was more of a "sandbox" game, allowing you to complete missions the way you saw fit. Go the looooooooong way around a forest to avoid patrols? OK. Instead of blowing up unattended tanks with demo charges, instead use one of the tanks to destroy the others, and the soliders and base nearby? Sure, if that's how you want to do it! Incredible.

The fact that this game has checkpoints should tell you all you need to know. It's a shooter primarily aimed at the more-casual console gamer, and it shows.

Fallen squadmates automatically come back to life when reaching major checkpoints. The game holds your hand, leading you from one checkpoint to the next, to each objective. Want to take a different route? Too bad--on most missions there's a limited amount of time before you must complete objectives, forcing you to run mad dashes directly into the hail of enemy fire. There's not much time for tactical planning and approach.

I didn't seem to be able to find a way to change weapon loadout, even as I neared the end of the game. Why you are assigned short-barreled close-quarters M4's for 99.9% outdoor environments is both puzzling and frustrating.

The grass present in most areas in realistically overgrown, given the rural setting, but the enemy seems incredibly adept at seeing you long before you can see them.

The accuracy of your squadmates is disconcerting; they also never seem to run out of ammo as quickly as you do.

I very much was looking forward to this game, but must say it's quite a disappointment. Armed Assault 2, though quite buggy, seems to be a more accurate spiritual successor to the original Operation Flashpoint.

Dragon Rising probably will be more fun playing through the campaign with a buddy or two, as the game supports. But multiplayer is pretty much unusable, with the lack of dedicated servers (!) and maps.

Back to Operation Flashpoint 1. :/

I just started playing this game today and just finish the first mission, which took me about an hour to complete both the main and side missions. I did not bother checking out the multiplayer because I heard that there's no servers and if you do get into one, bunch of people get disconnected. Anyway, here's what I don't like and what I like:

I like the main menu music. I like the graphics in this one compare to OFP. I like the combat sounds too. Picking the weapon you want is easier than OFP by pushing the numbers above your QWERTY keys. AI's are much smarter, making the game more realistic. They will try to outflank you. They will take cover behind trees, rocks, and buildings. Oh yeah, you can swim in this game. In the first OFP, you drown in the water. That's about it.

Now here's what I don't like:
1) Its more complicated to control your squad. Have to cycle through bunch of menus to get the right command I want.
2) As mention with other reviews, no free look when driving. I can't look to my right or left or behind me.
3) No tutorial or training missions. If you are brand new to the game, don't you want to learn how to fight and move and all the other goodies before going to combat?
4) Default key assignments are ridiculous. Push F1 to use binocular? Then you have to hold the right mouse button to use it. I don't think you can even zoom with it. I pushed every button on my keyboard to see if I can zoom, but nope.
5) No ability to lean left or right, which is huge deal when peaking or shooting around corners.
6) If you get into a vehicle first, your squad may sometime go in with you without you having to give them an order. I'm like, "did i order you to get in my vehicle?"
7) You are stuck with the weapon you have before starting the mission! I like the option of choosing different weapons before starting the mission, but apparently it won't let you.
8) When changing weapon, it takes forever for your guy to get that weapon out, especially when you take your rocket launcher out. If you need to get your rifle back out after switching, forget about it. Your dumb guy wants to put a rocket into the launcher first before getting to your other weapon.
9) It is always a 4 man team. Unlike the first OFP where you can control as many as 12 men. However, you are always the team leader from the very first mission.
10) Low lack of vehicles to get into. You are mostly running all over the place.
11) Mission editor sucks b/c there's no preview for it.

I think the main thing the frustrates me the most is giving commands to your squad. This is truly a waste of my $37! Why there's no CD-key? I bought this game b/c I thought I will need a CD-key to play online. APPARENTLY NOT! I bet this game is already free for download on file-sharing programs and you can play online without any CD-key check. Of course, the multiplayer is currently in disarray and they are currently making a patch for this game.

I don't know if future patches to this game will make gaming experience better. They tend to make it better, but I still don't want to cycle through bunch of menus to give orders to my squad. I remember installing patches one by one for OFP and that took forever. You have to install the very first patch to install the most recent patch. You probably will have to do that too for this game as well.

In summary, don't buy this game. Its very disappointing and it doesn't even come close to Operation Flashpoint Cold War Crisis or OFP Resistance. If they implement the old OFP features with the awesome graphics and sounds, this game would of been the best Operation Flashpoint ever to be made.

PROS: Fluid and natural movement compared to ARMA II. The campaign actually works very well in co-op mode. Very good system of using laser range finders to accurately adjust for realistic bullet drop. For example if a target is 600 meters away in the laser range finders, you will hit with first shot if you adjust your aim correctly. The night vision devices and the infra-red laser designators work well. Nice effects of dirt on the screen when bullets land close, along with the screen shaking on explosions. Simple system of effective tactics, like smoke screens to fall back or suppression of a target. MISSION EDITOR INCLUDED!!

