Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising Final Hands-On Impressions

Given the success of Battlefield series of games, it was only a matter of time before another publisher would challenge EA's franchise. With Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising, NovaLogic has unleashed what it hopes is a Battlefield killer. NovaLogic does have a long history of producing military-themed action games, though it has never done a multiplayer-focused game on the scale of Joint Operations. We've been playing Joint Operations since its release earlier this week, but we wanted to share some of our early impressions with you while we're busy working on the full review.

Joint Operations is set in modern-day Indonesia. An insurgency threatens to destabilize one of the world's most populous nations, so the Indonesian government has invited Western special operations forces to conduct Joint Operations against the rebels. Thus, the table is set with Western and pro-government forces on one side and rebels on the other. As a member of Joint Operations, you can play as a Delta Force commando, a US Army Ranger, a German KSK commando, a Russian Spetznatz commando, and more. A number of these options allow you to select different skins, or appearances, and a few even have different genders, so you can play as a male or female Army Ranger. The insurgents are composed of Indonesian ex-military and separatists, and there are also a number of different skins and voices available for them.

Like in other team-based multiplayer shooters, Joint Operations allows you to play a number of different classes, which determines the weapons and equipment you'll have access to. The most ubiquitous is the rifleman, who gets a wide range of assault rifles as well as access to antitank rockets. The gunner gets to select the machine gun, which is useful for laying down suppressive fire. The engineer blows things up and gets either the mortar or the Stinger antiaircraft missile, which is very useful for knocking the myriad helicopters in the game from the sky. The sniper has access to, well, sniper rifles, and the medic rounds things out by being able to heal and revive fallen comrades.

There are a couple of things to note about classes and skins. The first is that while there are pilot-specific skins, any player can jump into any vehicle and pilot it--even helicopters. There's essentially no difference at all between playing a US Navy SEAL engineer and a British SAS engineer, aside from your character's appearance and voice. With that said, it's important to take into account the amount of weight your character carries. You can have a light, normal, or heavy level of encumbrance depending on the weapons and ammunition you carry. Of course, the heavier your load, the slower you'll run. Thankfully, the game allows you to tweak your weapon and ammo loads, so you can choose to forgo heavier weapons to gain additional speed, or you can reduce your ammo loads for each weapon to go from a heavy encumbrance to a normal one. You may even go into battle with a maximum loadout, and as you burn through ammunition, your encumbrance will lighten. As a consequence, you'll pick up speed. This allows you to tailor your character to your play style. You get to determine whether you want to pack light (so that you can move through the jungle quickly) or heavy (so that you are carrying enough weaponry to take out anything that crosses your path).

OK, once you've gotten your character and weapons all sorted out, it's time to jump into the game itself. To get you acclimated, Joint Operations includes a series of training missions where you'll learn how to employ the various weapons, use vehicles and helicopters, and defend and seize objectives. We suggest that you take up the more advanced training missions, even if you're a first-person-shooter veteran, because here you can learn the nuances of the game. But aside from the single-player training missions, the rest of Joint Operations is multiplayer-only. NovaLogic packs a variety of multiplayer game modes into Joint Operations, including cooperative gameplay, team deathmatch, team king of the hill, and advance and secure.

The More the Merrier

In a cooperative, you can team up with as many as 63 other plays to go up against computer-controlled opponents in a series of missions. In theory, you can try playing a co-op game solo, but it's going to be very difficult and frustrating on your own. NovaLogic suggests that you have at least four or six players on your squad in a co-op game. The most popular mode by far, though, is advance and secure, which is reminiscent of Battlefield 1942's popular conquest mode. However, there are a few key differences to note. The first of which is the sheer size and scale of Joint Operations. The game can support up to 150 players on a server, which is more than twice as large as most Battlefield games. (So far, most servers tend to support around 80 to 100 players, though there are usually a few 150-player servers up at any given time.) And one of the things that impressed us so far is the overall network performance of the game, even with 150 players running around. While there have been a few issues of lag and warping, there's generally been little difference between an 80-player game and a 150-player game.

Some of the levels in Joint Operations can be absolutely gigantic--as much as 50 square kilometers in size--though there are smaller-sized maps designed to accommodate smaller numbers of players. To get around these huge levels, the game features an assortment of boats, land vehicles, and helicopters, some of which are mainly for transportation while others are used as weapons platforms. For instance, there are three classes of helicopters for each side: a small, fast scout-type helicopter that can carry up to four passengers or two passengers and either rocket or gun pods for strafing runs; a medium-sized assault helicopter that has a minigun on each side and can carry a small squad; and a huge, lumbering transport helicopter that can carry a couple of vehicles inside. On some of the largest levels, there are an abundant number of helicopters available, so it's not unusual to see a half-dozen choppers circling an objective, delivering air support and reinforcements. Meanwhile, flying a helicopter is incredibly easy, because NovaLogic has opted for a simple and forgiving control scheme, as opposed to the realistic helicopter controls and flight modeling featured in Battlefield Vietnam.

Joint Operations uses an advanced version of the graphics engine that powered the Delta Force: Black Hawk Down games, and it feels like a big step up from those games. Character modeling is highly detailed, and there's lushness to the environment that's particularly inviting. And though there may be a detail here or there that looks a bit plain, the thing to keep in mind is that the game looks really good when it's in motion. It's amazing just looking out the side door of a helicopter to see jungle, villages, and rice paddies passing below. Furthermore, the vehicles are rendered in beautiful detail, so there's nothing quite like coming up on the wreck of a Black Hawk in a rice paddy.

There's also something to be said for some of the innovative features that NovaLogic has packed into the engine. The game incorporates an accelerated day/night cycle, so while you're battling it out, the sun actually rises and sets, and the lighting conditions change accordingly. This changes the gameplay dynamic drastically. As a result, during daytime hours, visibility is excellent, and snipers can scope the lay of the land. However, at night, everyone has to don night-vision goggles, and it becomes more difficult to locate enemies. NovaLogic also incorporates a weather setting so the server administrator can toggle heavy fog or clear skies, which makes a huge impact on sniper and helicopter operations. In heavy fog, snipers have their ranges reined in, while at the same time, it's harder for helicopter pilots to detect long-range threats from the ground and the air.

So far, it really looks like NovaLogic has got a serious challenger for the Battlefield games in Joint Operations, given the game's modern setting, cutthroat combat, cool vehicles, beautiful graphics, and huge scale. We've engaged in some epic battles so far, but we can tell that players are still adjusting to the game, which has only been available for a few days. Nearly everyone is still getting a feel for the game's weapons, vehicles, and levels, though we expect it won't be too long before players figure out both tactics and how to effectively employ them. We'll have a full review of Joint Operations early next week, so check back with us for our final verdict on the game.