Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is the official sequel to Bohemia Interactive Studios’ 2001 release, Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. This time around Codemasters has taken the reigns as BIS has moved on to bigger and better things including developing their own milsim shooter known as ArmA. Long missions and intense firefights give Dragon Rising an unquestionable sense of realism, but bugs, bland visuals and horrendous AI hinder what enjoyment there is from the game’s realistic setting.

Lock ‘n Load

The year is 2010 and the global economic crisis is the worst seen since the great depression. China takes the hardest hit as consumer demand for the nations goods plummet, causing massive rioting as China’s oil reserves begin to deplete. Seeing no other alternative, the communist government mobilizes its troops along the China-Russia border as it invades the tiny oil rich island of Skira. Russia seeks the aid of the United States and convinces the American government that a surprise US invasion to liberate Skira Island from China would be the best course of action.

Dragon Rising is a tactical squad level military shooter often referred to as a military simulation or ‘milsim’. The majority of the player’s time will be spent leading a four man squad during the liberation of Skira through the games eleven missions. There is no shortage of vehicles for the player to commandeer, but often times it’s easier to reach objectives on foot so as to not draw attention to themselves.

The reason for not wanting to draw attention stems from the games often brutal difficulty. Players will quickly realize that this game is not Call of Duty. There’s no regenerative health to be found here, only death. And don’t be surprised when chunks of play time are wiped out from the impact of a single shot. Part of this difficulty comes from the games lack of any sort of a tutorial.  While the game’s manual is informative, and players are given some sparse information via pop-ups at certain times, there just isn’t enough useful information.

But the lion share’s of difficulty is not the realism that Codemasters has tried to implement, but the game’s horrendous AI, something not limited to your squad mates but to the enemies you will face as well.

The problem is that the PLA are pants-on-head stupid when it comes to combat in the few areas on Skira that contain buildings. In one particular instance I was given the task of rescuing a group of downed helicopter pilots that were besieged in a hamlet. Once I engaged the PLA, they would attempt to storm my location while avoiding cover, or they would try to shoot through whatever cover they currently were using (even the PLA that were in buildings would try to shoot through the walls at my position!). The sad thing is that this happens on a consistent basis throughout the game.   However, the PLA will often times do the right thing when fighting out in the open; they look for cover, go prone to avoid gunfire, and attempt to use suppressing fire in order to take you out.

A player might be able to take advantage of this if it weren’t for the fact that the other three squad mates under their command are just plain incompetent. Players will have to deal with squad mates walking in front of their gunfire with little regard to their well being, not using cover during firefights, not changing stances when it’s appropriate or follow movement orders when given. The problems with squad AI are exacerbated when attempting to issue orders on a console-friendly command menu.

Issuing orders is actually quite easy; press Q to bring up the quick command four-way radial menu, then use the W, S, A, and D keys to navigate through the various command trees. If a player looks at an object, enemy or squad mate then the radial menu will update with different options that can be chosen. There are no shortages of commands that can be issued to your squad including changing the rules of engagement, ordering them into a particular formation, use suppressing fire and giving movement orders to flank enemy positions.

All of this would be great if it wasn’t for the poor execution of the quick command menu. The first problem is that when using the command menu the player can no longer move, just look around. The second problem is that it takes too much time to navigate through the menus to find orders to give to your squad. As the squad leader, players can issue orders to individual squad members and even split up the squad in attempts to flank and suppress the enemy, but players will find that in the amount of time needed to issue such complex orders they could have just completed the needed tasks themselves. Even if players are able to issue orders, squad mates at times have a hard time executing them.

Dragon Rising does have a map that will show known enemies and vehicles and can be used to issue orders, but the map lacks any kind of detail and players can only use basic orders like assault and move. A better option that Codemasters could have used would be to have the game pause when using the radial command menu or to just simplify the command trees themselves. The unfortunate side effect is that the game at times turns into the run and game gameplay found in Call of Duty, but with much deadlier results.

