Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

The tiny, flat crack of their gunfire is drowned out by the frightening zip and thud of their rounds past your ear. Guns sound vastly different from different ranges, and their echo crackles and crunches off hills and buildings. Distant explosions travel to you seconds after you see the bombardment you've ordered strike a village, while your breath and boot-steps are close in the still air. It's very atmospheric.

For fear of breaking that atmosphere, Codemasters hasn't dumbed down the game's stringent rules on any difficulty setting. All enemies are good shots given enough time, a headshot kills you outright, and getting hit anywhere else means you'll bleed to death if you don't bandage it. Lower difficulty settings instead give you UI assistance - red markers for enemies on your compass, clear tracer fire, a target reticule. It doesn't sound much, but finding men wearing camo gear 200 metres away in a copse of trees, and then figuring out if they're friend or foe, is one of the principle challenges in this game, so it helps.

For the most part the UI is good, tidy and helpful, and the controls are sound. Aiming is fast and precise if a little sticky on the pad, and the quick-command system for tactical orders works well - you hold down RB and use the d-pad to make quick stepped selections, or use smart context-sensitive shortcuts. However, equipment selection is awkward and sluggish, and even Assisted difficulty gives you no help actually locating your team-mates - realistic, but often problematic if they're mixing it with the enemy or need to be bandaged. More seriously, they are often unresponsive to orders, which might well be because you're doing it wrong, but some sort of clear feedback would help if that was the case.

At any rate, as you get accustomed to the game, you're probably best leaving them to their own devices, which is when their AI really shines. Without orders, they'll react fluidly and sensibly to the course of action you're taking and provide valuable assistance, flanking, suppressing and perhaps most importantly, spotting threats. Operating with their excellent, autonomous backup gives you confidence in tackling this intimidating game. Whether the tactical system is precise and predictable enough to be a useful tool later on, we won't know until review, but there are some questions at this early stage.

Checkpointing is on the sparse side for such a difficult game with so many instant-death scenarios, and you have to wonder if for once, the old necessary evil of the FPS quick-save might have been usefully brought out of retirement. However, although it can frustrate, Dragon Rising is seldom unfair, and multiple tries at encounters give you a chance to explore the enormous breadth of approach routes, tactics and equipment - rifling enemy caches and bodies for weaponry is always worthwhile - at your disposal. It's not a sandbox game in the free-wheeling playground sense, but the freedom is considerable all the same, and a welcome counterpoint to the tight real-world restrictions of the combat.

How far that freedom extends to the mission design, and chances to explore the landscape, isn't quite clear yet. The introductory mission, on its mini-island, presents you with your main objective early on and rewards you with a big bang as you call in thunderous howitzers on an enemy-held village. You can then pay as much or as little attention as you like to mopping up resistance en route to your helicopter lift out, and there's an optional objective clear over the other side of the island if you want to tally and explore.

The second mission feels more tightly scripted. You assist a beach landing - no D-day this, a modest scramble alongside three amphibian vehicles - by taking out anti-tank gunners, then mortar spotters, then anti-air teams, finally seizing a well-defended village and defending it yourself to hold the beach-head. Guided by the clear waypoints, it flows very well and provides a couple of dramatic moments, but there it doesn't open up in the same way or offers you anything entirely optional to do. Stray far off the beaten track, and you'll find nothing much at all.

Although the mission design is clearly strong, you wonder if Codemasters will have the bravery and the vision to offer you the full scope of this military sandbox. That's what ArmA II does so well, and it's possible that Dragon Rising won't be able to resist the urge to guide you towards its next carefully unstaged, studiedly informal set-piece, like a big-budget effects film shot with a hand-held camcorder. But maybe that's just a matter of taste. And when they've got those atmospherics so right, who can blame them?