Operation Flashpoint: Red River

As the sound of Megadeth’s ”˜Symphony of Destruction’ from a radio fills the air, interspersed with barking from a foul mouthed sergeant, you’re in you’re in a humvee, deep in the hills of Tajikistan trying to quell a civil war along with three other scarily authentic marines who are a part of your squad.

Welcome to Operation Flashpoint: Red River, the latest entry in a franchise that was, at one time, at the forefront of military simulation shooters. From the setup it you’d guess that it’s as stunningly accurate as ever. Well you’d only be half right. While Red River manages to nail the atmosphere with pin-point precision it falters almost everywhere else.

The squad AI is so far beyond abysmal that the moment you alight from your vehicle onto the battle field you have to continuously babysit your squad. They will run blindly into enemy fire, they can’t or won’t follow your commands (smartly placed onto the shoulder buttons) and they can’t shoot either. Most of the time you will find yourself struggling to keep them alive.

If this wasn’t enough, the majority of the game time is spent trawling vast expanses of desert. While it looks good and playable, it results in your enemies sniping at you from a million miles away, ensuring that the only class you end up playing the game as is a scout due to the availability of a sniper rifle. Painful given that there are three other soldier classes to choose from such as rifleman, auto-rifleman and grenadier.

The online version is slightly better, with co-operative modes such as Last Man Standing that’s a realistic take on Halo‘s Firefight mode, pitting you against waves of enemies, and the campaign with friends is a tad better than its offline counterpart as whoever you’re playing with has a sense of self-preservation unlike the squad AI.

To sum it up, Red River is not the most polished game around, neither is it anywhere close to being fun let alone perfect. Look elsewhere for your shooter fix.