Those who’ve played 2009’s Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising will feel right at home with Red River’s core game play since it remains largely the same. It’s still the closest thing to a warfare simulator you can find in the mainstream games market today boasting realistic health and wound damage, meticulously recreated modern weapons and technology and more.
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The single biggest difference between Red River and its Operation Flashpoint forebears is how the surrounding experience has been restructured to focus on co-operative play. While your typical story-based campaign returns, competitive multiplayer has been dropped completely instead replaced with the following four co-operative modes known as Fire Team Engagements.
Last Stand is the equivalent to Gears of War’s horde mode. Hold out as long as you can against waves and waves of oncoming PLA forces before successfully getting air-lifted out when things get too hot to handle. On the flipside, Combat Search and Rescue (or CSAR as Codemasters kept calling it) is an offensive mode where you have to infiltrate an enemy holdout, rescue two captured pilots and make it back to an evac point.
Combat Sweep is a more freeform mode where various objectives spawn on the map. Take out as many enemies and weapons caches as possible to rack up points.
The most interesting FTE is Rolling Thunder in which you have to protect a convoy of vehicles long enough for them to make it through a particularly enemy infested region. Its unique dynamic comes from your team leader having to decide when to give the motorcade orders to halt and proceed and the potential for some of the vehicles to be commandeered by players.
Of course, Red River brings its own sim-like sensibilities to each mode. Though the concept of Last Stand mode is pretty cliché at this point, sensible tactical considerations have to be made. If your team runs out of redeploys (read: lives) and fails to successfully evacuate, you won’t bank your score and experience for the match.
This same rule in Combat Sweep also emphasis a bigger risk and reward balance. Going after another distant weapon cache could mean a big boost to your final score but if you’re jumped and taken out by an enemy force you’ll lose everything.
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Though some might complain at Red River’s lack of competitive multiplayer I believe this new change of direction to be a wise one. Though the series has always focused on being more sim-like than its modern warfare competitors, given the dominance of Call of Duty and Battlefield in the multiplayer space it makes sense for Codemasters to carve out a distinctly different niche.
Speaking of smart moves, the developer has also realised that being challenging doesn’t necessarily mean being inaccessible and have implemented a number of measures to appeal to newcomers of the series. Though we didn’t get to play it during this particular preview session the campaign mode introduces you to Sergeant Knox, a veteran marine who will guide and give advice to players. If you choose to play on the standard difficulty there will also be various behind the scenes elements like aim assists to make things a bit more forgiving. A new mini-map on the heads-up display was also evident this time around, giving a lot better indication of where your squad mates and objectives are.
For those of you concerned about the series dialling back the realism and becoming less “hardcore” to cater to a wider audience, have no fear. If you desire the hyper realism and challenge of a pure simulation you’ll still have the ability to turn all of these assistances off, including the HUD if you wish.
Red River is no slouch on customisation. The game has four classes to pick from each with strengths and weaknesses designed to compliment each other when playing with a well-rounded team. Each has incredibly customisable load-outs complemented by unlockable weapons, gear and perks that are gained as you level up. In addition to experience points you’ll also gain skill points depending on how you perform in missions. These can be spent boosting your sprint, endurance, battle readiness, assault rifle handling and tactical awareness statistics which apply to all of your classes and even your AI team mates.
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Everything looks to be in place to provide a lot of content and incentives for players to keep coming back to Red River. The core game play here is so similar to Dragon Rising’s that if you didn’t get along with its predecessor’s fundamentals this one probably won’t change your mind about the series. But if you’re looking for a new co-operative take on modern warfare simulation than this is one to keep your eye on.
Operation Flashpoint: Red River air drops into European and Australian stores on April 21st, following five days later in the United States on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 platforms.
Most anticipated feature: The brand new FTE modes designed specifically for co-op are definitely the main draw. Rolling Thunder in particular, since it looks to make escort missions fun again.
