The “Break it Down” Blog

If you ever got a chance to play the original Operation Flashpoint, then you are familiar with the feel that Bohemia Interactive was able to create that has never been re-created in another FPS or army shooter since… not even America’s Army (the US army simulation game).

Kotaku describes that feeling as:

The feeling of being a real person, alone, in a dangerous place, and each step you take across the game’s huge landscape could well be your last.

and I think they nailed it right on the head. The trick with the Op Flash games was that there was already the map you were on, and it didn’t seem to end. You had vehicles, which included cars, jeeps, tanks, farm equipment, helicopters (attack and troop), crop dusters… and this was back in 2001. While each map had an objective, like “Attack this squad at these coordinates”, you could happily fly for 10 mins in the wrong direction and parachute out of the helicopter and land in a small farm town in the middle of no where with nothing but dirt roads.

It was nuts that you could even do this back then.

There were other things that made the game feel desolate, you didn’t know where gunfire would be coming from sometimes as there might be a sniper a quarter of a mile away, in a ghili suit tucked under some tree bush on a mountain side. Yea, it got that crazy.

You could of course snipe drivers out of vehicles, breaking the front windshield and making the vehicle come to a slow crawling stop… this included helicopters and the “slow crawling stop” was more like “falling like a rock out of the sky”.

Did I also mention that the entire game was multiplayer-enabled as well? Again, all of this that has been popularized by games like Battlefield 2, but back in 2001.

The important take-away from this post is that according to CVG, their time spent with Operation Flashpoint 2 shows that it has still somehow maintained the same gritty realism and mind-bogglingly large battle theaters that make you feel alone and under pressure when in the battle field.

We’ll keep you posted on any new developments as they trickle out.

NOTE: I declare semi-shenanigans on these “exclusive screenshots” below, the fire and smoke in the last one is ridiculously natural looking, so take these with a grain of salt and assume they were doctored by Codemaster’s marketing team before having a stroke at how good they look.

Thanks CVG!