Operation Flashpoint: Red River

Operation Flashpoint: Red River

The challenge is to create a truly realistic battlefield is rarely attempted in video games, but Operation Flashpoint: Red River that serves and is much closer to success. Unfortunately, the intensity of his very tactical AI Warzone often broke things, evil checkpoint, and the need for search-and-error approach in some areas. Red River has well presented and packaged in a planned campaign, and some of the most fun co-op multiplayer, but the long list of design problems and engineers ultimately, prevent it from being a great shooter.

In the campaign to play as a leader Fireteam Bravo, a team of four people, part of a squad of great navigators sent to Tajikistan to hunt insurgents who fled the conflict in Afghanistan. What begins as a small operation quickly degenerated into a people's Liberation Army China forces around the country to eliminate the insurgents who attacked the border with China. The story is well presented with a great looking cutscenes and gameplay footage combined with video of real-world conflict in Afghanistan. However, the plot is somewhat lacking in originality.

To control your team in the midst of growing chaos of the battlefield Tajiks, you can make a series of specific commands to his teammates. They start with simple commands like "follow me" or "hold position" and then pass the orders, such as assault ships, objectives, disposal, and air strikes or artillery. The key to success in the single player game is to make sure that your computer is always able to respond quickly to new situations.

However, despite your efforts, your AI squad mates show little knowledge of what is happening around them, and have little sense of self-preservation. They often roam on their own, even if they are told to hold the position, for example, there is compliance with the "follow" command, walking in his shootout with alarming regularity. During the intense exchange of fire, in particular, often spend a lot of time to heal your teammates as you shoot the enemy. Friendly AI shows little tendency to remain covered, and a blow sufficient to neutralize them. Healing takes time to their friends too, because there is a process to stop bleeding and another to heal wounds. The healing of his team often left exposed to the enemy, the risk of requiring a quick death to start recording again. AI negligence deadens the realism of the battles and the forces often repeated several times sections.

While these moments of this campaign is extremely frustrating, there are others that offer great satisfaction. Perform the maneuver perfect accompaniment is almost an art form and is a great way to surprise the enemy. This element of surprise is often the key to success in the missions of the Red River is long and difficult, because your enemies are deadly accurate, even hundreds of meters away. Make your approach too obvious and you can quickly find yourself in a bottleneck with enemy forces bearing down on all sides. Most matches will take place at a distance of 100 to 150 meters, but if your enemy sees a chance to get up close and personal, they'll take it. If you leave them too close, the game will be over very quickly because they use the same tactics on your own, trying to suppress and flank your position. Realism, the ebb and flow of tactical battles are a highlight of the Red River over.

This level of depth is ideal for shooter fans looking for a more strategic experience and more difficult. However, some players may lack the necessary tactical skills. This is where the Red River to get help rather than hinder inch the abilities of your enemies, turning the difficulty arises from some of the passes, most of which are by default in normal mode. Some of these aids, such as helping to provide, are familiar from other FPS, but in this strategy game using the most important are improving their knowledge of the situation on the battlefield. These include radars to indicate the location of your team and enemy target icons on the map and markers that indicate the best path through the environment. If you put these assists off, you can create a stronger military of authentic experience available in a video game.

The campaign can also be played online with up to four players. Without the friendly AI stupid to spoil the fun, the experience of co-op is much better. Ideally, you should use the voice chat to coordinate their efforts, then this is the best way to play with friends instead of jumping into a quick game online. You can organize your loadouts to ensure that your collaborative team is ready for any situation and then take the field to play the same missions as the single player campaign. Get good tactic when you play with real people is much more satisfying and gives you greater creative freedom to deal with situations in battle. This makes the cooperative campaign, by far the most fun of the Red River. There are also several other cooperative games called Fireteam commitments.

All modes of single player and cooperative mode will reward you with experience. You can level up in each of four categories: Rifleman, Automatic Rifleman, Grenadier, and listen. This gives you access to new weapons, accessories and modifications, which function similarly to benefit systems found in many modern FPS. You can also assign points to improve combat capabilities and accuracy of specific sprint faster and better. All upgrades and experience gained are applied to all modes of play, and you always feel like progress, even when playing the campaign.

Red River offers detailed characters and exaggerated lighting. Unfortunately, the environment may lack detail and often have low resolution textures. During intense combat situations, you will not see this lack of detail, too often, but on other occasions graphics let the game down. During a sequence in a mission at the beginning, the sergeant warned his troops to be careful in the "forest" to come, but there are only a handful of trees to be seen. However, the viewing distance and scale environments is very impressive, making the battlefield feel great and impressive. PC anti-aliasing and lighting improved slightly, but offers only minor improvements on the graphics in the console versions. The voice acting is good, but there are a lot of swearing, which makes the dialogue sound more authentic than the clichés.

Operation Flashpoint: Red River is a good shooter and solid mechanics of shooting a lot of emphasis on a tactical approach to the battlefield. However, the single-player campaign hampered by bad AI that will change the challenging tasks that are frustrating, and lackluster graphics sometimes weaken the realism of the game. If you play co-op campaign, even if you are in a balanced game that provides satisfaction and a reward for overcoming the challenge high.

This is compounded by a checkpoint that regularly forces you to repeat sections when you kill too long.

Without it helps the confidence, the game becomes even more demanding, but because of the problems that AI is rarely more satisfactory.

These matches take place rapidly in the cards separately in the high season and provide more rapid pace of cooperative missions like the rescue of the drivers died in defense of an area of ​​waves of attackers, the protection of a convoy or clear a area of ​​enemies. The great cooperative play goes a long way toward offsetting the disappointing lack of competitive multiplayer.

At times the game would have benefited from the word military less vulgar and more technical, rather than having each instruction followed the sergeant with a parable filled with gang how he would be angry if you do bad things.