CONS: Very bad system to manually select ammo or weapon types (HE vs HEDP). Lack of actually vehicle use and weapon diversity in the game. Single player campaign vary between realistic missions to simply stupid and almost comical. Although there are several vehicles and many weapons load outs in the game, you don't actually use them in the campaign. Poor menu system and multiplayer server browser. Really bad menu music, it sounds like some Asian man with a full cleft palate trying to pass a cinder-block during a bowel movement. Invite system doesn't work in password protected servers. Lack of dedicated server support. No anti-cheat system implemented and unbalanced multiplayer system.

OVERALL: Not an Operation Flashpoint sequel, but an entirely different game. Many of the things someone might have loved in OFP 1 are not in OFP 2. This doesn't not make OFP:DR a bad game, but more like a false advertisement. Overall I have enjoyed the game because it was a semi-realistic simulator on some aspects, and it was easy to learn to play. What keeps me from loving this game is seemingly short campaign, poor mission design, and the lack of "epic-ness" found in the original Operation Flashpoint, and ARMA II.

Where to start? I guess I'll start by saying how wrong people are when they call this game a "mil sim".

There's so many examples it's hard to choose from, but lets start with a good one.

If you ask the corpsman to heal you.. He gives you a shot of adrenaline (I would have to assume its that and not just some silly yellow colored saline solution). If you give someone adrenaline and they've received some massive trauma you're only going to help KILL the person. If you don't know anything about Adrenaline or how the human body works... Easily put, it's going to make them bleed out faster because adrenaline is going to increase their heart rate which is bad (In this case). Not to mention the animation of the corpsman giving you the shot is horrible, but most animations in this game are - so don't be surprised.

This is honestly more like a mix of call of duty and battlefield 2.

I personally had high hopes for this game. While I was pointing out a lot of its mistakes and problems early on, I've always loved the operation flashpoint games, they were some of my favorites many years ago. But this is a horrible disappointment, at least in regards to it being a "mil sim" and an operation flashpoint game.

Also another big gripe is shooting, sure the sounds sound like they were recorded in a very confined indoor shooting range. So when you're shooting outdoors it sounds terrible and also it seemed as though a lot of the weapons that you fire lack a lot of the bite that their real counterparts have. To me the game felt like there was very little weight, everything felt very "floaty", for the lack of a better word. It's hard to describe but it just didn't feel right from the very beginning.

Also, speaking about shooting, it takes about 5 - 7 rounds, on average, to take down someone. Of course these vary, some less than others depending on the round and placement but the enemies generally just stand there or continue crawling taking hit after hit and the simple fact that it takes SO MANY rounds to take down someone makes this game laughable.

Even a single round or two from an m16 or m4 type variant can easily put someone to the ground even with some sort of armor (It might not kill them but either way they WONT be standing by their own will and strength after that type of impact). You're talking about almost 3,000 fps (Feet per second) from an m4. Obviously, more or less depending on the round, grain, and barrel. Now a round from an m4 or m16 puts out almost 1,680 joules that equates to about 1,238 foot pounds of force. My calculations might be off a little, I'm not much of a math wiz but you still get the idea. That's A LOT of force. Of course' there's always little variables, you can say "Well in this case" or "in this particular instance" but having to take that many shots on the "hardcore" difficulty to take someone down is ridiculous.

Back on point. There are so many mechanics of this game that are so unrealistic that calling this a "mil sim" is a huge slap in the face to anything else that's even halfway realistic.


Not to mention to lack of variants in firearms as well and customization options. You should at least be able to switch out your m4 or what have you with other optics like acogs, eotechs, aimpoints, cco's and such. But no, you're stuck with whats on the rifle. Different rifles have different sights, but there aren't even that many to choose from.

(Also when you shoot people you get a little tick mark on the crosshair, I think that speaks for itself.)

There's also the simple fact that this game is not even that difficult. I probably only died maybe half a dozen to a dozen times or so throughout the course of the campaign and I always play all of my fps games on their hardest difficulty. But I guess that could just be due to my past league xp, being ex cal and cevo main (I know, it's not that big of a deal but it's better than the majority) for games like 1.6, css, cod4, I honestly didn't have much of any difficulty with this game especially with the horrendous ai.

The main problems I did encounter however is with the other members of your fire team.

