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Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (Demo)
by James Sterrett

Article Type: Preview
Article Date: March 28th, 2001

Terribly nice of the officers to let us ride to the jump-off point

If you like military shooters, go download the demo for Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis now. It’s 64Mb or so, so you’ll have plenty of time to read the rest of this review while it trickles down your modem line (or gushes down your cable/DSL/T1, if you are so fortunate.) I approached the demo with serious misgivings about the game’s quality—and yet, I’ve found the game much better than I expected. Bohemia Interactive, a Czech development team, have made a game that might have pleased Jan Zizka (a brilliant Czech commander of the 15th century).

Stopped on a path in the woods

The full version of the game promises to provide the player with the opportunity to drive or fly over thirty vehicles and shoot over twenty personal weapons, all drawn from a 1980’s Cold War setting. Three sides: West, East, and Guerillas, are represented, and missions are set on four islands. The nature of the setting isn’t entirely clear but appears to be pseudo-European. The mission structure is supposedly non-linear, and the three possible endings to the demo scenario (there’s also the “player dies” ending) suggest that there is some sort of a branching campaign.

You 'll see this screen often

In the demo (the code for which is “85% complete”, according to one of the intro screens), you get one mission (and can download a second, unofficial one as noted above). I’ve managed to drive two vehicles, the Jeep and a captured UAZ. If you hunt around on the net, you can find hacks that allow you to drive a BMP, T-72, and a ZSU-23. A number of infantry weapons are present in the demo, ranging from M-16s and AK-74s (both with and without grenade launchers) to hand grenades, LAWs, Carl Gustavs, RPGs, anti-tank mines, and M-60 and PK machine guns. Players can only carry a small number of weapons at one time: for example, a few grenades, an M-16, and a LAW; or a few grenades and a machinegun or a heavy AT rocket launcher. Because of the player's limited carrying capacity and, usually, the need to drop items to make room for other items (do you want hand grenades or M-16 magazines?), picking up weapons on the battlefield feels more like desperate scavenging than treasure hunting.

Gazing through the M-16s sights

You play in Fog-World, which limits visibility to around half a kilometer at maximum, though it’s a limitation you likely won’t notice when playing as infantry. On the plus side, the terrain does a good job of looking more or less European. Forests are full of individual trees, and you can go inside most of the buildings. The textures used for grass and bushes blend well with enemy soldier’s camouflage, making it nearly impossible to see them at ranges over about 100 to 150 meters unless they are moving. This does a good job of creating the “empty battlefield” effect. Since the game models cover, concealment, and detection, soldiers that open fire will soon draw a fair amount of return fire. The game also models suppression, so that soldiers tend to hunker down and hide for a bit when under fire. Combined, the concealment and suppression models mean that if a firefight doesn’t end quickly, it can acquire a realistic stop-and-go feel, with fire flaring up when once side or the other tries something, then dying out again as both sides go to ground.

Ooh, err.. I wonder what happened next?

On the other hand, there are odd things about the combat model too. The vehicles appear to take damage on a hit points system, so firing any weapon at any vehicle long enough will, in theory, produces a kill. Tanks, however, are tough enough and dangerous enough to be fearsome to any infantry without heavy anti-tank rockets, and trying to kill a tank with a machine gun is suicidal. Nonetheless, if you demand a high-fidelity combat model, stick to Steel Beasts. Flashpoint has a good feel to it, and the combat is both tense and fun, but it doesn’t appear to have the same rigor of simulation behind it.

Oops... the soldier with a LAW just missed the enemy BMP.

The demo missions gives a good introduction to the game’s infantry combat and the non-combat-vehicle driving. The overall feel of both of them is spot-on, and it’s the “feel” that makes Flashpoint special. Given my skepticism about the driving, I was amazed to find that driving the Jeep (steering with the mouse) in Flashpoint is reminiscent of driving an older Land Rover or Jeep: going cross-country, the vehicle bounces around, and while you don’t actually have to wrestle with the wheel, it does bounce back and forth a bit, forcing you to keep putting in minor corrections. Jeeps break if you run them into trees or signposts, though tanks are able to knock them down with impunity. It isn’t a detailed, high-fidelity simulation of a Jeep, but it feels good enough that it doesn’t break the immersion. Playing with downloaded hacks, the other vehicles don’t seem as well done, but, in fairness, that may change before the full version is released—besides, they aren’t vehicles we’re supposed to be using in the demo.

Driving along in my automobile

Similarly, the infantry combat generally feels right despite oddities. Your squadmates and the enemy tend to be pretty aggressive initially. The result can look like a standing wave charge, but they do in fact drop prone fairly often. Once the suppression model kicks in, however, most everybody is hiding in a bush. Individual soldiers are pretty human—sometimes incredibly stupid, sometimes fairly smart. If you are commanding infantry, you can form fire teams inside your squad, and tell them where to go, to hide or engage, and, if need be, to concentrate fire on specific targets. The latter is notably useful in ensuring that your soldiers with AT weapons concentrate on killing the most threatening enemy tank.

Advancing past a pair of houses

The sounds are mostly pretty good, with the exception of the radio broadcasts in the game. These, all too often, are obviously cobbled together from disparate sound bites and at worst sound like a cheap voice synthesizer. Hopefully this will be fixed in the full game.

Kill the driver, steal his UAZ!

The various parts of Flashpoint seem as if they ought not work well together. You may wince when you find that the game is pretty loose in its use of “squad”, “platoon”, and “division”. You may find it jarring that an apparently American squad is equipped with Carl Gustav anti-tank rockets. But the whole game comes together in a package that is more than the sum of its parts, in a way that games like Delta Force and SpecOps never have for me.

Out of the truck, and now it's time to go over the hill and face the enemy

How will the full game turn out? I came to the demo expecting to find yet another wannabe, claiming to be a sim while being Quake in camouflage. There’s a lot of sim in Flashpoint. I doubt it will turn out to match up to the hardcore standards of Steel Beasts, but it’s a long cry from Quake. There are, certainly, things I worry about. How will the campaign work? Will flying the aircraft and commanding the vehicles work as well as the infantry sections of the game do? However, my earlier pessimism has been replaced by cautious optimism, and, at the least, the infantry section of the full game should be a lot of fun. It seems that more good things come from Bohemia than Pilsner beer and Jan Zizka.

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