This game has enormous potential, but was wasted on bugs, sloppy campaign, and a even buggier multiplayer game.
As a virtual and real life pilot, my first choice in this game was the helicopters training. It was amazing, I was astonished but the information that my eyes received. A far and beyond tree line, great HDR effects, and perfect sound effects. I took a bunch of troops to a few easy landings, and then I trained some more. Completed all of the aerial trainings, with some reserves around the way a plane flies on the game, but after all, it's a game, no hard feelings with that. Even FSX has a lot to argue about that, and this isn't actually a flight simulator, but a combat simulator
Then Apocalypse dropped upon me. Firing a weapon became something really disappointing, the sounds are awful, the firing effects also. They look a lot alike the old Operation Flashpoint effects, and that's not right, can't be right. I had this weird feeling before, when I shot a couple of hydra to the ocean. Moving around with a soldier feels a little awkward; it's like trying to walk on a soldier's costume, all tight and stiff.
Bugs, bugs, and more bugs, as I advance in the training, there's like 30 bugs to address to, like the impossibility to complete certain trainings or a sudden game crash, sending the player to desktop with a funny gameface still on. Multiplayer is sometimes unplayable, with constant crashes, and sudden bird transformations. One of the players had this problem 5 times, and a text warned him the following: "Illegal copies may deteriorate the game", and he said to me: "I bought and illegal copy with a weird original logo on it; I didn't know they made it that way".
I played the campaign in cooperative with some friends, till we got to this endless cut scene, that never got us to the next mission. We agreed that it's the ending of the game, or a bug. That was a lame attempt of humor; it is a bug, a great bug.
AI is actually ok, but not great, sometimes they just drive like hell, and pilots most of the time crash their airplanes when trying to attack a tank formation. People can actually "eject" from a flying helicopter, actually that doesn't simulate war at all. BVR it's sometimes annoying when piloting an aircraft, due to the lack of countermeasures. Talking about aircraft, a real life Su-34 will often carry a high payload of bombs, instead of G/A missiles.
Actually I'm quite disappointed with this game; again my expectations were answered in a rude and buggy way. I pray to all the gods of the universe, that actually Codemasters heed this lesson, and makes a 10+ game with "Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising".
My final scoring was set by the following logic (added a new category to the evaluation – Feeling, it intends to describe the player feeling while playing the game):
Graphics: 8 (Great) // Logic: Great visual effects, except the firing of soldier rifles and pistols. Great visual depth, HDR is amazing in this game. Excellent shadows and lighting effects. The light "halo" of street lights is very close to the old Doom2 light effects.
Gameplay: 3 (regular) // Logic: The soldiers run in a dorky, stiff way. Shooting a gun feels really disappointing. Bugs everywhere, campaign has the highest difficulty setting I have ever experienced: "Impossible due to bugs". Voice acting is as bad as in Arma I. Lacks of dynamism.
Story: U (Unmarked) // Logic: Wasn't able to end it due to a bug. I hope that they either return my money, or patch it out.
Feeling: 7 (Good) // Logic: Sometimes it can surprise you, with great visual effects that get you into the war, I rocketed a position at night with a Mi-24 and my friend almost had a heart attack. Flying is beautiful, shooting sucks.
Overall: 6 (Good) // Logic: The graphics and effects of this game definitely gets the highest ratings, but my recommendation is to wait until Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising gets to the stores, because I don't think that they will able to patch this amount of bugs out. Good luck to the armaholic with this release, because frankly you will need it.