Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a first person shooter set on the fictional island of Skira. With the financial crisis and China's need for oil, war breaks out over the black ooze buried underneath the Russian soil. China's claim of original ownership results in the military invasion of Skira and the Russian are quick to respond with U.S. backing.
The large open world maps offer many ways to reach an objective. Single player mode lets you coordinate your squad of 4 with flanking maneuvers and suppressive fire on a particular location using the HUD. Regularly checking the map to find the best way to sneak around the enemy, or attack a installation is important. You cannot run in to a enemy fortification with the guns blazing, careful planning is required as one bullet is all that may be needed to put your characters lights out. Co-op mode lets your friends control the other four squadies through the campaign, but you need to stay within 274 meters.
There are plenty of real world weapons within the game, you may find after a while that you run out of ammunition, but you can change weapons in the middle of the battle by looting an enemy corpse for gun, ammunition and equipment. There are also a lot of vehicles including enemy and support helicopters, controllable land vehicles to commandeer and supporting artillery fire.
Standard multiplayer is Annihilation and Infiltration modes, with more proposed. The PC version supports up to 16 vs 16 players. There are no dedicated servers.
The graphics seemed rather dull at times, but faster loading and smoother frames are preferred, especially when in multiplayer or co-op mode. There is a lot of individual detail on specific actions, some bombs kick up dust making it difficult to see while the sound also reacts to your environment. When you are inside a building, the rifle fire sounds different and you hear the bullet casings hit the floor, which you won't hear as much when firing on the grass. The voice actors seem realistic, there isn't much in the way of in game movies, it's straight into the action everytime. There is time for briefings while your running towards the objectives. A noticeable absence is rain, this would be nice, but there is probably a good reason for it's omission.
Dragon Rising realistic in environment, similar in ways to the older Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon titles. Sure it can be fun, but this close to the release Modern Warfare 2, you might be better of saving your money. Sure, it's good fun, but it's still lacking in a few areas.
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