Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis

"The best game I have ever played in my life!"

Don't listen to all the wusses who say ''it's too hard!'', or ''that (expletive) shot me no sweat from 300 meters!''. They're lying. I'm 13 years old and can beat the game and all of its expansions on the hardest difficulty level and achieve the best endings, which brings me to the game's first strength:

Replayability 10/10
Several endings of different degrees of coolness, but even the individual missions have this ability. Check this out, on one mission, my squad was dead and my radio stopped working. Even better was the fact that the egress point was several kilometers away (the game uses the metric system), and patrolled by tons of squads of enemies, WITH BMP's (Russian transports armed with shells, missiles, and a machine gun). There are so many ways to win! One is to kill the soldier patrols one-by-one. Another is to go from concealment to concealment (bushes and houses). Another is to try to steal a civilian car and hit it! These aren't the only ways to win, and I won't spoil the rest of the mission for you (you're in for a surprise!) but it was brilliant!
Best of all, there's a professional level mission editor for modding, and it's great!

Gameplay 9/10
Incredibly realistic. One shot kills or wounds, wound lowers your aim but you can get healed to a reduced capacity by a medic. If you're hit in the legs too many times (one or two :), you become incapacitated and have to crawl! Look for a field hospital! You can fly/drive any vehicle (there are dozens). At the start of the game you're being controlled by a commander, but once you reach lieutenant, you can control your squad. The command interface is great, it's quite intuitive and will become second nature to you. You can also pick up and use any weapon you find! The only problem is that some clipping problems can mess you up.

Graphics 8/10
Quite good, but the frame rate suffers on older computers. Still, I was able to play it well on a 600mhz w/ 128megs of RAM, 4mb video chipset. My current computer is much better for it though, 256megs, 1.6ghz, 128mb video card. It will probably work on your computer. The graphics themselves look rugged and pretty good, but you won't get the tracers without the expansion pack.

Sound Effects 7/10
Somewhat realistic, but nice. They aren't really notable, but they're okay.

Music 10/10
BRILLIANT! They used a group I like -Seventh (download the operation flashpoint music from mp3.com.au)- and the non-rock music is great too. I hope the sequel's music (oh please let there be a sequel) is as good as this.

Overall
A game that will have you occupied for months, get it NOW!

Online
A nice interface, and a fun online game. I prefer to play over lan though.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/04