Taking gamers as close to war as they’ll ever want to get, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is the much anticipated return of the genre-defining military conflict simulator. Set to deliver the total combat experience, Flashpoint: Dragon Rising challenges players to survive the chaos and rapidly evolving situations of modern warfare in a new contemporary theatre. Players experience the intensity, diversity and claustrophobia of a modern conflict from the unique perspectives of an infantry marine, a helicopter pilot, a Special Forces officer or a tank commander, each engaged against the full force of the Chinese PLA on a scale never previously experienced in a military action title. Gameplay simulates an immense conflict between advanced forces and provides unparalleled scope with different military disciplines, vehicles and equipment for players to utilize.

I wanted to love Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, especially since I was a die hard nut of the original game on the PC. But in the end I have to admit the game seems to want to punish the average gamer, it just misses the mark on many levels in terms of gameplay and fans of the original game on PC and the original Xbox may not find this game worthy of the Operation Flashpoint name while others will love it. 

Gameplay 

One thing that Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is not is a corridor shooting action First Person Shooter like Call of Duty – Modern Warfare. Every bullet can kill you, you can get hit in the leg and have your mobility affected, if you are hit in the head you can die or even just be blinded, this part of the game is extremely realistic. Like Brothers in Arms you can suppress the enemy which lowers their accuracy dramatically, but it seems they either are dead on accurate or firing blindly with no middle ground. Plus like a few other games you can control your team mates telling them where to move, how far to spread out, engagement rules and more. For tactical shooter fans there is much to love with this game.

The missions are set up so you can follow way points and your eagle eyed companions will call out the distance and location of enemies so you can alter your direction if stealth is your preferred gameplay style or hunt them down if you want to risk having the Chinese PLA come down on you with many men and possibly gunships and other equipment. Knowing when to shoot is just as important as how accurate you are.

One part of the Rainbow 6 series that I love is the customization of your weapons by adding different scopes, sights, clips, silencers and more to your weapons to fit your style of gameplay. So it boggles me that special ops who are being dropped behind enemy lines with just a couple of guys as back up and are not allowed to add a silencer or change the scope around to something more effective. You are given these static weapons to use and while you can change them out when you come across ammunition caches the weapons available are just the basics and usually nothing special. The only thing you can actually adjust is your rate of fire at least that is something.

Multiplayer is a nice feature with its Co-operative gaming such as Single Mission, where you play any of the campaign missions you have already completed and Campaign where you play the campaign from the start to the finish. The normal multiplayer side of things is player versus player with two game modes called Annihilation which is a Team Death Match game and Infiltration which is a game of attack and defend, where one team is a smaller special-ops team who is infiltrating a defended location by a larger force. Both of these are straight forward and Infiltration is a better way to play because the smaller team can easily destroy a large team when they use communication and tactics and the other team has forgotten to.

Graphics

Graphically, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a good looking game with a few flaws that certainly do stand out and dull the shine of this game. Up close the in game models look good and well detailed but at a distance and even through field glasses and a scope you can see the lower quality models and texture work used. Some of the up close textures are also not very well done and look fuzzy. Of course these issues are to be expected because the game needs to stream the entire game world to you.

Audio

For the most part Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has some impressive and memorable audio. The game’s soundtrack is excellent in this mix of Asian and Celtic sounding collaboration which fits the games setting well. The sound effects are well done, at least for the most part but some of the weapon sounds are more like pop gun than realistic weapons. The voice work is also mostly well done and I loved the Chinese soldiers yelling during firefights and your guys calling out specific information during the game. In the end though everything in the game is something we have seen many times before and it does not take a big chance and overall that is the most difficult part of listening to the game.

Value

The single player game is very enjoyable for a single play through and even upping the difficulty to higher difficulty levels makes this a single play through game. If you enjoy the co-operative and multiplayer side of things you can keep the game going longer but there are better games we have played in the past such as Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and the original Operation Flashpoint.

Bottom Line

The single player game is well done and the co-op/multiplayer game is a nice treat in this age of pointless multiplayer action experiences we are bombarded with on an almost daily basis. But in the long run this game is not one I can see playing for more than a couple of weeks until the next game comes out that will keep my attention for a longer period of time. I have to say this is only a buy if you must; it actually is more of a rental.