Operation Flashpoint: Red River

The current trend of modern military shooters is to numb our souls with a constant barrage of magnificent scenery, narrative trickery and heroic stupidity. Gaudy and grandiose in equal measure, these Hollywood-infused attempts to capture the spirit of war can be quite convincing, but it's all just too perfectly structured, too glossy and sleek - and too far from what war really is. The Operation Flashpoint series is, and always has been, different. The series is renowned for its harsh and unforgiving take on the military combat genre, but lacking in style. With a few changes this time around for Operation Flashpoint: Red River, the hardcore attitude of its forbears is still mostly in tact, but is now accompanied by some much-needed charisma.

It's imperative that you know what you are getting yourself into when it comes to a game like this. Step into Operation Flashpoint, and you're in one-shot-kills territory. This is a place where strategy, ammo conservation, teamwork and intelligent use of cover take precedence over killstreaks and exploding remote-controlled cars. No one-man army, no on-rails helicopter battles, and no quad bikes, jet skis or bloody snowmobiles. This is war, close up and intimate, and it isn't always pretty.

The theatre of war for this tour of duty is Tajikistan, Afghanistan's Northern neighbour, where Tajik insurgents are getting fidgety about the US forces stationed so close to their borders. A simple yet visually stylish introduction - basically just a conversation between your fireteam and your Staff Sergeant about the current situation cleverly presented with animated text - sets the scene for your insertion into Tajikistan to neutralize any threat before it escalates. As you can imagine, things do escalate, and by the time you hit the half-way mark through this campaign you will be going toe to toe with far more than just a few AK-47 wielding desert warriors.

The first few missions provide a fair introduction into the very different play-style required to survive in Red River, starting off quite slowly and never letting the learning curve overwhelm you. The starter missions can be challenging though, and unless you take heed of the orders and guidelines barked into your ear by the ever-present Staff Sergeant Knox, prepare to die on a regular basis.

Keeping with the realistic tone of the game, there is an authenticity to the varied mission types along the way, from searching and clearing choke-points along a supply route to a midnight insertion to knock out AA teams restricting your air support.

At times your team will find themselves in trouble, having to pop smoke and fall back as the enemy overwhelms your position - quite a contrast to the usual "run and gun" Rambo attitude associated with most first-person shooters. There is a sense of desperation with these moments, and an even greater feeling of relief and achievement when the tide of war turns in your favour after hours upon hours of gruelling combat.

Due to the realistic setting of Red River, the tempo is far more sedate than what you may be used to. Many will claim that while most modern shooters only clock in at around seven or eight hours, those are hours used to the full - all thriller, no filler, as they say. That may well be true, but there is such a thing as negative space when it comes to creating atmosphere. Every moment does not have to be crammed with explosions, plot twists and cut-scenes. Instead, Operation Flashpoint: Red River takes its time to tell its story, and is all the better for it.

In fact, it's the quiet times in Red River that add to the suspension of belief and the immersion in the combat scenario. Sitting on the back of the Humvee in convoy, listening to Staff Sergeant Knox rattling off about Knox's Ten Rules, while chatter over the comms system crackles in your ear, it's these moments that make you feel like a soldier. The truth is that soldiering isn't 24-hour Hell-raising - there are times of reflection, times to relate to your squad mates, times to rest your weary head before the next engagement - and that is something that Red River handles brilliantly. By the end of the campaign your fireteam will feel like old friends, and your Staff Sergeant will be the firm but fair figure of authority who you will miss once it's all over. During every mission, and especially the briefings and debrief sections, expect a torrent of military banter - most of it laden with pretty rough language - which plays a big part in building the story.

If you don't intend to get to know your squad mates, you are going to have a tough time in Tajikistan patching up bullet holes in your digicam fatigues, because these are the guys who keep you alive. By default you take the role of the rifleman in fireteam Bravo, one of three teams that make up squad Outlaw 2. Each fireteam is made up of a rifleman, auto-rifleman, scout and grenadier, and for each mission it is possible to switch between these classes to find which best suits the task at hand. There is a character development aspect to this, with points awarded based on certain parameters for each mission which can then be spent on upgrading your soldier. It is a simple system, but it does make for a more user-defined experience, allowing you to build your soldier and his load-out to suit your style.

Regardless of which character class you select, as with Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising the player is always in charge of the rest of the firesquad. Once again this works via the radial command system, giving you control over who goes where and who does what, as well as calling in air support and various other mission-specific options. The radial command system - popped up with a press of the right shoulder button - has been streamlined somewhat since its last appearance, and offers quite robust squad control options on the fly. It's just a pity that your squad don't always do exactly what you want them to, thanks to some annoying AI issues which show up throughout the game.

