Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis review

When I first played this game, I thought it was really hard because your player’s health, though not visible on-screen, is simulated near real-life-like. Meaning when you get hit by a bullet in the head or get damaged by a blast from a grenade or tank’s cannon, you instantly die (as you would in real life) and you have to return to your last save point. The game makes you devise a plan or strategy as you would do in an actual combat and how to stay alive on a mission.

The game features different weaponry and it ranges from assault rifles, machine guns, anti-tank and anti-aircraft rocket launchers, and other explosives like hand grenades, land mines, etc. Players can also use a variety of vehicles in the game such as wheeled vehicles (e.g. cars, jeep), armored vehicles (e.g. tanks), armored aircraft (e.g. gunships), boats, etc. With this interactive objects in-game, it gives players a variety of options as to how they can complete a mission.

The war is set on three fictional islands namely Everon, Malden, and Kolgujev. Players in campaign mode get to control one of the four characters depending on the current type of mission:

David Armstrong – Private soldier whom takes up infantry missions on the front-line eventually commanding his own squad.
Robert Hammer – A tank commander. He is the character that you play with tank missions.
Sam Nichols – is a pilot and his role can be played during the aircraft missions.
James Gastovski – is a special forces soldier and he takes on covert-type missions.

Even though these characters have specialty in-game, they can still use vehicles and weapons that are available in their missions. This is what adds more fun in the game. You can complete missions in anyway you want it. I myself liked this game a lot and made me play this game several times trying different ways of completing a mission.

Operation Flashpoint has some addons. The Operation Flashpoint: Red Hammer where players takes the role of a Russian soldier named Dmitri Lukin. The campaign mode somewhat happened at the same time with the story of the Americans in the game but players get to see the Russian side of the story in the war or conflict. The addon also adds weapons and vehicles.

Another addon is the operation Flashpoint: Resistance. The campaign mode setting of this addon takes players three years back before the story in the original game took place. Players assumes the role of an ex-Special Operations (SpecOps) soldier, Victor Troska. The story in this addon brings players the “Resistance’s” side of the story. In this addon, players have to be careful of their decisions in utilizing weapons and squad member in a mission since losing them can greatly affect the succeeding missions. This feature makes it a little bit more complicated but more fun.

I have been waiting for a sequel to this game since it was announced that there will be an Operation Flashpoint 2. Now, after like eight years since the original game was released in 2001, the sequel to the series, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has been announced that has gone “GOLD” last September 24, 2009 and is going to be released this October 6, 2009 in the US. I have watched some of preview videos of the game and it seems the developers really did some major enhancement in the game. We’ll see what are the major things to note about the game when it’s publicly available.