Often times I had to tell them to board my vehicle, then if a fire fight ensued and I had to leave the vehicle to find some real cover I would find that my team mates were still sitting there and doing (For the most part) nothing. It's just a hassle having to bring up the command menu and telling them to get out of the vehicle every time, although I can see how it might be a benefit. Like if you just had to run out really quick to grab something and didn't want your team to dismount. But more often than naught, it's an annoyance.

The only real use for them is to lay down some sort of suppressing fire if you're advancing on a location like in Brothers in Arms: HH. Or for having them point out obvious (And sometimes not so obvious) threats.

Also if your team is in a vehicle and you look at them they're often just stuck in a single pose. They don't move, they don't do anything at all. They're frozen in a single pose and don't move until something happens. I know it might not sound like something important but if you're playing and you hop out and look at your team mates frozen there it really does kill quite a bit of the experience.

There is also a very limited amount of vehicles you can operate. Don't be fooled in thinking you can fly and drive everything under the sun, well you can... It's just that there's not a lot of variety. I think it's about on par with vehicles on BF2. Maybe more, maybe less. There's something like a total of 50 vehicles however they're not all playable... Well you can play with them in the mission editor so I guess that still counts right?

Multiplayer? What a mess.

First of all, there's no dedicated servers. Which for consoles is ok, but for pc's... Yuck. And it's funny how on the pc packaging it says under its multiplayer requirements that "Dedicated host server are recommended for optimum performance". Neat stuff huh? That might change in the future.. If someone has their own dedicated box that they're willing to host from but as of yet (Or to my knowledge) codemasters hasn't provided any files for hosting the dedicated server.

There's also a very limiting amount of people you can play with.

If you want to play co-op, know that it's only on-line co-op. You can't play co-op offline. And when you're playing online, there's a max of 4 players. There's no ability to "drop in" or "drop out" per say. There's supposedly a max of like 32 people on things like deathmatch and the other non co-op modes. BUT remember, since there's no dedicated servers... Hosting even 20 people is going to be a challenge. You're probably going to find servers from 10 - 16 people max. At least, to have good enough and playable ping.

There's a lot wrong with this game and very few things right. The graphics aren't that great (Trust me, in the videos they look way better) but even with the settings maxed, at 1280x1024, with full aa and all the ingame settings set to full I was left with a big emptiness because this just wasn't what I was looking for. Plus there isn't that many settings to change either. You can't change the draw/view distance, you can't change things like the post effects, or details in the terrain, players, etc.

The textures are terrible on more than one occasion. If you go to your map and zoom in, the map of the island is so low res that it becomes very pixelated before you even zoom all the way in to see your troops. The textures on rocks and the landscape in general are terrible. The uv mapping on them is awful, there's lots of stretching going on and most of it is hidden by the games grass (Which looks pretty awful by todays standards).


Needless to say, I was highly disappointed with this release. However, this game isn't all that bad. Sure, the graphics suck, a lot of the animations are terrible, it's not realistic, the sound isn't even half good. But it's not a completely awful game. This is JUST another badly produced, over hyped, rushed shooter. That's it.

If it was $15 then it might be acceptable but even at $40, it's not worth your time or money.

And don't listen to the operation flashpoint fan boys who rate this as the most amazing game ever. If this was tetris with the operation flashpoint name and called it a "mil sim" there would still be "amazing" reviews about it. Don't listen to the fan boys, you can read tons of reviews from REAL people who have REAL reviews about this all over.

I've been playing Dragon Rising since it was available in the US. I won't repeat the backstory of Dragon Rising and all the ways that it fell short of it's potential.

If you're buying this game just for the single-player campaign you will probably be disappointed. The missions range from marginal to acceptable, but you never get the awesome feeling of being in a squad or that first time you came under fire from enemy armor that you got in Operation Flashpoint. You don't even get to use all the vehicles or weapons in the single-player campaign. And there are some timed missions with not enough guidance as to what you're supposed to be doing. You do however get a nice feeling of accomplishment on hard difficulty level when you finish a ~45 minute mission without dying.

The outdoor engine is very well done and performs great on any decent hardware. I'd encourage anyone interested in this game to go to YouTube or Gametrailers and look for gameplay footage. You'll see tall mountains and wide valleys, and anywhere you see you can seamlessly go by foot or vehicle. The tall grass and trees aren't the most beautiful but considering the scope of the landscape they're impressive, and quite a bit better and Operation Flashpoint. I just wish the AI couldn't see through the tall grass, because I sure can't. There are no large cities or towns in Dragon Rising, just small villages.

The weapons are varied and well modeled, although as mentioned before you won't see many of them in the campaign. On harder difficulty levels you do not get artificial crosshairs on the center of the screen, you press a key to look through the iron sites or scope of the weapon. The weapons, ammo,and magazines are handled realistically. When you deploy an anti-tank weapon you better find some cover because it takes 5 or 10 seconds to set it up, as it should.

