Middleditch Littlebitch

Operation Flashpoint: Kill Me Now

If you’ve read my earlier posts about Operation Flashpoint or ArmA, you’d know the story.  Or, if you’re in the know, you know the story.  The quick briefing:  the original OF team split up, and the hard core sim guys started making the ArmA series, while the mainstream wanna-bes kept the Operation Flashpoint brand.  Now I suppose it’s a little unfair that I’m giving my opinions of Operation Flashpoint: Red River before I’ve completed the game, but then again I am by no means a professional member of the gaming press so I am not held to the same standards.  The two people who will read this will likely give less than two shits.  NEVERTHELESS…

Weirdly enough, Red River is kind of like the Stanley Cup finals right now.  Operation Flashpoint: Red Rising (the first OF console game) was a foray into the console world from a rich history on the PC.  Like the Canucks’ squeak-by victories over the Bruins, it was by no means a home run but it got the job done.  After playing an hour online doing 4-player co-op with friends, an experience I was sure would be thrilling, I can safely say that OF: Red River (the sequel) is just like the Canucks’ most recent performance, ie: a massive mound of absolute horse cock.  Dead, steaming horse cocks.  Bloody, and covered in shit.

How can you take a franchise that has a chance at being something unique and fresh and innovative, strip it down, and TRY and make it like every other FPS out there?  How?  HOW, can the SEQUEL, have shittier graphics than its predecessor?  How in God’s name can you have the minstrel show that is the fucking Sergeant or whoever it is that’s supposed to train us “knucklehead marines” spouting his endless, offensive dribble and be ok with it?  Who signed off on this fucking game?

I feel bad for convincing my friends to buy it, I really do.  I assured them a good, realistic, tactical, “different than all the other games” game that we could all play.  Granted, they are fun dudes, and when you have fun dudes around you’re going to have at least some amount of fun.  But I’m attributing the fun to the DUDES.  Not the game.

To continue my horrible Canucks analogy, I’m writing this as the second period has concluded and the Canucks have gone to the dressing room with a 3-0 deficit.  Morale is low.  I ended my first gaming session of OF: Red River walking away completely shaking my head.  Almost as if I lost a Stanley Cup finals game 8-1 kind of shaking my head — wait, no, that’s fucking impossible.  If I shook my head that hard my brains would fly out of my ears.  BUT, there’s hope.  Maybe?  Maybe the Canucks will come back?  Maybe me and my buds will reach a point in the campaign where Sergeant Black Stereotype will get shot in the face and die, then suddenly we’re not being rushed to every objective with the same two lines of dialogue being repeated every two seconds?  Or perhaps the AI will smarten up and not just run over the hills in the open in a straight line?  Or maybe there’s like a secret code to make the game NOT look like it was programmed for the Sega Saturn?

There is only one true milsim (military simulator).  And that’s ArmA.  Well, not really, there’s some intense software that governments use to train their soldiers and it costs hundreds of dollars for private ownership and I can’t remember the name so fuck that — There’s only one in my mind.  Just like there’s only one Stanley Cup.  So, I don’t really know where this is going or how to wrap it up other than I am extremely disappointed in both the Canucks and OF:Red River.  And I wanted them both to do well SO BADLY.

Turn it around, guys.  This is 2011, ok?  It’s time to shine.

Wait.  Fuck.  I couldn’t even click “create post” before the Bruins scored again.  4-0?  What is happening?