One summer, I scrapped and saved for an entire summer to purchase a preowned Xbox. I worked for my dad, saved my pennies, and literally searched high and low for change. I eventually saved up my money, purchased the Xbox, and along with it, two games. The first was Morrowind, and the second was Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis Elite. I became an instant fan of both series. Years later, I picked up Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising for the Xbox 360 and recently replayed the game on Xbox One.
When the game came out, I was an active duty infantry Marine fresh off my first deployment. The games had you playing as a modern Marine infantryman in 2011, two years in the future. As a dude who was already living that life, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising impressed me. I remember using modern guns and optics and being gripped by the realism of the game.
Operation Flashpoint is one of the best examples of military simulation. It’s not your typical first-person shooter. It has slower-paced gameplay that is the exact opposite of Call of Duty. Combat takes place over a massive open world map, and the game mixes in moments of intense firefights and gaps complete with foot travel. Most firefights occur in a quasi-realistic manner. You aren’t zapping fifty dudes in three minutes at 10 to 20 feet away. I loved it then, and after a replay, I love it now.
They don’t make ’em like they used to.
I felt like an old man describing the game to my wife. I was talking about how much I missed this style of game, and every current first-person shooter is more obsessed with selling me a character or a skin than providing good gameplay. Military sims have been reduced to ARMA, and that’s about it. ARMA is unsurprisingly made by the same Czech studio behind Operation Flashpoint.
Sadly the market doesn’t seem to want slow-paced shooters that try to lean on realism. I miss that and have essentially become my dad, but instead of TV Land and Andy Griffith, I’m playing old video games and complaining about new ones.
Enter Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising takes place in 2011 on the fictional island of Skira. This island is owned by the Russian Federation and was invaded overnight by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) due to a massive reservoir of oil. Russia is dealing with China on the mainland, and the United States deploys a force of Marines to Skira to retake the island. That’s about all the story you need or get.
You play as two characters, one being an infantry team leader named Sergeant Hunter and the second being 2nd Lieutenant Mulholland, a Special Forces team leader. He’s listed as SF Team leader but is also seemingly a Marine. Maybe the developers meant for him to be MARSOC and used Special Forces as a generic term. Either way, the missions between the two men vary widely.
Hunter does grunt work, and I really enjoy these missions. The tasks are very infantry oriented, like taking down machine gun nests or AT teams to allow your main force to attack. It’s big and loud and tons of fun. Mulholland gets some sneakier missions with specific objectives involving rescuing POWs, targeted assassinations, and similar missions. Sometimes the two cross paths with a recon/sabotage mission Mulholland does at night to allow Hunter and the infantry to seize a bigger target the next day.
The Gameplay
The game gives you objectives and generally allows you to figure out the best way to complete them. The map is absolutely massive, and you can take multiple paths to get where you need to be. Vehicles are used occasionally, but really not enough. Why not allow missions as a helicopter pilot or tank driver or even a LAR guy? You’d get a fuller scope of warfare.
As a team leader, you have the ability to issue orders to your men. You can have them do a ton of different tasks, from suppressing fire to assaulting, flanking, and more. If you use your team wisely, you can pull off such fun tactical feats. The action is intense but often a bit slower than most FPS games.
Sometimes you could be approaching an objective at full steam, and then boom, you’re dead. All it takes is a round or two to take you down, and you might never see it coming. Operation Flashpoint wants you to engage with your binoculars or optics. You need to scout ahead, stick to cover when you can, and take advantage of the terrain.
The enemies make mistakes, and you’ll see the bad guys come over a hill and highlight themselves as they do it. This makes them highly visible and easy to pick off. Sometimes it gets frustrating having to move slowly in the prone, but if you don’t, you might get lit up by a machine gun nest. This takes us to the gunplay.
The Gunplay
Everything slows down with Operation Flashpoint. It’s slow and methodical. Every gun has its own ballistic system, which measures bullet drop and the time it takes to get to a target. When your M16A4 has an ACOG, you’ll have to use the built-in bullet drop compensator to land your hits.
Lord forbid you find yourself under fire from squad support weapons. You better fight your way through and do it quickly, or full-on retreat. Getting pinned down by a machine gun nest can quickly end your playthrough.
You need to make smart moves, and running across an open field is rarely a smart move. One time I needed to crawl slowly over the hill, having my guys fire on my lead. I barely poked over the hill, and 400 meters away sat a PLA heavy machine gun. I sighted it with my ACOG and used the 400-meter mark to make a very careful headshot to avoid getting decimated by that machine gun position.
That position had to be taken out so I could advance and take down an anti-armor team to protect the LAR and tank assets moving into the attack. That’s the experience you get from Operation Flashpoint.
When you’re under fire, the game does a great job of ratcheting up the intensity. Dirt flies and bullets zip overhead. When wounded, patch yourself up to stop the bleeding. However, a shot to the leg kills your sprinting, and shots to the arms seem to increase scope wobble. At close range, it can be game over very quickly if you’re not paying attention and using cover.
It’s Not Fun
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising isn’t fun in the traditional sense. You won’t be smiling while you play. You’ll be on the edge of your seat. It’s not fun, but it sure as hell is satisfying. It’s challenging, non-linear, and delivers a different experience with every replay. I love it and have a blast playing it. It’s not perfect.
The multiplayer for a 13-year-old game isn’t populated, so it’s single-player only. You use a very limited weapon set and don’t get much time behind vehicles. Your character gets an M4, an M16A4, or a SCAR L or H, depending on your character. You can pick up enemy Chinese weapons and occasionally get special weapons like a sniper rifle, SMAW, or Javelin. If an ally dies, you can pick up their weapon, and that’s the only chance you’ll have to use a SAW or M21.
You also can’t choose your weapon prior to the mission, and your attachments are somewhat random. They could have really made a few tweaks, and we could have gotten a slightly better experience. There are a few DLCs, but they don’t add much beyond some one-off missions and a chance to fly around the island and explore as a pilot.
If you want a military simulator, then check out Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Sadly Red River isn’t on the Xbox Store and seems to cost anywhere from 60 to 100 bucks, so I might way to try the sequel again. Are there any other Flashpoint nerds in our audience?
