Operation Flashpoint 2 Hands-on Preview
By
Neon Kelly - 30/03/2009 - 10:03am GMT
Operation Flashpoint 2 has a great legacy to live up to.
There's a war going on out there, and it's being fought with über-detailed military simulations. On one side we have Operation Flashpoint 2 - the official sequel to one of the most popular and influential war games of all time; on the other, we have ArmA 2 - the spiritual sequel designed by Bohemia Interactive Studios, the guys who coded the original OpFlash. I've already spent a bit of time
with this latter game , so it was with keen anticipation that I travelled to Leamington Spa earlier this month on a mission to check out Codemasters' effort.
While I'm sure there are plenty of PC owners watching this game, one of the interesting things about Operation Flashpoint 2 is that it's also coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360. Okay, so normally that's not such a notable feature - but anyone who played the original game will know just how PC-focused it was. Operation Flashpoint was something of a benchmark release in terms of the amount of strategic control and variety it afforded the player. From your humble beginnings as a newly-recruited marine private, you slowly rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant in command of your own squad. When in this position, you were able to tell your men to do pretty much anything - they could seize vehicles, scan the horizon for threats, and retrieve equipment from dead bodies. If you were defending a base, you could even get them to keep an eye on specific directions that the enemy might approach from.
All of these commands required a series of keyboard inputs mostly using the number keys to work through several different sub-menus. It was a bit of a ball-ache at times, but once you remembered the important commands there was no limit to what you could do. Operation Flashpoint was one of the first games I ever played where it genuinely felt like you could handle a mission in any way you liked. It was endlessly enjoyable and pretty damn tense too, thanks to the fact that you could die in seconds. No recharging health malarkey here; one bullet was enough to kill you, if it hit you in the right place.
Now, this dizzying depth is all well and good when youre dealing with a PC player whos used to hardcore simulations, but how in the name of Blue Blazes do you make it work on a modern console? Fine, most of us are now used to the idea of open world gaming, but how do you make that complicated gameplay work in an age where every studio seems to be focusing on simplicity and accessibility?
Carelessly dashing into battle will probably get you killed.
The answer, if your name is Mr Codemasters, is to keep things as straightforward as possible. In terms of control layout, Operation Flashpoint 2 initially resembles the majority of first-person shooters on the market today: the analogue sticks aim and move you, the left trigger aims down the sights of your weapon and the right one fires. However, the clever part is the way you dish out orders to your men: holding down RB/R1 summons a radial menu with commands that can be given by pushing the d-pad in the corresponding direction. Up is context-sensitive and is used to tell your boys to move to a specific spot or to attack whoever youre looking at, while Left and Right lets you access a range of sub-menus with more detailed tactical options. With time, you should be able to instinctively crack off the d-pad movements for issuing complex instructions... just as you did with the keyboard setup back in the day.
Naturally, this neat setup would count for nothing if the game itself didnt play like Operation Flashpoint. The controller layout may resemble your average FPS, but thats certainly not what this is. Storming in with your gun blazing will get you killed in seconds. Instead you have to pick your way slowly through missions, keeping an eye out for movement in the distance. It pays to remember that your weapon is an assault rifle, not an uzi; aimed shots are the order of the day, not panicked sprays. Having said that, its actually quite hard to take down your enemy when they appear to be little more than a splodge on a far-off hill. One of my abiding memories of the original game was of being mildly terrified of an enemy I could barely see, and this sequel seems to have that same tension in spades.
Of course, you eventually get used to the ways of simulated warfare. You realise the importance of suppressing fire, of crawling into cover, and of sticking close to your mates. Youll also learn to check whether your target is dead or not, since often youll plug a guy only to have one of his chums come over and patch him up. On the bright side, this lets you re-enact the sniper scene from Full Metal Jacket wounding one soldier and then taking out the second when he runs over to help. And naturally enough, the same rules now apply to you: when you inevitably do take a bullet, you may be able to save yourself by healing or calling for a medic. Time is of the essence here, since it doesnt take long to bleed to death from an untreated wound. Oh, and its also worth mentioning that you can even be killed by the bullets that
miss you, since ricocheting shots are just as deadly as those that hit their target.
This level of detail can be found throughout Operation Flashpoint 2, from the 100 per cent accurate reload animations to the fact that each weapon and ammunition type has a different penetration value in other words, high calibre bullets will pass through certain kinds of armour and cover. Promotional material for both this game and ArmA 2 has tended to focus on impressive sounding numbers and statistics, and its quite interesting to see how close the two games seem to be in this regard. The game-world in OpFlash 2 is 220 square km while the one in ArmA 2 is 225km, and both landscapes have been constructed using real-world satellite data. Opflash 2 has 70 accurately-modelled weapons, while ArmA 2 has roughly 80. Okay, so Codemasters game doesnt have 1883 unique road signs written in Russian but that might be something to do with fact that their game is set on Skira, a Y-shaped island north of Japan (modelled on the island of Kiska, West of Alaska).
The final game will feature roughly 70 weapons and variants.
To be honest, all of this stat-crunching will probably take a back seat once the games actually surface, later in the year. From an outsiders perspective, its quite fascinating to see two companies essentially producing their own variations on the same game. As to which will come out on top
it's far too early to tell. My initial feeling is that ArmA 2 may win over the hardcore crowd while Operation Flashpoint 2 attracts a wider audience. Bohemias game seems almost frightening in its commitment to scope, with a warfare mode that has the potential for multiplayer wars lasting several hours. Codemasters game may end up being slightly less expansive by comparison, but its still going to be huge and itll also be going out across all three formats at once; Bohemia is keeping fairly quiet about its plans for a console version of ArmA 2.
Furthermore, I suspect that Operation Flashpoint 2 may be the slicker of the two products. Even at this early stage of development, theres a certain kind of confident presentation here that ArmA 2 lacks. The graphics are a little more stylised, and even though the build I played used a lot of placeholder audio, the vocal work sounded emotive and high quality. Codemasters has a lot more experience than Bohemia when it comes to dealing with a wide gaming audience, and it's made some wise moves. One key example is the way difficulty is being handled: on easier settings, the games AI and mechanics will remain the same, but the player will be given more visual information about whats going on therell even be a compass-like indicator to show the locations of enemy forces. Little aids like these may be shrugged off by the elite, but they could make all the difference when it comes to attracting casual gamers. Needless to say, well be keeping a close eye on both projects as 2009 rolls on.
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