f13.net

With the release coming up next week, I figured I would see if anyone from f13 was going to get it. With Co-op and crazy multiplayer, it's looking like the game will shape up to be something nice, a lot more appealing than launch day ArmA. Some of the new videos (http://www.gamespot.com/showcases/flashpoint?sid=6230734) are pretty damn sexy.

So, whose going to war?

I'll probably get it just for the SP war, but I'm /SO/ going to get it. Realistic wargames?  :grin:

Seriously, I've got opflash, all addons, arma, arma2, and opflash2 seems to be arma2 with even better graphics and possibly less CPU requirement and ... hopefully less bugs. Although that might be wishing for the moon.

i am most definitely in.  What platform you going for, i'm PC because potentially then i can rope Megrim and a couple of others in.

Also i read somewhere that the multi is maximum 8 v 8 for consoles but up to 32 v 32 on pc, so naturally we want to go larger.  also thumbsticks  :uhrr:

PC. Realism and thumb sticks is nonsensical.

Watched the video, looks good (except for that last bit where the Exec Producer brings out an M4 with the carrying handle on the foregrip rail and awkwardly cocks the .45)  :oh_i_see:

however.

Doesn't Codemasters traditionally = Starforce?

:ye_gods:  :uhrr:

Good point. I think they stopped using starforce a while back, however, you did remind me that I must be very vigilant when I'm buying it.

My take on it is, if it has starforce or online activations, then I won't be buying it. I like to buy my games, not rent them.

Having said that, I desperately hope they won't put any of that crap on, because I desperately want this game, if only to see how much better/worse it is compared to arma2.

Last I heard they had dropped Starforce because of the backlash.

Eh, I'm not revisiting the series. I was a huge fan of the original, but playing the Arma2 demo reminded me of all the crap I put up with to enjoy it, and it's just not my thing anymore. Know thyself.

For those of us who haven't played it before, can you give some examples?

I don't see how putting up with crap from another game that was made by an entirely different team reflects on OpFlash2. Not to mention they've said it isn't 100% sim and is the reason they put in Hardcore mode.

Computer and Video Games has put up their review giving it a 9.0 (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=224624), which we know is arbitrary and says nothing about the game.

Rundown:

- Not buggy or bogged with performance issues like ArmA II
- Some console undertones (checkpoints, squad mates respawning at said checkpoints, radial menu)
- Hardcore mode resembles the OpFlash of yore (No hud, no saves, no mercy)
- Game is challenging without being unforgiving
- AI is reasonable enough not to ruin the experience

Avoid the comments section. The console undertones comment in the review makes console people nerd rage.

There's also a Co-op Diary here (http://) that's a decent read. Some of the stuff that stood out to me:

I'm quite curious about this game's multiplayer. I still play CoDWaW, and am looking forward to a new one before the new CoD comes out. I'm a bit hesitant about vehicles in multiplayer mode, since in CoDWaW its basically a really silly immersion breaking mechanic that's disabled on most tactical servers.

Two very different types of shooters.

I understand that OF is geared towards a higher degree of realism, whereas the CoD line angles for the twitch fun crowd. Since I like my CoD 'toned down' and only play on tactical crouch servers, I'm hoping that this game will meet the need without having to resort to artificial player imposed rules such as 'no noob tubes' and 'no bunny hopping'.

If it is anything like OpF 1, bunny hopping serves absolutely no good use. Better to get down and crawl into cover.

I enjoy the slower pace of game to CoD. I don't care too much for insta-gibs that reward twitchy experts though, since I'm probably not as twitchy as I was 5 or 10 years ago. Battlefield 1942/Desert Combat/BF2 is about as fast as I like to get.

That's why I have switched from CoD4 to CoDW@W. It is slower, for the most part. After months of playing W@W, I went back to CoD4 for lark, and go killed repeatedly before I could ever get into any sort of defensive position. That said, W@W has its own unique issues, such as a ridiculously accurate 357. If your screen is large enough to see the vaguest of pixel movement half a mile away, you can essentially snipe with it. Many tactical servers prohibit the use of side arms for that reason.

Anyways, if OF2 has a multiplayer that rewards caution instead of run-and-gun, then I will be purchasing it.

The game is based around rewarding caution. Run and gun serves only to get you and your squad killed.

Ahh. Flashback to days of old and DeltaForce 1 snipe-wars with 480x300 resolutions or some such. Basically, the lower resolution you had the easier it was to spot opponents at a distance.

 This game has no dedicated server capability. It's going into an early grave.

 :ye_gods:

Wait, what?  :heartbreak:

At least ArmA2 has a dedicated server so we can setup what we want on LAN parties, so all is not lost. Just have to wait a few years while they fix bugs.  :oh_i_see:

Is this a hard thing to add on? The code for a dedicated server seems something that's older tech. It simply keeps track of users visiting, scores on that particular server, etc, no? Or is it more complex than that?

