Twinfinite's Henry McMunn revisits Codemaster's military simulator and realises it was actually really great all along.
There are games wich shine with light. However, not all games have the same opportunity to receive support from their editors.
This results in remarkable games, even outstanding, which have been forgotten or, unfortunately, were never known by the mass audience. Even their reviews, do not capture the true quality of the title, since most anticipated games, are unfortunately better received in the newsroom.
Part I: Hidden gems in First Person Shooters
"I’m tired of the need for more 'realism' in games. I don’t want to hear about how realistic Call of Duty is while you’re cowering behind cover watching the red Kool-Aid disappear from your screen. I don’t care if Battlefield 3’s bullet drop somehow makes it a better shooter. Does it really matter if you play Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo, or Need for Speed? They all look and feel fantastic; why does it matter if one is more realistic?
"You want to see a realistic game? Go play Operation Flashpoint on the hardest difficulty. After you’ve gotten out of the fetal position, tell me how enjoyable it was. Unless you happen to be a masochist, I’m going to bet you didn’t have a very good time. That’s realistic.
"We use video games as an escape, just like movies, literature, and music. They tell us stories, let us make our own, or let us live out an experience. I can’t drive a race car (heck, I don’t even have a license), but that doesn’t stop me from playing Need for Speed. The cor...
Exactly. I love the fact that you can jump and shoot with a .50 cal sniper rifle in COD. That adds to the fun whereas realism reduces the fun and makes the gameplay boring. Games aren't suppose to be realistic, we as human beings are very limited when it comes to abilities and powers and such and having game designers implementing what we fantasize the most in terms of technology and surreal action in video games make us people happy cause we get to experience our own "world", the world of fantasies and joy in those games which brightens our imagination and give us something to think about. If I wanted realism, I would rather stick to the life outside of home and drive a real car instead of playing GT5/Forza for instance. Realism ruins the fun, fun is surreal or simply like our folks at Epic Games call it, Unreal.
Some people would like the opportunity to "be" a soldier, so to speak, but without having to risk their life to do it. In that sense, realism in games is wanted. Some people would like to hop around in a land full of giant mushrooms and clouds you can stand on, and that's where "unreal" games come in. There's a place for all types of gamers in this world.
Doesn't an escape from one reality into another make all the more magic though?
Operation Flashpoint on hard is BOMB! I loved it! Intense! One of the few games that was genuinely hard and not just cheap like playing COD on veteran.
Most of my favorite games this gen are unrealistic
Valkyria Chronicles
Tales of Graces F
Disgaea 4
Atelier Meruru
Mass Effect 1
R834 and The_Stacked_Nerd review 2009 tactical FPS Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.
The_Stacked_Nerd: "My first impressions of this game were rather, let’s say, enthusiastic. The box was detailed and explosive – what I generally look for in a FPS – and the story was set in the modern day, something I generally appreciate as there are normally a range of great weapons to be tested.Once we started playing it, however, I realised that it was, in my opinion, utter rubbish."
Yeah - we're reviewing a whole backlog of games we own to add content to our site, which only opened on 2nd April.
...but that's not a good enough excuse for wasting bandwidth on reviews of old, crappy games. Since you're so new, your reviews/opinions are meaningless and irrelevant anyway, as you haven't built a rep yet. Starting out regurgitating old info, about old games that nobody cares about, isn't going to help you.
Write some original articles, review what's new, preview what's coming...you know, like a normal gaming site.
@sp1deynut
Who gives a shit what you think? He can do what he wants, it's his bandwidth.
Maybe next time you see one of his articles show a little self restraint and don't click on it.
And he may be new, but you haven't exactly been here a great length of time either.
@sp1deynut
Come on, that's a bit harsh.
I'm only "wasting bandwidth" on my site.
And your statement about having "meaningless and irrelevant" opinions is paradoxical: I can't write good articles because I have no rep, but I can't build up a rep because I don't have any articles... o_O
I'm not regurgitating anything - this is the first time my review for this game has been posted anyway, and I posted it to my site, which, as I previously said, is less than a week old.
I did write an (arguably) original article earlier this week, which ended up as Today's Hottest.
And, as a guy who is not currently receiving any income from the site, I would have to have a large amount of money sitting around to be able to buy enough brand new games to fill your review quota.
And properly previewing what's coming is difficult when I have no way of personally playing upcoming games, so I would just be "regurgitating" other the opinions of other people who have played those upcoming games.
"Normal" gaming sites like, say, IGN, make a lot of money from their site, so have enough money to hire writers and buy in games, and they have such a large reputation that games developers send them their games to review.
As a small site by just two people, getting no money from the site, I think that's going to be difficult.
But thanks anyway.
Wow. The only good thing about reading this review was that I know not to trust your site for reviews. Ever. While the game had some issues, it's clear that you attempted to play a sim style game as just another Call of Duty clone. I wish I could have been there to ridicule whoever played it. While the UI sucked balls, I got used to it and was able to use my team effectively. The game is clearly made for co-op play, but the AI is plenty good enough if used properly. All in all, I thought Dragon Rising didn't quite live up to it's potential, but it's hardly as bad as this review makes it sound. I'm looking forward to the sequel in a couple of months.
A review is just an opinion, and in this particular review, you have the opinion of two people. In my personal opinion, there were still many points that needed to be refined.
Prior to this, I had played only one Call of Duty game - World at War. I played Dragon Rising shortly after playing WaW, which is why I attempted to use the CoD control scheme.
I did not, however, try and use Call of Duty tactics. I'd played the Dragon Rising demo on PC quite a bit, so I knew roughly what to do. I snuck around, keeping to cover as much as I could and only died when I reached the section I talked about, after I'd travelled 1.8km on foot.
And I *was* there to ridicule The_Stacked_Nerd, as we were using the PSN text chat feature while playing at the same time.
From what I have personally experienced, the AI is incredibly dumb.
But, as I said at the end of my article, I will persevere and continue to play this game.
I'm sorry you did not like this article. :(
Agree
Play Red River next... Tell us if it's worth it!
Ugh I just remembered this game and it makes me want to me sick in a bowler hat and drown myself in it....
The only good thing about this game was borderlands was out a week later!
Dragon Rising was a really great idea but with Codemaster's typically shoddy execution of anything not racing related. Their poor handling of the criticism, bugs and outright lies on the packaging was eerily similar to EA's BF4 flustercluck. The game was a breath of fresh air in many ways and was really the only truly tactical, open map shooter of it's kind on consoles. Anyone who played the original Flashpoint or ARMA games would feel pretty comfortable with Dragon Rising. It's just a pity Codemasters dropped the ball completely on the online portion, allowed several annoying bugs to remain to this day and lied about features in the game and later charged for these promised features as DLC. With the way they handled the whole situation, Codemasters earned the first spot on my ever expanding list of developers that I refuse to buy anything from them. Again, much like BF4, you can easily see the awesome game it could have been and yet it's still totally out of reach.