Operation Flashpoint: Red River Hands-On Preview – Dawn of the Red

24
Richard Walker

War is hell, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And as far as military simulations are concerned, on the console there's really nothing quite like Operation Flashpoint. While some have criticised the series for moving away from its uber-hardcore PC roots, realism is still very much at Operation Flashpoint: Red River's heart, one bullet can still be fatal and careful strategy will always win out over mindless gung-ho tactics. War is still hell in Op Flash, that's for sure.

Red River is the second in the series on current-gen consoles and the second to be made internally at Codemasters using the EGO Engine that powers the DiRT franchise. Transporting the action from Dragon Rising's fictional island of Skira, to the very real and highly topical region of Tajikistan, you'll lead a fireteam of four, but rather than lumbering you with three virtually anonymous imbeciles, Red River actually attempts to inject personality into the members of the US Marine Corps, who will be your brothers in arms for the duration of the three act campaign.

It's not just new personalities that your team benefit from, they all have new AI and a streamlined radial menu can be used to issue commands with ease. In the game's single-player campaign, you'll also be given concise objectives marked upon the compass on your HUD. Shown as red chevrons, there's no getting confused when it comes to your goals, and with co-op players able to drop in and out, it helps that there are more precise mission briefings than previous, as well as clear compass markers and the ability to set waypoints for your team.


The engaging briefings are issued by Sergeant Knox, who shepherds the player through the campaign, and this too adds an extra degree of personality to the game. In that vein, Codies has used Generation Kill as its influential touchstone it claims, taking the hard-edged perfunctory military vernacular out of the game and replacing it with something more believable and less 'Oscar Mike' and shouty in style. As a result, it feels more like your part of a team of actual soldiers, rather than a group of command-spouting automatons.

Going hands-on with four different parts of Operation Flashpoint: Red River's campaign, it quickly becomes apparent that teamwork is essential, because as Codemasters notes, “lone wolves die young.” This is sage advice indeed we quickly find, as enemy bullets thump into the dirt in front of us almost immediately, provoking panic as we engage in a 'Last Stand' mission defending a fixed position from incoming PLA troops who launch an all-out assault in increasingly challenging waves.

Starting out on the crest of a hill facing down into a valley, we have the advantage over the PLA marching in from all angles and our sole aim is to prevent them from overrunning our entrenchment for as many waves as possible, before calling for an extraction. It's immediately apparent that the enemy isn't stupid, with some taking up positions on hills in the distance in an attempt to pick us off, while others split into other directions to flank our four-man fireteam. One of our team bites the big one after a few minutes, as we fail to make it to him and patch up his wounds before he bleeds out.

Should you get clipped by a bullet, you can apply your own field dressing by holding down A, which now serves as Red River's all-purpose context-sensitive action button. It beats having to rummage through a menu to find your equipment and it simply feels more logical without dumbing down the game's realistic vibe. You can dress wounds and then heal them outright, which might not be entirely realistic, but it beats retreating to cover to magically regenerate health as per almost every other FPS out there.


After beating five waves with our three-man team before making our way to the green smoke for extraction, we move on to the 'Rolling Thunder' convoy escort mission, which also bears the hallmarks of the game's Generation Kill influences, with a taut journey through the Tajikistan countryside where pockets of insurgents are out to destroy your orderly line of Humvees. Conventional wisdom tells us that the best approach is to keep our foot on the accelerator pedal and that soon proves to ring true, as stopping leaves us wide open like sitting ducks, making having to deal with the enemies hiding in the verges and on the rooftops of the houses lining the route, a necessity in order to progress.

So, following a slow and steady trail down Hell's highway, it's soon decided that we get the gist of that particular mission, as two of our jeeps perform three-point turns like myopic old men trying to steer while under AK-47 fire and we manage to stop inches short of veering off the edge of an escarpment headfirst while driving. It's not a roaring success, but lessons duly learnt, it's time to check out the CSAR search and rescue objective, wherein our team has to destroy heavily guarded helicopter wreckage, in what we're told is one of Red River's toughest missions.

Things start off gently enough however, and as the sun sets on the horizon, we're slowly lulled into a false sense of security. Making our way to the wreckage at the top of an incline is relatively easy, as is destroying the charred mound of twisted steel, but the subsequent action is relentless, causing us to lose both our Grenadier and Scout in quick succession as countless PLA reinforcements pour into the area, meaning only two of us have any chance of making it to the extraction point. Even that is easier said than done though, as we're pinned down by yet more AK bullets. Perhaps we should move on to the Combat Sweep mission...

