Operation Flashpoint 2

[Highspeed]

I'm not really a big fan of first person shooters, but I've played a few over the years and enjoyed them.
The original Flashpoint I actually bought, because when I played the demo it was like " I'm really confused, people are shouting at me to do things, other people are shooting at me but I can't see them properly. Oh shit I'm dead " - which seemed a realistic summing up of what would happen to me if I found myself on a battlefield.
The Falklands War mod was even better. The best way to get through the assault on Mount Tumbledown was to find a large rock and hide behind it.

Anyway my mate bought Flashpoint 2 and his archaic computer won't run it worth a damn. But he likes it enough to consider upgrading his PC, so I offered to test it on my 'gaming' computer.
I built it with the sole purpose of running a car racing sim called rFactor, which isn't really greedy about hardware, so it's just about the bare minimum system requirements for OPF2.

It runs like a greased weasel and apart from one initial CTD it's been really stable.

The plot is that you are some poor loo-tenant in the USMC and have to kick the shit out of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army, for geopolitical reasons involving some godforsaken shithole of an island that has an oilfield underneath it.
The missions are scripted according to the principle of " no matter how bad it is right now, it can always get worse, and it probably will "
Your commander is a medal hungry retard with the callsign " Capone " who likes getting Marines killed.

Unlike the original Flashpoint, where you could be a grunt and hide behind rocks ( frontal assault on the machine gun emplacement Sir ? yeah right, like that's really going to happen ) Flashpoint 2 forces you to command a squad. To be fair to the programmers your squad will generally behave quite well if you tell them what to do.

There is something wrong with ammo load for your character. It's pretty much inevitable that to get through a mission you'll be scrounging Chinese weapons and ammo halfway through ( and I'm taking aimed shots, not spraying and praying )

The save game function is retarded. You don't decide exactly where you save, it rolls back to a 'checkpoint' . I'd like to save the game while taking a deep breath, behind some hard cover.

On the whole I reckon it's not a bad game. Graphics are really good, even on a minimum spec machine. I'm not sure about the longevity though, there are 9 missions in the campaign and I'm already on number 5

[Mud_Dog]

I remember Operation Flashpoint!

When I ran it on my original computer I would play the large attack against the Russian forces and it was quite fun. My computer wasn't exactly a great computer for gaming, all of the ground was white , which I thought was normal until my cousin let me know that it was supposed to be green...

It was quite a realistic game, really good. I just could never get past the campaign part when I get separated from my squad and have to make for the woods to escape. They had freaking Spetsnaz in the damn woods!

After that I pretty much dropped the game and moved on to stuff like(the then new) America's Army.

[Jericho941]

Interesting. I tried out the demo to the first Operation Flashpoint back in the day. Couldn't get into it. It seemed like somebody decided that you need to be able to do everything a soldier might do at some point, which made it clunky and cumbersome.

"Hey wait... there's a salute button? Okay, whatever. 'Sling rifle,' maybe that'll let me run faster? ...nope, I can only walk. Um. How do I un-sling this thing? Where is the freaking enemy, anyway? Is there a point to this? Oh hey, an APC. ...now I'm in the ocean. Oops."

[Highspeed]

It seemed like somebody decided that you need to be able to do everything a soldier might do at some point, which made it clunky and cumbersome.

Yeah, you aren't wrong on that. The original Flashpoint forced you to complete missions as a grunt, tanker and attack helo pilot. While I thought it was OK with the grunt stuff it made a REALLY bad tank and flight sim.

I was wrong about the 9 missions in Flashpoint 2, it's 11. I'm currently about to start number 10.

The mission scripting isn't so good. I've had situations where I'm not completing the assault in time because supporting forces are 'taking casualties' from the guys I haven't yet eliminated.
Bearing in mind that the whole might of the USMC is arriving with armoured vehicles and the only resistance actually left is one Chink rifleman who is heavily suppressed, it's just not realistic.