A basic "move" command is usually followed to the letter, but there are times that your squad mates seem intent on getting stuck in a room, or behind a wall, or are down-right disrespectful - refusing to heal you when instructed. Often, when they do decide to come to your aid, they will come running without any regard for their own safety. Too often I ended up in a situation where each of my squad mates came to heal me one by one, and were each cut down by the same enemy that shot me in the first place. The user manual says that they will first clear the area and then heal you, but someone should have given Bravo that memo. There are quite a few other examples of the sketchy AI - soldiers falling off of buildings; walking in front of moving vehicles; getting stuck somewhere while I wait for them to mount the extraction helicopter, meaning I have to restart from the last checkpoint - but it must also be said that the AI is much better than it was in Dragon Rising.

Even though your enemies aren't the brightest bunch in the world, it didn't really detract from the Red River experience. They often don't react to gunfire as quickly as you would imagine, and they sometimes seem to run around aimlessly between cover points, but locating, marking and executing your enemies as you sweep and clear an area leaves a feeling of satisfaction that the enemy AI issues can't destroy. There are other bugs around though, like environmental textures that sometimes just don't appear, or your weapon disappearing - things that do damage the immersive quality of the game to some extent. None of these issues are really game-breaking, however, and considering the sheer scale of the environments and the scope of the missions - some of them easily over an hour long each - it's possible to be forgiving of the bugs which appeared now and then.

Obviously any squad AI issues are thrown out of the window when Operation Flashpoint: Red River is played in co-op mode. One has to assume that this is how the developers envisioned the game being played - it's almost like it was custom-built for four-man online co-operative play, and it's just brilliant. Even with the lacklustre enemy AI to contend with, working together with three friends to outflank a heavily defended stronghold is a gaming moment to be savoured. The co-op play is filled with these memorable moments which make for a totally absorbing multiplayer game, and it's almost jarring to snap back to reality after a lengthy session in the heat of the battle.

If you're going to be taking this game online, I can't recommend strongly enough that you convince some of your Xbox LIVE friends to do the same. Some may complain about the lack of competitive multiplayer, but there is still enough content here to keep serious military combat lovers busy for quite some time. Besides the excellent campaign - playable alone or in co-op mode - there are also four different Fireteam Engagement modes to play through, each with a number of missions to complete. These modes include convoy escort, sweep and clear missions, search and rescue missions and a wave-survival mode. Expecting these extra missions to be nothing more than a last minute addition, I was pleasantly surprised to find them to be a lot of fun - and a great way to add progress points to maximise your players stats. The campaign is the main dish here, make no mistake, but the Fireteam Engagements make for a tasty dessert just when you thought it was all over. In fact, some of these missions could have easily been slotted into the main story without seeming out of place.

Despite using Codemasters' updated Ego 2.0 engine, there is still a visual grittiness to Red River, especially up close. Wide open environments are a big improvement over those seen in Dragon Rising, and character models are more detailed and realistic this time around, but the Operation Flashpoint series has some catching up to do compared to the biggest names in the military shooter genre. Comparisons aren't really fair though, since this game is rendering a significantly bigger gameworld, instead of the tightly scripted and linear style found in the majority of shooters. Dragon Rising suffered from an issue where distant enemies were sometimes impossible to spot against their background - not because they were cleverly camouflaged, but because of the pixelated graphics - but this has been fixed for Red River thanks to the superior Ego 2.0 engine. The Tajikistan landscape can be a stark but beautiful place to look at from a recently secured hilltop, even if it is sometimes plagued by texture issues and some dodgy environmental artifacts.

As with Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, your enjoyment of this Red River chapter will be greatly enhanced if you go into it with the right mindset. Without the usual onslaught of movie-style set-pieces and dramatic narrative twists, Red River relies on its own strengths to deliver an adrenalin-fueled representation of what it's like to be a soldier on the ground. Even though the journey forms part of an overarching war scenario, the focus is very much on the personal relationship and experiences of Outlaw 2, making for a more emotive narrative then you would ever expect from a hardcore military shooter. There will be complaints that the 'hardcore' element has been toned down somewhat this time, but once you switch it up to the higher difficulty settings each mission in Red River becomes a savagely intense experience. Skill and caution are required to make slow progress, and every successful engagement leaves a feeling of satisfaction because you know it could easily have been you on the other end of the bullet. Buggy AI and sometimes rusty graphics do detract from the realism of it all, but Operation Flashpoint: Red River is an engaging combat simulation that brings something different to the crowded military shooter genre.

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