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Operation Flashpoint

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Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (OFP) is a critically acclaimed tactical shooter and battlefield simulator released in 2001. Set on a group of fictitious islands in the year 1985, Operation Flashpoint (OFP) puts the player on one of three sides in a potentially catastrophic conflict between American and Soviet forces. As well as the original game (Cold War Crisis) there are two expansion packs; Gold Upgrade (which contained the 'Red Hammer' Soviet Campaign) and the Resistance campaign, which added greatly to the original game. The main feature of the game distinguishing it from shooters is close attention to realism.

Contents

Synopsis

Cold War Crisis

The year is 1985, and Mikhail Gorbachev has come to power in the USSR. While his Glasnost and Perestroika reforms are welcomed by western governments, there are communist hardliners in his own government that are unsympathetic to his cause.

One of these men, a fanatic Stalinist Soviet general called Guba, is determined to bring down Gorbachev and make himself the next leader of Russia. Guba commands an army on the island base of Kolgujev. Nearby is Everon; an independent republic, and Malden; another republic which has a strong NATO presence. Guba invades Everon, crushes the punitive militia force there, and secretly plans to take the war to the Americans.

The NATO presence on Malden, under the command of the American Colonel Blake, moves in to investigate the loss of contact with Everon, and reports of invasion by an 'unknown hostile force'. When a helicopter of troops sent to investigate doesn't return, Blake orders a full scale invasion of Everon, not knowing about the Soviets, and the deadly conflict that would lie ahead.

During the campaign players take the roles of one of four characters:

David Armstrong - A naive but determined foot soldier in the US army who is training on Malden when the fighting breaks out.

Robert Hammer - A cocky young tank commander who has been called into front line service despite not having completed his training due to a shortage of competent tank men.

Sam Nichols - A Black Hawk transport pilot who is called on to fly Cobra attack helicopters, and eventually an A-10 Thunderbolt II.

James Gastovski - A retired US special forces soldier, Gastovski is called out of retirement to carry out sabotage missions, and settle a score with an old enemy.

Red Hammer

An add-on campaign Red Hammer, which was controversially designed by Codemasters (the company responsible for the distribution of the original game) instead of Bohemia Interactive Studio, depicts the same conflict, but places the player in the role of a Russian rather than American soldier (Dmitri Lukin) who during the course of the campaign, somewhat unrealistically, switches from his steadfast fight against American forces to battling his own countrymen in order to pave the way for an American take-over of the island. Some fans of the game consider Red Hammer a failure, claiming it has a badly written story and poorly designed missions. There are a few vehicles added, including AH-64 apache, V-80 Hokum and other types, but since Red Hammer includes only a few any new objects, players mostly don't need to have it in order to play online. The save game system was altered significantly, making reverting to a previous level impossible in the Red Hammer campaign.

Resistance

Another add-on, Resistance, is set three years before the events of the two preceding games. The player takes the role of an ex-Special Operations soldier, Victor Troska, who has returned to his homeland of Nogova after years in exile serving the US Special Forces. During the first introductory mission to the campaign, the island is invaded by the Soviet Union. Initially, Troska refuses to have any part in the fighting and ignores the persuasion of the resistance pioneers, despite feeling guilty and helpless as his countrymen are massacred by the Russian invaders. One day, a seriously wounded guerilla takes refuge in Troska's barn with Russian troops literally on his heels. At this point, the player is faced with a decisive choice: to deny his presence and fight, or to reveal his presence and become a Soviet agent (in which case, Troska is executed after his first successful reconnaissance mission). Troska has virtually no choice but to lead a ramshackle uprising, and the player must use his/her resourcefulness to salvage weapons and ammunition from fallen enemies to supplement supplies which are continually available at later stages in the campaign. The Resistance expansion pack also updates the graphics, sounds and multiplayer mechanics, adding much more than the Red Hammer expansion and thus drastically improving the original game, even to the extent that a lot of pre-Resistance addons and mods were incompatible with the newer version due to the huge changes. It is now considered a norm amongst OFP fans to own the Resistance expansion. Few 3rd party missions, addons or other material are made today for people still playing with pre-resistance versions.

Gameplay

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Missions in OFP are not by any means limited to the usual cooperative Single-Player Campaign and conventional multiplayer missions such as Capture the Flag (CTF) and Deathmatch. A server host has the ability to choose cooperative multiplayer missions where a team of human players fight together to accomplish specific objectives, as well as the player-devised Conquer The Island (CTI) mode designed by Mike Melvin where two teams of human players, or alternatively one team of humans and one team controlled by AI, have the ability to build their own bases complete with basic defences, train AI infantry units, build empty or AI-crewed vehicles and clash in large-scale battles.

Operation Flashpoint also includes an in-game mission editor which can be used to create anything from simple missions (with some practice and/or by using some of the extra tools that are available on the web) to professional campaigns complete with custom music and voice and advanced triggers and waypoints which greatly reinforce the smoothness of a mission and the intelligent activity of the AI.