So far it's ok. I think I need to get used to the radial menu and using it to better utilize my squad. Also, do NOT alt+tab if you have Windows 7. Instantly makes the game not respond.

I will most certainly be picking this up when I get back. I leave here in just under 30 days and should touch down in NC mid November.

NiX, you and I shall co-op the shit out of this game.

Done! You can tell me how terrible of a soldier I'd make :awesome_for_real:

 And i would just like to add... they shipped with no anti-cheat, no cd-key support, and only two maps for each mode (deathmatch and infiltration respectively).

 So... most of the people playing right now have downloaded the game through a torrent site, and are probably also aimbotting and wall hacking.

 And the worst part is, I doubt CM cares enough about their multiplayer to do anything about the hacks.

 They didn't ship with CD-key verification for multiplayer.

 :uhrr:

 Seriously. Someone else on the official forums said it best:

 "Back to BF2 and project realism for me."

 :facepalm:

I will definitely play this on hardcore mode (personally, I'm only interested in the single-player experience, but hey, might try multiplayer). Can't wait.

Seconded. Game comes out and Day 1 someone is whining about pirates with wallhacks and aimbots. :uhrr:

Awesome. I guess I won't worry about this one too much then.

Guess I'll just torrent it and see how I like it  :awesome_for_real:.

Not sure I get your intent, but really, if you release a shooter with multiplayer, for crying out loud, put some work into it! Does it even use punkbuster or some hack prevention? Because not having a dedicated server doesn't necessarily mean its a vulnerable environment. Of course, only shipping with two maps? That's just out and out clownshoes unless there's a significant campaign editor players can create maps with.

It very much looks like I'll be waiting til Nov 11 for CoDMW2

I thought you were facepalming to the bitching. My mistake, but the lack of dedicated does mean that you can't really put out a reliable anti-cheat system. Without a persistent system that's constantly updated, you're pretty much fighting a losing battle and heading back to days of yore where people would just not update to stick with a certain version they liked.

So in your opinion the bitching is misguided because the game never aimed at a multiplayer audience? Not trying to be snarky here; I have no problem if the game was specifically designed for single player play only.

Total lack of any anti-piracy or exploits stuff is clownshoes. You cannot have decent multiplayer if people can use wallhacks and aimbots with impunity. I can't believe it would have taken much more work to incorporate punkbuster or something similar.

The fact that they've only got two maps isn't necessarily awful. If it's anything like the OFP 1 they'll be huge maps with plenty of space for using different parts of it for custom missions (which is where OFP shines. It's not really a game for deathmatch as far as I'm concerned.)

I really didn't get that vibe from all the schilling they were doing. It really seemed like this was all about the Single Player/Hardcore experience and nothing else. Which, in my opinion, is fine and only better with the addition of 4 player co-op. Obviously it would have been nice, but I don't think it's what they wanted their strength to be. Whether it was because of financial reasons or that they figured most would flock to MW2, I don't know, but I do agree that it's a missed opportunity.


Once again, no dedicated means there can't be punkbuster or something like it. Anything imposed would be nothing but a band-aid and easily circumvented.

If it were the original developer, I'd say they did it for the community, because there was a really tight community for the original game, and cheating wouldn't have been as big a deal in a small, tight community. Nor would the maps, because they were modding mofos.

With the new devs, I have no idea what's up with the hacktopia.

Aren't the original Devs the ARMA guys?



edit - so what's the SP like, anyway?

The original devs are bohemia interactive, and yes, they're the ArmA[12] guys.

I haven't gotten to the point where I've tested the SP yet (need to go buy it or something), but a few friends have tried it and said it's pretty okay.

Yeah, my only interest in this game is Single Player anyways.  Anybody have opinions on that yet?

Part of me views this like a multiplayer experience on a board game. There are rules, but you can circumvent them, but then you're not playing in the spirit of the game. The main difference is that if someone did this with a board game, they'd be much less adverse to trying, because you're right there to clobber them upside the head with the game board.

Point being: play with people you know. Let the cheaters cheat, just don't play that mode. They probably don't see their multiplayer as the next WORLD-SPANNING HALO KILLER, so why put in all those things to move towards that?

Which would be why a dedicated server would've been a nice feature to have, that way you could f.ex setup a 24v24 LAN game at a lan party. If anyone were being asshats and cheating, they could get some ... incentives to cut it out.

I've seen videos of a very well coordinated assault on a village in ArmaA I think, somewhere on youtube. I don't seem to be able to find it offhand though, but it looked pretty nice. I'd like to see you get that going on a public server, especially if there's no anti-piracy or anti-cheat mechanism...

