Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Usually in modern warfare you’re a pretty damn super soldier, capable of absorbing bullets and healing yourself by picking up a handily labelled box. Not so in Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising, where all it takes is one shot to the head from an unseen enemy to put an end to your hopes and dreams of liberating the island of Skira of its natural resources.

In terms of the plot, it is found that Skira has untapped oil reserves, and with this being set in 2011, it immediately starts a militaristic ‘gold rush’ between the United States and China, with both superpowers fighting for occupation of the island.

While the island’s name is fictional, everything else in Dragon Rising isn’t. Mostly. The island is based on Kiska near Alaska, well, we say based on, but in actual fact it’s been modelled accurately, even down to the terrain. Which means the island where you’ll be doing all this fighting hasn’t actually been designed by a level designer so there won’t be any sweet spots for camping or obvious enemy respawn points. It’s just you, your guys, and the only waist-high walls are the ones God put there, or were formed when the island’s volcano erupted.

So there you go, you’ll be fighting in a real place with real terrain and nothing to exploit, just like in real life. You’re going to have to be pretty sharp to form strategies with this unfamiliar terrain, because when you do end up in a firefight, you’ll soon find out how easy it is for you to die. This is because of the more-realistic-than-most damage system that doesn’t let you be a bullet sponge and one well-placed bullet will kill you. On the other hand, one badly placed bullet won’t kill you. Say you get shot in the leg, apart from it hurting a lot, it’s also going to slow you down, because you’ve got a bullet in your leg. We didn’t get to see how the healing system works, but we were told that every soldier has nine pints of blood, and if you’re bleeding out of several holes then it doesn’t take long before you die of blood loss. You will be able to use bandages to patch yourself up a bit and prevent the blood loss, but until you get to a medic, you’ll still have a bullet in your leg preventing you from moving quickly.

With this gritty realism pervading over everything, your tactics are going to have to be spot-on, because the enemy AI will be incredibly intelligent. We were told it’s still being worked on, but what we saw was still impressive, with enemy squads moving to flank or defend certain positions to distract you from other forces.

But it’s nothing you can’t deal with with a bit of planning. You’ve got plenty of options to advance your squad of four soldiers, and you can split off from the rest of them so that you can flank enemies. And with over 50 different weapons there is opportunity to take the island in a huge variety of ways. Vehicles will also play an important part; an even more important part if that vehicle is a tank – it’s not just for destroying the enemy but for getting around as well.

So far Operation Flashpoint 2 is looking like a much more cerebral squad-based shooter that is more grounded in reality than other games of its ilk, but it makes strategising and planning much more satisfying when it all goes well.