Operation Flashpoint: Red River answers the question "How bad can it be?" with a strong and resounding "Absolutely awful!". Red River was released by Codemasters, the company that brought us such classics as Turning Point, You're In the Movies, etc and is certainly a shining example of how low a company can sink when releasing a game.
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising was the firstOperation Flashpoint: Red River answers the question "How bad can it be?" with a strong and resounding "Absolutely awful!". Red River was released by Codemasters, the company that brought us such classics as Turning Point, You're In the Movies, etc and is certainly a shining example of how low a company can sink when releasing a game.
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising was the first installment in the series on the 360, and was marketed as an ultra-realistic tactical shooter. In Dragon Rising, you need to be healed by medics. Bullets to your arms or legs cripple you, and can hinder your ability to run or aim. Firefights are over large distances, with little to no close quarter combat. Red River took this design, toned it down, and released it without fixing anything that needed to be fixed. For example, close combat is the name of the game now. Enemies will frequently be in buildings close by, popping out of windows or from behind corners and spraying at you, killing or downing you instantly. In the event that you are face to face with an enemy, you absolutely MUST spray at them until they drop or drop you. Why? Because this game has no melee function. Despite the close quarter fights, the developers neglected to add in a melee feature that was present in Dragon Rising. If you do not fire first and hit your enemy, you are going to die. This is due to the simple fact that a shot from an opposing soldier will cause you to flinch and recoil, a motion you can't shoot while stuck in. Basically, you're stuck in this position until you die or if a team mate is close enough to neutralize the enemy. If you do escape this situation, you will likely be injured and bleeding. You must then stop and hold A to patch yourself twice, once for the blood and once for the actual injury, meaning healing simply takes an incredibly long time. Overall, the combat is an awful experience.
As far as the campaign goes, it is linear and simple. You will be fighting against Tajik soldiers with AK-47s early on, this eventually gives way to PLA soldiers with AK-47s. Every character is awful and unlikable, screaming obscenities at every given opportunity which sounds more like a group of 14 year olds having their first beer instead of a group of trained military men. The mixing and editing of the dialogue is absolutely atrocious, with certain characters blaring out of the TV and others being masked by background noise. It is painfully obvious that every phrase was recorded separately, and simply pieced together like a sort of speech impediment Frankenstein. "riflemen...75 METERS!!!!...north" is a common example of how poorly the speech was pieced together, and it comes off as sounding stilted and awkward. The command menu is clunky, forcing you to scroll through many combinations of LB/RB/Left/Right to give the most basic commands or orders. It's unwieldy and leaves you exposed whenever you try to use it.
The characters are written terribly, the plot is boring, and every environment is the same blotch of brown. The trees, grass, buildings, enemies, vehicles, and squadmates are all the same shade of medium-light brown. That makes seeing enemies in cover nearly impossible, and you'll find yourself shooting at the direction bullets are flying past you much more than the actual shape of an enemy. The buildings have no furniture, windows, and are lucky if they have walls honestly. The power pylons don't even have power cables attached to them! The environments and levels are barely designed, and seem more like beta sketches than a completed game. On top of that, the blinding sun makes everything miserable. Even with the brightness turned down, the sun takes everything in the level and makes it a blindingly bright shade of brown that makes it impossible to see enemies, bullets, or even tanks. My final complaint is dealing more with wasted time. Every mission has a 2-6 minute intro AND outro, meaning at least 5-10 minutes per level of you just sitting in a helicopter or jeep. No dialogue, plot progression, or anything. Just awkwardly sitting there in silence, giving you time to reflect on your life while playing this trash.
Now for the real treat of this review, the list of bugs and glitches my squad and I encountered while playing this game. Not spawning in with guns, helicopters and jeeps spinning in midair rapidly, extraction helicopter getting stuck on a pylon, AI keeling over dead without enemies around, missions being "complete" before they even start, spawning stuck inside a helicopter and dying when the helicopter takes off, air strikes being called directly on top of a target and "missing", enemy vehicles being invincible (we saw an APC take 5 Queen Bee shots and 18 noob tubes before killing us all), javelins being aimed 400 meters ahead of us but killing the entire team, helicopters landing inside other helicopters, and the list goes on and on and on. This game is buggier than a pile of cow excrement.
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