Most missions are heavily scripted but take place in a large game world. The game world doesn't consist of maps as most do, rather the events happen on open islands. These islands are large; if you attempted to travel from one end to the other on foot it would take well over two hours, depending on the island and person.

The Islands

The original OFP version's three main islands are based on actual existing islands. Kolgujev is based on Tenerife Island, one of the Canary Islands. Everon is the Croatian Island of Krk. Malden is the Greek Ionian island, Levkas. OFP's desert Island is Meganissi, the largest island just to the east of Levkas.

While these islands are based on real islands, the geographical size of OFP's islands in the game are on a smaller scale than the real ones.

Although the island of Nogova itself, found in the expansion pack Resistance, has no real world analogue, it shares landmark names with Bohemia Interactive's native Czech Republic.

Fan-base

Although Operation Flashpoint's fan-base is somewhat smaller than that of wider-audience first-person shooters like Half-Life or Quake (most likely due to its realism and difficulty level being an undesirable factor for some gamers), it is still very active; a great number of missions (10000+) created using Flashpoint's mission editor are available for download on fan pages, and fan created mods (25+) and add-ons (2000+) have already been released as well as many still in progress. There have also been a few community made graphical improvements to the game, adding DirectX 8 and 9 effects such as reflection and so on. The modders among the community have managed to represent many of the world's military forces in the game. Addons range from 18th century muskets and cannons, to futuristic aliens and spaceships.

Many in the fan-base see the ever-increasing amount of add-ons and mods created in contrast to missions as a problem. The vast number of add-ons are rarely used in missions, as there are simply too many to use. A popular belief among mission creators and scripters is that add-on and mod makers receive too much credit for their work, while mission creators and scripters hardly receive any gratitude. A further problem is the compatibility issues between mods and user-created missions makes it extremely important for players to coordinate which mods to install before playing. This has essentially limited Operation Flashpoint's multiplayer to pre-arranged games between users who already know each other.

The Operation Flashpoint community is often viewed as a very mature, serious and responsible community, with very little aggressive behaviour on multiplayer servers and on the various fan webpages. Much of this reputation is perhaps caused by the fact that there is a large number of players from the military community. Although it is extremely easy to cheat in Operation Flashpoint, players rarely run into cheaters as often as in, for example, Call of Duty. This is believed to be a result of the off-beat look and gameplay, as well as Flashpoint's realism, which frightens the average gamer, leaving only the hardcore to the game.

Over the years, Operation Flashpoint has won critical acclaim for its realism of simulating military conflict situations on PC, even to the extent where the game's technology has been adapted for real soldiers to use as a special combat training application VBS1.

Operation Flashpoint was developed by Bohemia Interactive Studio [(BIS)] and distributed world-wide by [Codemasters].

The sequel, by name, Operation Flashpoint 2 is being developed independently from Bohemia Interactive Studio by the original games publisher Codemasters, it is due for release in early 2008.

Bohemia is working on an unofficial sequel named Armed Assault ([link]), based on an improved Flashpoint engine which is due to come out in Q3 2006. Armed Assault (aka. ArmA) was originally reported to be backwards compatible with original OFP addons. BIS has now stated that some changes will need to be made in order for OFP addons to work in Armed Assault.

One of the more popular websites dedicated to Flashpoint is OFP.info, found here :- [http://ofp.gamepark.cz/]. It hosts many of the community made addons, as submitted by their creators, and also flags up important news stories and releases from the BIS community forums.

Unofficial addons

Several independent mod "studios" have sprung up to support OFP, creating addons representing the most modern technology from not only the U.S. and Russia, but also countries not found in the original game, such as French, German, Australian, British and Chinese forces, as well as many others. Addons and campaigns have been crafted for everything from Vietnam to both World Wars and even the Napoleonic era.

Weaponry & Vehicles

Operation Flashpoint features a wide range of guns and vehicles, and pioneered the use of realistic vehicle and aircraft combat in FPS games. While Operation Flashpoint cannot provide the same level of vehicle realism as a dedicated tank or flight sim like Armored Fist, or Falcon 4.0, it is nevertheless impressive because it is both able to simulate aircraft, tank and infantry combat with higher levels of realism than other games in its class, and also accurately simulate the complex relationships between theses elements in wartime, (i.e. combined arms). The weapons and vehicles that appear in the game are: (Note: this list includes official addons released through Patches and Expansion packs):

Weapons

West: East: Resistance:

Vehicles

West: East: Resistance:

Related games in the series

Awards

Partial listing:

See also

External links

Official Sites: For ArmAs News: For OFP News: To Learn More About OFP: For OFP Editing/Mods: For OFP Missions/Campaigns: For OFP & ArmA News, Forums and Editing for Spanish community: For OFP & Online Gaming Matches, Betting and Tournament.:

 

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