Check out the latest OpFlash: Dragon Rising video featuring some of the game's vehicles in action. I've been watching this game for some time now with more than a little bit of interest and excitement; it just looks awesome. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to have serious doubts about the game. Now these doubts are not about how the game will play, but about playing the game. You see, Codemasters is doing funny things with the MP and by funny I mean playing games with the numbers that make sense but in the end are just a little silly and will ultimately mean this game will not be played for very long.

What I'm really concerned about with OpFlash: Dragon Rising is the multiplayer for both consoles and PC. For consoles, Codemasters has said the game wil be 16v16 - wow, OK that's pretty good, not great but good. Too bad it's not really 16v16. The MP for consoles is really 4v4. What?? That's right, it's 4v4 but because each player is the "leader" of 4 bots they say in all seriousness this is 16v16. Um, no, not really. I don't care what they say about an advanced AI, this is not the same thing and it will, no matter how good, doom this game.

PCs are getting the same shaft too it seems although the information is a lot harder to gather because they are being very tight-lipped about this. According to the official forums, PCs will get 32v32... but that's really 8v8 with bots isn't it? Again, this is from their forum but not official and some reports have it listed at 64v64... with bots. There is also the matter of dedicated servers, or rather, the matter they are completely ignoring requests for information about dedicated servers. On that last, there are posts saying there will be no dedicated servers out of the box and if they come online later it would be without anti-cheat. If this is true, this game is dead in the water for PCs.

I've been around long enough to know that this is not shaping up to be a happy ending. If a dev was completely confident in their game they would not hesitate to lay out the information for their fans. I want to be wrong but I do believe this is heading into Frontlines Fuel of War territory here where a game with incredible promise just fails out of the box. Please make me wrong.

In any case, the video does look good...

Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising hits on October 6th for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

< Prev		Next >