Got this on steam. Am only on the 2nd mission of the single player, and well, its hard. Miles harder than CoD. Its going to take a while for me to get the hang of it. I'm starting to see why they may not have focused on multiplayer, since this game does really cater to the average FPS gamer. A lot of it in Single Player is controlling your squad, which tend to be a bit dumb. The AI on the other hand, is not dumb. You get flanked, surrounded, chased by gunships. Its not pretty.

I despise the controls. Mouse feels like it's lagging about 1/4 second behind my actual movement and the radial menu sucks.

Turn off vsync.

Played some Hardcore Co-op last night and it was pretty damn intense. The two most memorable moments were when Phire and I had managed to wander in between two enemy squads. One opened fire after finally seeing us and the entire encampment over the hill decided to join the fight.

The other was having to defend a town from a PLA counter attack where Phire and I weren't watching out right flank and got overwhelmed. Our two AI squad members died while we fell back to a small farm house nearby. The bullets peppering the side of the farm combined with hearing the PLA soldiers shouting from right below us was pretty damn crazy.

Has anyone here played this on a console yet?  I loved OpFl, some of the best multiplayer ever, and I'm itching for a new PS3 game, this could fit the bill :)

The controls feel 'console-y'; the radial menu sometimes goes 3 menus deep into just one tree. That had to be done with consoles in mind. As to wether its fun to play on a console, I'm the wrong person to ask. In my 'get off my lawn' universe, console game pads are for Donkey Kong and little else.

 :ye_gods:

Death to pads in FPSes. Big, fiery, terminal death. Also death to MS/Sony for specifically forbidding keyboard/mouse in games, or at the very least providing some sort of alternative. I mean, some weirdo can get a guitar and a drum set, flight sim people get joysticks, racing games get steering wheels, but FPSes, arguably the biggest type of game in use today, gets a fucking pad? really?

I've been saying for years, that if they made something with 20 keys or something, and a mouse (so the console won't be too "computer-y"), I would happily switch from the PC to the xbox for my gaming needs. As it is, they can get a gigantic fuck off from me and their 100NOK higher pricetag for games, because I /know/ the gaming experience will suck ass compared to the PC.

Having said that, though, there are also way too many games which are literally ruined by being developed for the consoles first and ported to the PC later. Make it stop. :mob:

Blah blah blah.

If you'd been here longer than 5 minutes you'd know that a) I'm recovering from a back injury and thus cannot play sitting down at a PC and b) I don't give a flying fuck about your opinions re: shooters on consoles.

That wasn't what I asked.

Not here, not now. :uhrr:

In between MW2 and Borderlands, I'll have to pass on this.

Unless SP is teh awesomes, in which case, I dunno.

I just saw the date, and realized it was after the 11.10.09 release date. Initial thought: "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODMUSTGETTOTHESTORETOBUYIT". Then my (slightly) more rational part of the brain took over, and I googled for "modern warfare 2 copy protection". Second hit: http://www.ps3news.com/PC-Tech/cod-modern-warfare-2-delayed-on-pc-activision-defends-price/

So, it's going to be very pricey, it'll be delayed by 2 weeks, and I can't seem to find out which type of copy protection it has.

/tinfoil on the type of copy protection until proven otherwise.

Meh, I'm not too worried about a 2 week delay. I don't need it on Day 1 anyway. Price-wise there are always retailers doing deep discounts in the first two weeks anyway, unless you have an aversion to not buying at EB or Gamestop.

PC version is always cheaper than console on top of that (yet double the US price). Besides, the delay is most likely to encourage people to purchase the console version rather than torrent the PC version.

So I've been trying out dragon rising for a bit.

1) where the hell is my option to look around manually instead of pivoting my entire body?
2) seems a bit too easy to hit people.
3) running out of ammo for the rifle isn't a big deal, just zergrush with the pistol and shoot them in the face instead.

Enjoyable enough, though, but I'm going to have to see if the difficulty ramps up beyond just not seeing where people are on hardcore.

Yeah, it's not really a successor to Flashpoint at all. I guess Arma 2 would be that. It's ok fun, pretty standard tactical shooter. Some things are annoying though - like no 'lean' for when you're in cover. Also, accuracy seems a bit high, I'm making 3-400 meter shots with the close quarter M16 variant.

Also, it's not 1 shot 1 kill at all really. Quite a few times I've hit a guy - seen the little blood cloud - and he just hightails it off. Course it is 5.56 ammo so hell maybe that's realistic.

All in all it's an ok shooter, good mission editor included. But I may have to pick up Arma 2 once it finally gets patched up.

