Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising E3 Demo Hands-On

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has been a long time coming, but later this year, Codemasters' tactical shooter will be arriving on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The super-realistic shooter has been designed from the ground up to play as well on consoles as it does on the PC, and during a recent visit to the Codemasters area of Warner Bros. Interactive's E3 booth, we had an opportunity to spend some time with the Xbox 360 version.

Taking the controls in Dragon Rising feels a lot like taking the controls in most first-person shooters, but we discovered early on in the demo that this game requires a very different approach. Moving up a large hill at the start of the demo, there were no enemies in sight, but the Codemasters representative who was talking us through the game made it clear that we should still move between areas of cover rather than run around out in the open--with good reason. About halfway up the hill, we noticed that two red triangles had appeared on the compass at the top of the screen, indicating the last known position of enemies spotted by a friendly helicopter. They were still too far away for us to actually see, but there was no obvious way for us to reach our objective (an enemy radar station) on the other side of the hill without moving past them.

Using the context-sensitive radial menu, we ordered all three of our squadmates to take cover a few hundred meters from the enemy and lay down a suppressing fire. At this point, the enemy soldiers became so preoccupied that they didn't notice us flanking them. Clicking the left analog stick to move into a prone position, we crawled into a wooded area where, after crouching close to a large tree that afforded us some cover, we were able to pick the enemies off with relative ease. We then ordered our squadmates to follow us as we moved to the top of the hill.

From there, we were afforded a great view of the radar station that we needed to destroy and noticed that there were a handful of enemies defending it. Pulling out our binoculars to get an even better view--which took as long as it would in real life and was animated accordingly--we spotted a red barrel at the station. And, because red barrels in games invariably explode when you shoot them, we decided the first thing we would shoot at would be the red barrels. There are very few "gamey" features, such as red barrels, in Dragon Rising, but on this occasion, the barrel did exactly what we expected. Unfortunately, the explosion didn't kill anyone and, even though there's a morale system in Dragon Rising that can cause enemies to flee when they're afraid of something, all we actually managed to do was alert them to our presence.

As the enemies opened fire, we hurriedly took cover behind some rocks and foliage, but not before we were shot in the arm and started to lose blood. You don't have a health bar in Dragon Rising, and you certainly don't have any magical medical supplies that can instantly heal you when you take a bullet. Rather, you have eight pints of blood that you'll start losing from open wounds and a supply of field dressings that can be used to stop the bleeding. Any bullet that hits you has the potential to kill you, but what's more likely to happen is that you'll sustain wounds that impair your ability to fight. For example, leg wounds can slow you down, arm wounds will affect your aim, and headshots can mess with your vision. You'll regenerate health at the checkpoints that are scattered throughout mission areas, but these are few and far between.

One of our squad also sustained an injury during the fight that ensued, which we were alerted to when the icon representing him in the top-left corner of the screen changed color. We all survived to see the radar station get blown up, though, and were then told that our next objective was to assault a nearby coastal village. There were quite a lot of enemies in the village below, so before we moved in, we decided to put the sole artillery strike that we'd been given for the mission to good use. Targeting a building that some of the enemy soldiers appeared to be congregating around, we used the radial menu to order the strike and were impressed that we had a few different patterns of fire from which to choose. Scattering shells across a large area definitely afforded us a great opportunity to see Dragon Rising's explosions, which unlike the giant fireballs of Hollywood, result in impressive clouds of black smoke and dirt being thrown up into the air. It was also interesting to see the game's morale system at work because some enemies set their sights on us while others tried to flee.

It was at this point--as we discussed how impressive and believable Dragon Rising's AI is with a member of the development team--that we were killed without warning. Had one of the enemies scored a lucky headshot? Had one of them managed to flank us while we were focusing intently on the village below? No. What actually happened was that the antitank guy in our squad, armed with a bazooka and presumably trying to target an enemy jeep that was moving around below, shot us squarely in the back. Like its real-life counterpart, the bazooka in question is equipped with a sensor that prevents it from firing at targets that are too close, but apparently we were far enough away from our squadmate that he was able to take the shot. This freak friendly-fire incident brought our mission to an abrupt end, but we weren't about to let a bug in a work-in-progress demo stop us from playing, so we restarted the mission from the beginning.

Without going into too much detail, it was interesting to see how things played out differently the second time. For example, our squad managed to take down one of its enemies when we used the suppress order--the sort of thing that can happen in a game where bullets are physical objects that fall when gravity kicks in and ricochet off certain surfaces. As it turned out, assaulting the town was supposed to be the end of the E3 demo, so when the enemies were routed and a friendly force moved in to mop up, we were told to head toward an evacuation point and secure it.

There were no enemies in sight when we got there, but when we heard a vehicle approaching, we took cover and waited to get a look at it. What showed up was a Chinese jeep with a couple of soldiers in it, and while letting them drive by seemed like a feasible option, we instead chose to open fire. After we killed the passenger, the driver attempted to retreat, but one of the many bullets that we fired at the vehicle must have found its target because moments later the jeep rolled over and the driver was killed.

In the finished game, you'll be able to repair and commandeer more than 30 different vehicles, including the Chinese jeep. You can also do it in the E3 demo, but unfortunately, the ability to roll vehicles back onto their wheels hasn't been implemented yet. That's unfortunate not only because we'd have loved to see how the vehicle handled, but also because the secondary objective to destroy some SAM sites that we were determined to complete was almost two kilometers away.

We walked. Actually, we sprinted a lot of the way, though with regular pauses to check for enemy activity. Three enemies approached us at one point, and we were a little surprised to see two of them get back up after we'd shot them and seen them fall. Apparently their wounds weren't fatal, but they stayed down the second time, and the third guy ended up getting shot in the back because, having seen both of his colleagues killed, he decided to run away. When we went to check the bodies, we found that we could take ammo and supplies from them, and we were excited to discover that one of them had been carrying an MK 17 rifle with a sniper scope on it. There were only 20 rounds of ammunition for it, but it made our assault on the SAM site a lot easier because its power and range were noticeably better than those of the MK 16 that we'd been using up to that point.

After destroying the SAM site, we finally decided that it was time to let someone else play. Needless to say, we came away from Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising pretty impressed. This isn't a game that's likely to win any beauty contests, but given the sheer scale of the environment that you're in (225 square kilometers, with a draw distance of about 30 kilometers), that's understandable. We look forward to bringing you more information on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising just as soon as we can get our hands on a copy.