Combat Sweep is a counter insurgency mode in which you carefully clear an area of hostile targets, as an allied chopper circles overhead, barking helpful commands while marking targets on your new and improved compass and HUD. Solid red arrows on the compass pick out targets and your team will shout out the direction to help you spot them. Blurred red arrows indicate an enemy's last known position, so you'll need to stay frosty and stick together as a team to avoid getting surrounded. Your ultimate aim is to work as a group and execute a clean sweep through the ghost town, destroy the randomly spawned ammo caches and reach extraction unscathed. Make it through without sustaining injuries or indeed casualties, and you'll be rewarded with a massive score. Our score? About 62000. The current record? Erm... 316,000 apparently. And we completed the mission with no casualties, few wounds and little procrastination. Getting the massive scores may require some practice, it seems.


Upon completing tasks and missions, you're rewarded with XP to assign to your character, which falls under one of four classes – Rifleman, Grenadier, Scout or Auto-Rifleman – and each has their own defined set of attributes and skills. You can assign earned XP to levelling-up for new equipment, or use points to boost the abilities of your soldier, such as tactical awareness, sprint speed or endurance. This not only adds increased depth to Op Flash, but it should also make you feel more invested in your character. That's the idea anyway.

As our extended hands-on session draws to a close, we're left with the distinct feeling that Operation Flashpoint: Red River could well be a marked improvement over its predecessor. Codies has clearly taken on board the criticisms levelled at Dragon Rising, addressing them with an increased emphasis on character, while streamlining the experience without 'dumbing down' the authenticity the franchise prides itself on. Your team is more intelligent, the radial menu has been tidied up a bit and there's a new news-style presentation to reflect the topical influence of the game. Sure, it's come a long way from its roots as a raw military sim on the PC and like it or not, Op Flash has changed. Whether that's for the better or not is purely subjective of course, but for our money, Red River could well be a better game for it.

Operation Flashpoint: Red River is slated for April 26th, 2011.

