Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis

"War, has never been so much crud..."

And i don't mean to offend anyone who has ever been involved in a war, in it or outside it. My 'synopsis' obviously relates to this FPS/strategy real-time effort.
If you've ever played games like Medal of Honour, you'll see that war FPS's have been quite tight corridor based affairs. Operation Flashpoint has tried to rectify this by having vast fields of land for the 'war' to take place on. You can literally see for miles... however, that's about as 'innovative' this game gets. read this review to find out why...

Graphics: 7

I have a top-notch pc which runs games like Unreal Tournament, Star-topia, and other such demanding games perfectly and, although O.Flashpoint ran smoothly enough, the graphics just didn't seem topnotch. Ever played Spec Ops? The graphics used in that game are strikingly similar to O.Flashpoint's. Incredibly similar.
The animation is pretty poor too. All the men run around like they've got turds down their pants. Looks hilarious, but put that aside and you wonder why they look like that at all.
Variety I doubt was a word ever considered by the developers because all the levels look incredibly samey. Tree after tree is identical, and that's about all you ever see on the landscapes. Trees. Hordes of em'. Big ones, little ones, but they all look the same when you're playing.

Quite simple, the graphics do the job, but realistically, they could have been a hell of a lot better... did I hear someone say soldier of Fortune? Oh, nevermind.

Gameplay: 4

A disaster. Why all the magazines are raving about this game is beyond me because i haven't seen a much worse developed game in quite a while. The controls are disastrous, the game's difficulty level is on Einstein level, and I stopped playing after my first sitting through this.
For instance, take the way you run. The moment you run, the view shifts to a first person POV. Innovative? I suppose, but it's sickeningly tough to get to grips with and i did keep wishing that I could play it with a Half-Life type view, where you see your gun, hands, etc. It's a horrible way to view the game...
Another disaster was the training mission at the very start of the game... lordy have i ever played a tougher training mission? No, i haven't. Half-life's training missions were fun, simple to use, and very educational in the learning process of how to play the game, but O.Flashpoint's... may as well have been a battle in itself. There's one point where you are supposed to complete a simple, tiny little obstacle course... well put it this way, that's as far as I got before I gave up on it and decided to use a cheat to get on the next level. That's when you know a game's been made poorly when the training level is as tough as the actual game.

Sound: 6

OK, but I dislike people giving credit to sound just cos some SFX sound realistic... it's not the SFX for me, it's speech and music. If music can set the mood for a part of the game you're at, brilliant. If the speech can make you think, ''Ya know, Lara Croft really would sound like that...'' then good. but O. Flashpoint's is just so so. So what if the guns make the sound that their real-life counterparts do? You don't notice it after 5 minutes anyway.
Oh, and the voices, while OK, do seem a tad OTT sometimes.

Lifespan: 2

Well, I 'tried' the training mission... and the first level, but after that i packaged up the game and took it back to where I got it from and instead opted for Star-Topia which instead is quite a delight. Thank God!!

Overall:

I had O.Flashpoint for maybe 3 days then took it back. Disaster doesn't come into it, absolute travesty does. And all the magazines ARE going mad over this. Why? I haven't got a clue, maybe they've been paid or something, it does happen ya know.
I don't know why this poor game got praised to the high heavens and then you get other really good games like Half-Life Blue Shift which gets made to look average. trust me, any Half-life game, Soldier of Fortune, Unreal Tournament, are all better than O. Flashpoint.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/01, Updated 07/13/01