‘Dragon’ flashes hot - Military Video Games, computer games, games, gaming - Navy Times

‘Dragon’ flashes hot

Like its classic predecessor, “Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising” is not for everyone. However, if you’re a stickler for “realistic” games — which are just as stylized as nonrealistic titles, in their peculiar way — you’ll love it.

Continuing the open-world concept of the original “Operation Flashpoint,” in “Dragon Rising” you can go anywhere, drive any vehicle — from humdrum jeep to attack helicopter — pick up any weapon and complete your objectives any way you want. A mission might be set up for you to advance over land and plant a bomb on a target, but if you stumble upon an unoccupied enemy tank along the way, you can jump in and wreak havoc in armored comfort.

Good thing, too: The next thing to know about “Dragon Rising” is that, like its predecessor, the computer-controlled soldiers you fight are some of the most ruthless, sharpest-shooting and smartest bad guys in all of video gaming. You learn to dread enemy armor, you learn to quake at the sound of enemy helicopters, and you learn early to give yourself every advantage.

Even fighting dismounted infantry is more of a challenge in this game than most others — your battles take place over long distances, with you lying down shooting at distant specs from under cover. You hear your character announce that he’s spotted an enemy rifleman and you think, “Wha? Where?”

If it’s any consolation, the troops you command are just as skilled as the enemies, unlike the useless quip-spouting bullet sponges that follow you around in most of today’s first-person shooters.

Like the original “Flashpoint,” “Dragon Rising” takes place on an island chain, which is how programmers stage all the action on one enormous map. (It would take you four hours to walk across the entire playable area.) This time, though, you’re fighting the Chinese, who have invaded the island of Skira to exploit its precious oil. As a member of a U.S. Marine invading force sent to push the Chinese out, you play as infantrymen, tankers and aviators at different points in the story.

In a typical mission, you and your squad might advance toward a town, destroy the anti-aircraft weapons protecting it, wait for computer-controlled AH-1 Cobra gunships to destroy the armor in the town, and then mop up any unlucky stragglers left alive.

This means the missions in “Dragon Rising” tend to be very long and so similar that some players might get bored with them. Plus, the computer characters are so deadly accurate that you spend a lot of time getting killed in the same spot by the same guys, an experience that quickly grows wearisome. Still, if you get into it, as I did, the game can become as immersive and intense as any other shooter out there.

Although this edition of “Flashpoint” came from a different design studio than the original, there are some improvements on the basic concept. You are equipped with a first-aid kit you can use on yourself, for example, rather than needing to rely on a medic. Your medic also can revive you after you take too much damage to heal yourself, although that means if he can’t reach you, you get to enjoy watching yourself bleed to death, waiting for help that never comes.

The game’s certainly not perfect. It froze my Xbox at least once. Parts of it showed up squished and blurry on my non-high-definition TV. The menu system you use to command your troops is, at best, inelegant, and it has less detailed orders than the original “Flashpoint.”

Speaking of that, I didn’t like how “Dragon Rising” jumps you right into commanding a squad of guys in the first mission. In the original, you began as a recruit in boot camp and spent the early game as a grunt rifleman, taking orders instead of giving them — it was fun, trust me — and you had a ground-up appreciation of “Flashpoint’s” combat dynamics by the time you took command.

The biggest letdown, though, was “Dragon Rising’s” multiplayer. I had trouble finding servers with enough players online to make for satisfying games, and taking on human opponents in the giant map was too often indistinguishable from playing against the computer.

But if you don’t have an Internet connection and you’re willing to spend the energy to outthink and outflank computer opponents, “Dragon Rising” is an investment that will yield many hours of enjoyment.

—————

• Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. $59.99. For Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows. Rated M for “Mature.” www.flashpointgame.com/

• Buy? Rent? Skip? Our verdict: Buy