ARMA: Cold War Assault

Consider this an addendum to the other great reviews posted by other users; I just wanted to add something. That 'something' is a word about the mission editor. If you are like me, you've always been intrigued by the idea of designing your own scenarios for games but way too scared of the cryptic, impenetrable editors that your favorite games shipped with. That is all changed with the editor in this game. It is so intuitive, robust, and straightforward that I was able to set up a 20-on-20 city night battle, complete with tanks, apc's, and helicopters, in a remote town on an island of my choosing in about 3 minutes without looking at a manual. And I've never made a mission before in my life in any game. Even if you never touch the campaign or the many missions available, you can lose weeks to this game just setting up nearly any battle scenario you can think of and playing them any way you want. This is truly a modern warfare sandbox, and it is sublime.

An extremely good and moderately realistic shooter where you have to think your way through an attack as well as shoot your way through it. I used to help run a fairly large OFP site that held the official forums so I've seen a hell of a lot of this game over the years. People are far more vulnerable in this game than in most, one shot usually kills anyone but 2 shots makes sure of it. This also applies to you so you have to be careful to keep your head down, use cover & concealment, move when it's safe and keep your shots accurate. The original OFP campaign is mostly excellent and includes several missions where you actually can't win and have to retreat which is a nice change from the usual 'good guys always win' thing you see in most games. You progress from being a grunt to being a squad leader and occasionally switch characters to play a tank commander, spec ops ninja or chopper pilot which breaks up the action a bit and gives some good variety. The missions are often interlinked as well, a tank mission leads to an attack on an enemy position that's way too strong. The next mission is the spec ops guys goign in at night to sabootage stuff and then the next morning you take the tanks back in to finish the job. The Red Hammer campaign is probably best not mentioned, it has a 'slap it together quick and shove it out the door' feeling. Not BAD exactly but it just feels lazy. Instead of being part of a 10-12 man squad which was the major defining part of OFP, you're frequently going solo and tasked with doing more rambo work than anything else. It has some really good parts but I don't think they're enough to drown out the crappier bits. If the expansions were a seperate package I'd recommend against Red Hammer but since you'll get it if you buy the set, give it a bash, you might like it more than I did. Resistance is really quite excellent though and definitely worth playing. It has a nice persistant unit feel to it, you have to be a bit careful with your equipment since you're never quite sure when you can resupply and that forces you to think strategically as well as tactically. Sure you could blow up the fuel truck with an RPG from a safe range and minimise your casualties but RPGs are best used against tanks and are in limited supply so you might be better sneaking your squad up and trying to lay an ambush instead. The number of mods & addons (a few of them even GOOD!) for the game is astonishing as a quick look on http://ofp.gamepark.cz will show. Missions, new guns, new vehicles, new maps... pretty much everything you'd want including anime style giant robots & a normandy landing map (Hmm, combining those two might be fun). As a caveat, the game has a fair few litle bugs even with 1.96. The vast majority of the time the bugs are simple but annoying instances of triggers not firing. They're rare enough to ignore thankfully but you get annoyed when you see them. One notable example occurs with some frequency in a mission called Pathfinder where you're attacking a town, once you're in you have to wait for allied troops to join you but sometimes the APC just never starts driving. If you're a Halo fan who's idea of tactical combat is running in guns blazing & obscenity screaming then you'll be in for a rude shock with this game. If, however, you're a halo player who gets annoyed with other people running in guns blazing & obscenity screaming, you might just want to have a look at OFP.

If like me you are use to the fast paced, long life type of shooter, Operation Flashpoint can initially be a very frustrating, where one hit almost always means your dead. However once you get the hang of the taking it slow mentality, the game is a real treat not to mention a refreshing change of pace. The controls are very easy to grasp and similar in many ways to other shooters, with one or two differences. The missons are varied from small commando type missions to larger multi unit missons. Worth a download for the change of pace

I started playing Operation Flashpoint back in 2001 when the demo of it came with an issue of PC Gamer. My friend and I literally played the demo for almost a hundred hours and it was only a single level. Mind you the levels are huge but still. I found a new copy in the stores about a year later and immediately picked it up. Close to 10,000 hours and 7 years later, I am still playing this fantastic game. The community really drives the game with new mods and maps and excellent coop multiplayer. Although I love this game to death, there are a few flaws that I should point out. First, the game isn't the prettiest looking thing ever, even for it's time it was pretty ugly. The gameplay more than make up for it and you can find user created models that look really good but still, the game is not eye candy. Second, for the game being so massive in scale there are quite a few glitches you will run into. Of course, for how many hours I've put into the game, I was bound to run into a few. Some are annoying like falling through the level but some are hilarious. For instance, one time my friend and I were just messing around in deathmatch over LAN. I planted C4 on the road in this town and watched from a small hill as he drove into town with a jeep. I trigger the C4 and see his jeep rocket hundreds of feet in the air and flipping end over end. Finally, if you are looking for a deathmatch game, this is not it. It is a fun deathmatch game, but it's not run and gun, it is very slow paced and strategic. The game is best played in coop and it shines. With a great level editor and fairly easy mod instructions, there are always new things being added to the game from users. Operation Flashpoint is easily one of my most favorite games of all time, and I've played many, many games over the years.