You can carry a fairly realistic load of weapons and equipment, basically 2 small or mid-size main weapons, or a one large and one medium/small. It does seem you can carry a lot of grenades, mines, and ammo magazines at once though.

The vehicles look good and the physics aren't too bad, but driving is not easy, the steering is too sensitive and it's easy to spin out. Also, you can't look around when you're in the driver's seat, but there is a 3rd person driving view that is helpful. There are a few tanks, helicopters, trucks, and jeeps. Also an anti-aircraft armored vehicle that can really light up infantry too. You can generally take a driver, passenger, or gunner seat.

The effects of the various rifles, grenades, and anti-tank weapons are generally very well done and intense. If you've ever played paintball and been behind cover with dozens of paintballs thumping all around you, Dragon Rising will give you plenty of moments like that. It's pretty hardcore and unforgiving. You can and will get killed in one shot, or have a head or arm wound that makes your aim bad, or a leg wound that keeps you from running. You can also bleed to death unless you or a teammate bandages you. A medic can completely heal you, which doesn't seem too realistic but I'm sure makes the game less frustrating.

Dragon Rising comes with a mission editor that is fairly capable, and there are dozens if not hundreds of missions available that users have made. Some are good, some are bad, it would be nice if the game had some sort of rating system built in so you could score them yourself. The downloadable mission files are very small because they are text-based scripts and data files, most are well under a megabyte and a basic mission can be done in 26K or so. They aren't that easy to install, and an auto-download when you join someone's game would have been GREAT, especially since the files are so small.

I mainly play Dragon Rising with a friend over the Internet. As has been much-complained about, there are no dedicated servers. When we play he hosts a listen server and I connect to his IP by choosing LAN from the Multiplayer menu. Works great that way. You can play the main campaign co-op together with 1 to 3 other friends, as well as most every user-created mission. Some missions are co-op and some are team deathmatch, and there are also objective-based scenarios with the latest patch. It's great fun when you play with people you know, but if you're looking for large games or robust server admin, Dragon Rising unfortunately does not have either. When you play co-op you normally play as part of a 4-man squad, and whoever hosts the server is the squad leader, there doesn't seem to be any way around that. If you only have 2 human players, 2 bots will fill in the rest of your squad.

The bot AI ranges from impressive to idiotic. Sometimes they act intelligently, sometimes they don't. Enemy squads have outflanked me more times than I care to admit. I feel like the hunter guy on Jurassic Park and think "you clever bastards!" The pathfinding is usually decent. When you're commanding bots the interface is effective but rather tedious, it lacks polish. Sometimes you're in command of your squad plus a couple others. Each time you bring up the command interface the troops you last commanded are highlighted, so if you want to command a different set you have to de-select each troop and select the new ones. That's hard to do while you're crouched down in a bunker with bullets hitting all around you. And sometimes the bots don't do what you command them to, especially when you command the medic to heal someone. And when you command them to breach a building they seem to pick an arbitrary door to enter, even if it's on the side of the building that has all the enemies behind it.

I could go on at length but I'll say that if you like military sims with large outdoor playing fields, Dragon Rising is worth your time to try. The game fell short of it's original goals but is still an amazing accomplishment. Now I just hope Codemasters will do a better job of fixing and supporting it.

The game came with lots of marketing hypes, but at the end turn in a arcade console FPS game in instead of a serious military simulation game like Arma2, or the original OFP. In fact OFP2:DR cannot match Bohemia Interactive game in graphics, reality, tactics and re-playability.

The interface operation is confuse and definitely was designed mainly for consoles but not computers, which create an annoying continuous back and forth keyboard operation to give to the team the proper orders during the game.

The narrow timed scripted missions don't let you use stealth tactics to approach to the objective silently and it turn in a run a gun procedure.

The lack of smart selection of gear create some ridiculous situations like doing night operations missions without weapons with suppressors.

It's looks like Codemasters turn a serious MilSim game in a kiddo run and gun FPS like Call of Duty franchise.

To many bugs and no dedicated servers you basically can't play Mplayer. Goto codemasters forum and read up first.

I am a hardcore gamer and love FPS, MMO, and RTS. I bought this game on release day. I rank it in my top ten of worse games ever bought. Not just shooters, games ever. There is no multiplayer to mention. The single player is frustrating in it's self too. I'm not going to mention many details. If you are a savy consumer you will go to Codemaster website and read the forum that pertains to the platform you're interested in. I was watching this game for 2 years as it was being developed and hyped. There's no CD key with the game, so pirating and cheating will be a huge problem for this game. It will be forgotten soon and no patch is going to save it.