Comments
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  • seriously hope this is better the OP:DR but only time (and £40) will tell
  • although i thought the concept of dragon rising was good , an actual war shooter not based like a cod game, i think it got too "realistic" especially on the hardest difficulty.Nothing worse than spending an hour taking your time to stay low and get to cover only to pop your head up once, dying straight away,then having to do the whole mission again.
  • It sounds like this game could well be the game I wanted OF:DR to be, even though I enjoyed DR it did have glaring issues. Looking forward to playing this through in co-op on hardcore difficulty, that'll be the test of how tough the game is!
  • @2 But thats how fast you can die in a war, make the wrong move and it will cost you. Luckily its just a game and we can restart and learn from our mistakes
  • And..... cue the COD fanboys... "This game sux balls cos you die from one shot, everytime i run at an enemy head-on with my overpowered shotgun i get killed!.... Where's my perks? i've just killed 5 enemies in 30 minutes without dying and i don't get a nuke?!... What's this? I can't hide in that boulder? What kind of FPS is this?!" Some us prefer more of a strategic military shooter. First one was pretty good, a tough but enjoyable challenge and I really hope this one builds on that. Please don't go the COD route of emptying a magazine into an enemy and he sill stands...
  • Even though I love the writing here on x360a, so no offense intended, all these previews/write-up's are so far from the actual reality of the game it's not funny. The previews I read all over the internet for Dragon Rising made it out to be a definitive military simulation experience for the console, but it was a washed out arcade shooter with one hit kills - yes dying instantly is realistic, but the game went no further than that. The XP system yells out "Draw in the CoD kids!" because that is really the only target audience that is bound to play this now. The people who were genuinely excited for the first title were burnt and let down due to misleading promotion and empty promises. ~Bryce
  • First one was a horrific pile of shite, so I think I will give this one a miss. Had really high hopes for OF:DR but it had the worst AI I've ever seen. At one point I was sniping and got shot in the back of the head by my own squad, who I had told to hold fire. @5 Cut out the COD fanboy bullshit, it's pathetic. OF:DR was shoddily made and didn't live up to any of the hype. It was about as realistic as a sadistic Unicorn.
  • @7 Sadistic unicors do exist...I saw one in the parking lot. On topic though, OF:DR is a game that had it's annoyances but the game was absolutely great. Even on Hardcore. RR seems to go on the right path here, especially improving the AI and other stuff
  • Just saying, if it takes you 30 minutes to get 5 kills you are either really bad or a camper, and secondly if anyones starting Fanboy wars it's you for mentioning it. Oh and a Nuke is 25 kills. OT - Not sure about this at the moment, might need some more gameplay to make a proper decision, maybe a rent.
  • This is starting to sound pretty awesome.
  • @7+9 - Not fans of sarcasm then? jeez, lighten up will you? i'm not aiming to start a fanboy war.... I was merely making a point that in every other news article regarding a military shooter you get the usual COD fanboys shouting "It's not COD" or "COD rulez!!!" why can't people look at a game on it's own merits without endlessley comparing it to something else? These days games are written off too easily if they try something new because they don't follow the norm or the current trend.... And #7, Do you mean the first Operation Flashpoint or the first Operation Flashpoint game on 360? They are worlds apart. The first OF on PC was awesome and i had hopes that DR would be the same... a Sandbox world where you were given missions but were at liberty to go anywhere you wanted. For Codies to create a large game-world and then limit how much you actually played on was a dire decision. Hopefully they have learned from the mistakes made with DR. I actually enjoyed the game despite it's many flaws.
  • @11 -Thing is either way I rate it on it's own. I'm clearly not a fanboy to no games. Have you seen how many games I've played? I clearly don't just play Cod. It's not the only FPS but I enjoy it. Is there a problem with that?
  • @12 - ditto, I am not a slave to one game or even one genre of game. Granted my favourites would probably be racing games. I never said you "just play COD" I don't hate COD (I've played every one this generation), I don't "hate" any game. If i play it and i enjoy it then great but i won't swear any game over another. My personal preference for FPS's is Battlefield (Bad Co or otherwise) as I've always found them more engaging, enjoyable and played better (people tend to work more as a team than every man running around like Rambo) but as I said, that is my opinion. I rate COD too, some of the best single player campaign experiences i've played, but i DON'T compare every FPS to it. I was not having a go at you, or starting a fanboy war. I was not slating COD or bashing it. What i was refering to was the "single minded, tunnel visioned" people who bash every FPS that is not COD.
  • Sounds like this might turn out to be a pretty solid game and not fuck up like DR^^ I'd be willing to give demo a shot and see for myself, so I hope they will release one, because there is no way I will buy this without trying first:-P
  • Er Codemasters.. you do realise us gamers remember the pile of steaming shit that was Operation Flashpoint.. right!? I'm pretty sure anyone who played that wouldn't touch this with a stolen dick & since when does glitchfest/broken unfinished game = military simulations You are the reason I rarely buy games on release day, did you ever fix it btw, or did you just hope people would forget it? Y'know like all that planned DLC..
  • @6 - We just try to call it as we see it and sometimes games do fall short of initial expectations, that much is true. And occasionally, certain games do seem better at the preview stage than the game that winds up on the store shelves. That's just the way it goes sometimes.
  • #1 ever heard of rentals? If you are not sure on a game, why buy it and then find out how it is? Saying it costs £40 to find out is kinda silly really.
  • I hope this one is going to be good as the original ones on the pc and the orignal xbox. Dragon Rising was ok but Operation Flashpoint Elite is the better game.
  • Loved the first one, Hardcore mode was such a blast. Hope this one is also good.
  • I hope it's actually completable on the highest difficulty solo. Dragon Rising was annoying without checkpoints.
  • Played the first one for about 10 mins.. Hope this one is much better. If not then oh well.
  • Original Operation Flashpoint on the PC's where one of the best FPS ive every played. Dragon Rising i enjoyed most of my time of playing Hardcore Co-Op even though due to the games gltichyness i did have to do about 2/3 run throughs for the achievements!! i can understand if you didnt have xbox live at the time to get the hardcore acheivement as the AI was balls hopefully they correct there mistakes, dont rush the game, and plan any dlcs before the game is even release finally i think they should make a demo 1st, and i probably wont be buying the game unless there is a demo, i will make a rental 1st, as i did with dragon rising (which i 1000G with 2 weeks rental)
  • i hope this game is good
  • Looking forward to it.
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