Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis E3 2004 Impressions

Codemasters and Bohemia Interactive are finally nearing completion of the Xbox version of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, their popular and revolutionary first-person shooter that was released for the PC in 2001.

In the game, you play as various American soldiers stationed on a fictional island in the North Atlantic in the year 1985. The Cold War is still on, and out of the blue Soviet forces invade the island. Cut off from reinforcements, you have to survive and then help lead the counterattack to free the island.

Bohemia, which developed the PC version, has managed to translate the game to the Xbox without any compromises in the game’s vast scale. Flashpoint takes place on a huge island, measuring about 200 square kilometers in size. That means you can literally travel to any point of the island during a mission, provided you have the means of evading and surviving contact with enemy forces.

In addition to a wide range of realistic American and Soviet weapons from 1985, there are hundreds of different vehicles, including civilian cars, jeeps, trucks, tanks, and more. You can commandeer all of these and use them to travel around. You can also fly a variety of fixed-wing and rotary-winged (helicopters) aircraft.

The Xbox version looks as good as the PC version (though it obviously runs at a lower resolution), and the controls translate well to the Xbox. The Xbox version should contain the campaign from the original game, and Bohemia hopes to add in the missions from the Resistance expansion pack. The Xbox version should ship this fall.