09.19
style
resources it does have on spectacle and set pieces, but that doesn't really excuse spending a good portion of your in-game time sat motionless on a long jeep ride while your commanding officer apparently reads aloud every last entry in Mr Naughty's Big Book Of Naughty Swears for his own amusement.
This guy, Knox, is by far the most talkative character in the game - primarily because most everyone else is either just barking or acknowledging orders. He's voiced by the bloke who played Apone in Aliens, and here he's playing pretty much the same hard-ass soldier, only a whole lot more foul-mouthed. What's initially entertaining, thanks to inventively weird swear-combos and Knox's oft-preached 'rules' (which introduce key combat advice within a more convincing pseudo-military context than a tutorial or loading screen message), swiftly becomes grating. One of the game's greatest follies is bookending so many of its missions with long jeep or chopper rides, in which you and your three squad-mates, either controlled by other players or puppet-mastered by AI, sit in silence while Knox rants away endlessly to himself.
At a guess, the intention is to evoke the waiting around and downtime US soldiers in the Middle East often face. Certainly, it's noble to scrub away the fake glamour and macho nonsense that so many other shooters opt for, but there's still to a debate to be had around whether such tedium is suitable for an action videogame. When a mission ends not with a bang but with an incident-free five minute jog back to an extraction jeep that surely could have just driven up to you instead, followed by yet more sit'n'waffle from Knox, it's hard not to think that a few priorities got lost in translation.
This quite possibly stems from the dilemma at this new Operation Flashpoint's heart, its inward tussle about what it wants to be. It's got its eye on a middle-ground between the ease of Call of Duty and the patient caution of the veteran PC soldier simulation whose name it bears. For the most part, it finds one. It's not sadistically punishing and it's certainly not hyper-realistic, but you'll quickly learn that a couple of bullets is all it takes to leave you dead or dying (the latter can be fixed by a squad mate's medkit, if they can get to you safely) and that not finding cover during a firefight means certain doom. Fights are slow and tense, a matter of picking your moments and ordering your squad to diligently cover holes in your offense and defence.
At the same time, it's still noisy and explosive, an involving action game against smart and deadly foes. It's more accessible than an Operation Flashpoint game ever has been before, but while veterans of the original (and of the spiritual sequels, the ARMA games) will inevitably find it too lightweight rest assured it hasn't sacrificed its every challenge to the dark god of dumbing-down. This is a game where every last enemy is an incredible threat; jog cheerfully around a corner rather than quietly scope it out first and the guy waiting on the other end will put two in your skull before you've even had a chance to raise your weapon.
At some points, this tension is extreme, for both good and ill. The regular long runs between objectives are largely, tediously without menace, but once in a while a lone insurgent or soldier will unexpectedly pop out from behind a rock or stone hut and create merry hell. Don't take anything for granted is presumably the message; don't make us do quite so many long, boring runs is perhaps the only sensible reply.
The excessive amounts of downtime can be alleviated by playing the game in co-op with 2 to 3 others, which is quite clearly how it's supposed to be played. You can instead play it through as a solo game aided by AI, which is impressively capable. While the AI is irritatingly short on autonomy, as long as you regularly give them orders (using a reasonably slick radial menu, which provides easy access to around 16 different commands) they stay pretty much on the ball. Or, if you give them reckless orders such as 'rush directly into that enemy compound' or 'get over here and heal me even though there are a thousand insurgents standing next to me', make terrible, terrible mistakes - for which you have only yourself to blame. The AI could certainly stand to be sharper, most especially in terms of realising when an objective's been completed and thus they should now regroup with you rather than lurk uselessly around the rocks you sent them to earlier until explicitly told otherwise, but anyone accusing it of being stupid most likely has been giving it stupid orders.
Co-op is where it's at, however. It's far better to shout at your sniper to hole up on that roof than to awkwardly place a cursor over it and hit a few buttons to send a robo-man wandering over. It's also far better to approach one of those long, boring runs by saying "you watch left and I'll watch right" or "did you watch Dr Who last night? It was that one where Amy turns into a Dalek" than to silently sprint 600 metres until a guy pops up from behind a ruined car and shoots you dead while your computer-controlled chums are still ambling 100 meters behind you. Humans make what can be a rather sterile, repetitious affair an awful lot more colourful, even if they're not enough to entirely create the diversity and fluidity Red River really needs. Even when a more advanced and organised enemy force is introduced part way into the 12ish hour campaign, the pace and combat is broadly unchanged even though the intensity steps up. Red River essentially models a tight, tense and tactical combat encounter in the contemporary Middle East, and models it very well - but then repeats it ad infinitum, often with only really cosmetic changes.
Sometimes, the cosmetic changes are enough. The sweeping, vast backdrop of arid mountains is a regularly spectacular sight, though there's a certain sadness to your movement being locked to only a very small section of the wide-open terrain. Roam too far from the prescribed road and you'll be warned about going off-mission, followed by insta-death if you persist in going AWOL. Perhaps, on PC, someone can hack freeform movement back in - but alas there is no official game editor at present, which means the impressive engine's full potential as a sandbox soldier sim may never be met.
Speaking of PC, we've played the game both on that and on Xbox 360. While this correspondent admittedly favours PC where possible, it must be said that both visually and in terms of combat aptitude Red River is a better experience there. The occasional aesthetic flurries, such as water cascading down a towering dam or sunset across an open desert, are that much more beautiful, while fighting distant foes is a completely different affair. What looks like three lumpy dots at 720p on an HDTV is unquestionably a man with a gun on a reasonably high-res PC, which means you can be a whole lot more accurate. In a strange way, this can be to the game's detriment as much as its improvement. This way, any of the four player classes (the all-rounder Rifleman, the snipey Scout, the explosive Grenadier or heavy weapons guy the Auto Rifleman) is capable of being a sniper of sorts, which perhaps slightly undermines the game's emphasis on the less long-range classes using suppression to keep enemies at bay while the more accurate fellows pick them off. Still, feeling like a capable soldier with a pin-sharp eye beats firing wildly at distant bushes and hoping you hit someone any day.
Special note should be made, incidentally, of the Fireteam missions, a selection of more openly videogame-esque bonus challenges. Dispensing with the drawn out travel and endless, tiresomely sweary jabber of the main campaign, these focus on shorter, tighter, all-action engagements (scouring a dense village for enemy munitions dumps, escorting a convoy through hostile terrain while performing guerrilla repairs amidst the gunfire) which reward skill with points and league table spots. While the core missions are long, drawn-out affairs you're often keen will finally wrap up soon, these have more of a race against time, against all odds feel and in turn offer the variety that's muted by the repetition of the campaign. Also On: PC, PS3
Closing Comments
All told, Red River just about achieves its objective - an engaging halfway house between soldier simulation and improbable heroics, and a slick, smart co-op modern warfare experience. If only it had trimmed down the flabby downtime and the reams of prattling fratboy dialogue which dominate its campaign, and instead pursued more tactical variety, we'd perhaps be looking at something exceptional. As it is it's merely capable, with occasional flashpoints of brilliance.
Posted in: Shooter
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