Please note this is not quite a full review, as I have not played the multiplayer (and from what I've seen, do not wish to) and have had... another problem which I will explain.
The full-blown tactical military simulation genre is not an easy one to pull off, I'll admit. Having very reliable AI, decent tactical maps and realistic weaponry are all vital and it takes a good dev company to get this done, but OF:DR falls down in a horrible number of ways.
Before I get to that, I'll throw in the good parts of the game. One is the map, a fictional island called Skira off the coast of Japan, which in the almost non-existant storyline has been overtaken by the Chinese and the Americans and Russians have combined to re-invade. Think that's just a setting? Nope, you genuinely get the whole island. One of the biggest maps in game history, it's a truly impressive sight - and you genuinely get the sight, no foggy environments WHATSOEVER, you can see as far as the human eye can - when you stand atop a hill preparing for your raiding of a PLA outpost. They did a lot of work on the aesthetics, so day/night scenes look brilliantly tangible. Thankfully, for it being a squad simulation, they also included a huge number of commands, from formations to orders of when to fire, and as it is mainly aimed at the hardcore gaming audience, they made the intensity of shoot-outs very sudden and tense, instead of your ordinary 'they come blasting out the treeline, you mow them down'. Every bullet can kill you, and you have to think tactically and make the right decisions for your squad.
All that is nicely done, but just about everything else went horribly wrong. This may take a while...
Firstly, this is where realism goes wrong. I understand that it's not meant to be easy, and that you're meant to be as vulnerable as every enemy, and I actually like the idea. But that isn't what you've got here! Why does every enemy have more health than you do? Yes they're not as clever as you, but that doesn't mean they should be able to take 5 bullets when you can take 2 at most. Speaking of AI not being clever, this game is a masterpiece of the moronic bots, in particular you friendlies. I've had numerous occasions where I'm shooting at the distant blob of an enemy at the other side of a valley, and my medic has thought it an incredible idea to jump in front of my barrel and get his brains blown out. They'll do what you tell them, but they don't do it well so for example while they will hold fire when you tell them to, when you tell them to open fire again they'll sometimes take about a minute to react and completely miss. Whilst desperately needing to escape a base I planted a bomb in, I was sprinting up a hill escaping enemy fire and there was my squad, crawling on their bellies after me. They were wiped out within 20 seconds.
Another is the general bugginess of the game. While playing co op, I died and the usual thing to happen afterwards is that you view the surviving player and respawn after a minute (at least not on Hardcore difficulty). I got a nice view of the sea and never respawned. I've also experienced one which many others have had where at the end of a mission my squad and I board the extraction heli, which then never takes off. The mission can't end. You have to restart. Last and certainly not least, my Flashpoint is effectively broken because of this bug, I can't play my last two missions, and will probably never be able to. Why? My game doesn't save any more. I have 60gb free left on my hard drive so that's not the problem, it simply won't overwrite. And despite the good environmental look to the game, get near anything at it looks jaggedy and too PS2-like, especially the character models who all look incredibly angry/constipated.
Apart from that, monotony will usually kick in, either from samey 'take out a mortar team' objectives or having to retry countless times because of enemies who apparently have skin made of kevlar. A couple of good sniper/stealth missions break the mould, but it's never long before you're back with your unbelievably dim fireteam. I rate this 3/10, Codemasters (surprisingly enough) don't seem to know what a code is, let alone how to make a game out of it.
