Gameplay

If you kick off the single-player campaign of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, the first thing you'll be regaled with is a history lesson.  Don't worry though, this doesn't involve a crusty old man wearing a tweet jacket with shoulder patches; instead, you're taken on a whistle-stop tour of the history of the region in which Dragon Rising is based, right the way from the fictional island of Skira's ancient Chinese rulers through to the Cold War, then on to the present day and slightly beyond.  We end up in this near-future scenario where the global economic crisis and oil shortages has led to a more radical Chinese administration, which decides to forcibly take control of previously Russian-owned Skira on account of the oil reserves which it holds.  Despite arguing that "they owned it first", this action is seen as an aggressive one by the rest of the world, and the inevitable resulting stand-off soon escalates into armed conflict to take control of Skira.

This is where you come in, as just one man in the forces deployed to retake the island from these opposing forces.  At your disposal you have a handful of troops to assist in whatever tasks you are assigned, while you'll also find yourself working together with and alongside other squads during the course of the game.  Your ultimate objective is, of course, to liberate Skira (which is actually based around Kiska Island in Alaska incidentally; don't worry, you don't have to beat Sarah Palin in a final boss fight though), but your part in such a victory is more piecemeal, from disabling radar and missile installations through to... well, trying not to die horrible more often than not.

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Let's not beat about the bush here - Dragon Rising is hard.  There's no room for heroics, or even moderate risk-taking more often than not - Simply choosing the wrong moment to pop your head out from cover or move out into an open space can mean the difference between completing a mission or having an out of body experience and watching yourself slowly bleed to death on the battlefield.  Slow and steady wins the race here, as you pick your way through the grasses, woods and undergrowth of the island, trying to remain in constant awareness of your current situation, surroundings and mission status, and marshalling your troops as effectively as possible to achieve your goals without any casualties.

Happily, ordering your troops around is simplicity itself, with the game allowing you to bring up a radial menu of commands so that you can ask them to follow you, move, attack and use particular formations at will while the game continues on around you in real-time.  You can also command your troops from the game's map screen as well if you prefer, which is particularly handy when it comes to pinpointing particular enemy formations that you want to engage or assault - Again, the game continues on apace even in the map system, so don't try using it as some kind of glorified pause button.

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As well as bodies on the ground, you naturally have a cornucopia of realistic weapons at your disposal, from sidearms through to assault rifles and grenades through to explosive charges, all of which behave as you'd expect in terms of range, firing rate ammunition and so on.  You can also pillage additional resources from the bodies of dead soldiers if you need, so to be honest running out of ammunition or finding yourself short of vital weaponry is rarely an issue.

As per the original Operation Flashpoint, vehicles also play an important role in the game, with everything from jeeps to boats to helicopters available to you... and if they aren't available to you, then feel free to steal them from the enemy at will.  Again as per the original game, you can choose to be a gunner, driver or passenger in any given vehicle depending on what you've just jumped into, although you shouldn't expect to be impervious to enemy attacks even here, as opposing forces will happily shoot at you through windows and put paid to your joyriding attempts.  In fact, it was driving a jeep around that seemed to bring me to the only major bug I spotted at any point within the game - Despite driving over and mowing down a single enemy solider multiple times, he simply stood there cursing in Chinese and continue to fire at me.  Yes, it probably serves me right for being a coward and decidedly unsporting in my choice of tactics, and I know that the game is supposed to let you at least injure soldiers by running over them, but on this occasion my eyebrow could do nothing but rise skyward at this oddity.

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Needless to say Dragon Rising is also equipped with a multi-player aspect to the game (as well as a pretty comprehensive mission editor for creating your own challenges incidentally) - Unfortunately we didn't have an opportunity to try this out due to the lack of players online before the game's official release and our solitary copy of the game being locked to the hilt with our "good" friend SecuROM.  However, from what I've seen online or LAN gameplay is split into two basic modes - Infiltration, where you pick your side (Chinese and American) and attempt to capture an enemy base or Annihilation, which is a more standard deathmatch-esque affair.  The chance of playing in a relatively realistic warzone alongside or against your friends, or at least human-controlled players, has plenty of potential needless to say, so I'm sure we'll be checking this out further once people start buying and playing the retail game.