If you can manage to nick a sniper rifle, then it sure as hell is one-shot, one-kill.  :grin:

Agreed on all parts, arma 2 *IS* the successor what with it being made by the same guys, the controls being the same, etc etc etc.

I'd forgotten about the no lean deal, that also really chafes me. I have, however, noticed there's some sort of semi-lean over/to the side when aiming, but it's not enough.

I'll play through opflash2, and I'll probably not regret it too much, but in a year or so it'll be back to arma2 fulltime for me, since they'll have patched the game up by then.

Apocrypha

I got it for the 360.  I'll spare the review but I love it.  I game on PC and Xbox, so I'm not biased.

I highly recommend it.

Cheers Roentgen, I may well pick this up for the PS3 then, if I can convince a friend or two to do the same  :awesome_for_real:

It's not without it's share of bugs and things I'd tweak  (sometimes it does take a LOT to down a PLA soldier, but a headshot always downs 'em.)   but all in all it may be my favorite shooter ever. The first time I was close enough to a group of PLA soldiers to hear them speaking in Chinese to each other was really freakin' cool.  The game is like Ghost Recon Plus.  The Ghost Recon before it got all third-person and with space aged technology.  The pure size of the playfield is what I really love.  I have a huge nerd boner for tactical shooters tho.  Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Operation Flashpoint...

Not for me. The first time that happened to me I was sneaking through a town with only my medic alive with me, I decided to use a house as a vantage point and while upstairs I started to hear chinese talking all around me. Two damn patrols and I forgot to set the ROE to hold fire

Hm. Brings me to my other annoyance. No alteration of load-out. Ok, I get it, I'm a Marine, I don't get to pick and choose. But WTF - I have a mission to engage people across a 150-200 meter field and you give me a shortened CQB rifle? Seriously? So now I have to spend 10 minutes looking for a stupid ammo crate to swap my gun, because the game won't let me alter my basic load-out. Dumb.

Ya, not too thrilled about that either. TBH, I haven't played it since this weekend and I don't think I'm gonna again either. Its just too dry somehow. The story seems threadbear.

A Perfect Example of why I rarely Day-1 stuff anymore.

You go to war with the army you've got  :why_so_serious:

I remember something like that from the original game, and my priority was to find an enemy with a BAR and become a lead farmer, motherfucker.

Strangely I haven't got many specific memories of OFP despite playing it to death for a while. I do remember hating Spec Ops missions, they somehow managed to combine being ridiculously stressful with being really boring. Playing through those was quite a strange experience since that combination of reactions wasn't really one I'd gotten from a game since generally things that are stressful at least occupy the whole of your attention.

I'm moving from mild satisfaction well into general distaste for this game. The last mission, in particular, absolutely brutally punishes you for doing well simply because the missions are clearly structured around triggers that seem to go off based on your geographical position, regardless of the actual state of the battle going on around you.

Sneak into the wrong spot and you'll end up triggering shit you have absolutely no chance of completing in the time limit. It's actually better to lag behind a bit and let your side take the brunt of an assault rather than protect the fuckers.

Also, despawning corpses fucking suck.

Edit: Fun tip. If you know a checkpoint is coming up, and you're playing on normal mode, just murder all of your non-medic teammates. You can then take their ammo/weapons and they'll respawn once you hit the checkpoint. This is how I've resolved my constantly-out-of-ammo problem.

And that seals the game in my mind as poorly designed and tested.

I'm playing on the medium mode; I think I'm at the last level (the one where they helivac you to the south base for the 'last stand'). So far it's the only mission that's really annoyed me. I think the marksman weapons are overpowered and my squadmates are nigh useless, but that's just like every war game I have ever played ever.

Then don't play it on retardo newbie difficulty.  Nothing but the lowest difficulty level allows this to happen.

Yes, if you play on one of the other two modes, then you can just murder people on your own side for ammo instead of your actual fireteam. Done that one too.

I play the game like some kind of homicidal sniper Rambo with a fetish for air strikes.

But at least your team mates don't respawn at every checkpoint.

Only the medic actually matters, anyway. The rest just exist so the AI can get some target practice in.

For those sorta interested in the multiplayer version of this by the original Flashpoint devs, Arma II is on sale on Steam this weekend at 50% off ($25). I wasn't too impressed with the Arma II demo, but YMMV.

So it's been a couple weeks and I still love this game.  Yes there are bugs.  The upright corpses n whatnot.  Hopefully those'll be patched out.  However, I think the core game and the game mechanics make for one fun tactical shooter.

playing on PC at the moment - while i'm enjoying campaign i'm really pissed at the fact that there are no servers.  And the Aussie players are so few and far between that none of them are going to leave open a server.  You can't play this game with 400 ping unfortunately.