Dragon Rising does have the occasional bug when it comes to completing mission objectives. At one point during a mission, I was ordered to take over a building in an enemy controlled based. Once I was able to infiltrate and defeat the enemies, the building blew up for no reason with my whole team in it. Uninjured, I was then ordered to find a SAM (surface-to-air missile) launcher to take out an enemy gunship that was headed my way and defend the building from a PLA counter-attack.

What ensued was a thirty minute period of reloading saved games as I was killed by the enemy looking for this invisible SAM launcher. With each reload came a different PLA attack as sometimes only one APC (armored personnel carrier) would come, sometimes three and never with the same amount of infantry. Not sure if that is by design or not but it will happen each time you reload a check point or saved game. Eventually the PLA gunship blew up on its own and I was given the confirmation that I had completed the objective as I was ordered to and I should move on to the next one.

Not all is doom and gloom for Dragon Rising, there is a good and sometimes exciting game behind the short comings. Before each mission begins players can keep track of campaign progress, check out the mission objectives in the mission briefing screen, and even view the equipment of the squad. Once the action begins there will be indicators for the locations of any primary and secondary objectives both on screen and on a compass located at the top of the screen, as well as any RV or Rendezvous points. RV points are supposedly meant to direct you to locations best used to the player’s advantage, but from personal experience that is the exact opposite. In actuality RV points have a tendency to send you straight to areas invested with PLA, a problem when orders are to avoid combat if at all possible.

Gear and Graphics

There are a multitude of weapons in Dragon Rising that are modeled after real life versions both in look and performance. Just as in real life, cover and positioning are vitally important, and one shot might not kill right away, but can have dire consequences including bleeding out. Players can only sprint for a limited time, reloading weapons can be time consuming and can even jam and trying to run and gun enemy positions can result in a quick game reload.

If the game wasn’t hard enough, players can choose to play on the aptly named ‘hardcore’ difficulty setting. Hardcore doesn’t make the enemies shoot any better or spawn more PLA; rather it eliminates the players HUD. Players won’t have access to both squad members and their own health status, enemies will not be marked on the map or compass and players will need to keep mental note of ammo because there is no on screen help. Instead players will need to rely on their eyes and ears as well as vocal cues from squad members.

Codemasters has optimized Dragon Rising’s graphics engine so that it should play pretty well on a wide range of computer setups. Testing has shown that many of the in-game video options have very little impact on the overall quality of the graphics. This optimization though makes the visuals a bit bland. Weapon models and vehicles look fantastic, and the lighting system and draw distance are wonderful. Codemasters boasts that Dragon Rising features a 35km draw distance, and standing on a hill and being able to see that far in all directions is breathtaking.

But areas like textures on buildings and soldiers, as well as grass and trees look pretty lackluster and low detail. Another issue is that each mission seems to feature a rather dominant color; night missions tend to make everything look bluish green, day missions look greenish brown and missions in the evening look plain brown. The bland color pallet also contributes to the games overall difficulty because trying to find an enemy soldier dressed in a brown uniform walking around in brown grass and brush with thinning daylight can be a challenge.

Multiplayer

The real draw for gamers for both the consoles and the PC will be Dragon Rising’s multiplayer. There are two multiplayer game modes, Co-Op and Player vs Player. In co-op up to four players can replay certain missions or play through the entire campaign if they so choose. There are two Player vs Player modes, annihilation and infiltration. Annihilation is your standard team death match where two even numbered teams fight it out until a time limit or score has been reached.

Infiltration is a bit more interesting than that. There are two teams; one smaller team takes the role of Special Forces while the larger team plays the role of defense force. The Special Forces team is tasked with infiltrating a key location while the defense force must hunt down and stop the Special Forces from destroying the objective. Either way both multiplayer modes gives Dragon Rising a lot of replay value, and playing a co-op campaign with other players is the best way to play through and avoid the games AI shortcomings.