Casting my mind back many years to when we used PC's to play games on and consoles had a little chap jumping over blocks as their main games I recall the PC game (and I still have a copy) Operation Flashpoint.
Despite a lengthy install process and taking up more hard drive space than the average "Bikini" photos we entered the game with open minds and eager child like anticipation.
It offered "hours of walking to cross the map", realistic weapons and vehicles etc etc blah blah blah.
In reality the enemy was nothing more than a pixel on the horizon with trigger accuracy akin to drive by shooters in some large Urban towns.
If you did see the enemy you normally saw the "death" animation moments later or found you fired about 900 bullets, still didn't kill them and they dispatched you with one pistol shot.
Certain that these minor teething issues would be resolved we persevered with the game, even buying the expansion pack.
The vehicles should have given the clues to what we should have done with the game.
When your offered "realistic", "True to life handling", "as close as it gets" etc this appears to mean everything except this.
Take the tanks for example, we used to get in one (I presume 40 or 50 tons of good metal there?) and you would touch a small stone to find the tank bounces like a ping pong ball - on several games we watched our tank bounce left, then right, then left etc bouncing further each time until the tank would fall onto it's side.
If you decided to "Explore anywhere on the map at any time" you often found tanks hitting the edge of the grass and stopping dead, sometimes the tank would jump many feet into the air then hit the ground before toppling over again.
The Helicopters were even better, many times we got in one only to find it started to climb into the air, gave up then turned upside down and landed on the grass, perfectly happy with the rotors still spinning.
You could even get in and out the chopper and it would sit there quite comfortable in the thought that it was anything but upside down.
It certainly helped team up with the upside down tanks or sideways vehicles.
Anyway, we decided never to play this any more and over the years moved onto the Xbox for our games.
Time passed and games such as COD 4 came by, Rainbow 6 etc - all excellent games in their own right, Gears of war etc and who can forget Halo ?
So we find ourselves once more dressed in our "i'm more gullible than him" T-shirt and awaiting delivery of Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising.
The Xbox is fired up and we start Co-Op play, the game offers "9 hours to walk across the map", "Realistic vehicles", "wide choice of realistic weapons" etc etc
Our first battle saw us screaming that each other was a fecking idiot etc then finding you die for no apparent reason, you find a vehicle, get in it and 2 seconds later it explodes, and for the best of the best I decided to perform a task so deadly I'm not surprised I died.
What pray was this small task ? Did I run into the enemy base and single handedly take on 400 enemy ? Did i try and drive a jeep through enemy check points ? Did I ????
Actually the death defying task I performed which actually killed me stone dead where I stood was .... walking up some stairs !
The villiage was cleared of all enemy, I walked into a wooden hut, my brother walked up stairs, I followed and died at the top step.
After re-spawning, I tried again and died on the same step !!!!
We also got in tank, saddled up and moved off, I made the fatal mistake of touching a rock and over she went, bouncing like a fat mans bollocks on a cobbled road.
The fricking tank bounced and rolled over - for fucks sake, we're back at the old PC game days.
Now I've driven a tank, it takes more than a rock the size of a chickens bollocks to make it roll over, get a grip Codemasters.
Even better was me screaming at my brother to stop twatting about with the tank as I couldn't aim, we them swapped seats so I could drive.
Turns out even with no one else in the tank, i.e just me sitting in the turret the tank twitches like the dying corpse of a wounded animal, the turret (your trying to aim) twitches with it and you may as well shoot bullets out your arse.
Put people back in the tank and the turret becomes a roulette wheel, spinning wildly while your trying to aim it, to the point where your actually firing the wrong direction.
Last nights battle ? we took out two tanks with rockets (ignored the enemy soldiers as you can't see them without a scope on your gun anyway), fought our way to the airbase, called in an airstrike to take out enemy tanks and then had to shoot down an enemy chopper.
I switched to Sam missles, tracked the chopper and fired ... hmm a miss....
The game then locked out all my buttons so I couldn't change weapons or reload - instead standing there like a fucking idiot (Take not Codemasters) anyway I then tried to reload again but died immediately without knowing why.
I don't like to use the phrase "Bag of shit" or "more bugs than the piece of shit on the PC", or "Codemasters should be ashamed of themselves".
To release a game in this day and age at the price they expect you to pay with such rudimentary bugs is beyond anything you expect.
You can't pick your weapons, one team member has a thermal scope for example so can see the enemy quiet clearly, the other has iron sights - so already there are issues.
If you decide to be a sniper you have a night sight but not thermal sight, it simply doesn't add up.
Then add the fact your team wanders where it pleases and refuses to follow basic instructions it all adds up to yet another code masters disaster.
The irony is the graphics are there, the game sports nice effects and decent graphics, the issue is down to poor equipment allocation, enemies who are more trigger happy than a bunch of gangsters and the "realism" level being totally stupid.
Operation Flashpoint ? - more like operation Waste of fucking time !
To quote the came - "How Copy you ?" - "Calling Codemasters, Solid Copy, the game is actually more shit than your original PC version many years ago, Suggest you proceed immediately to extraction point and sack yourselves for being Foxtrot Charlie - i.e Fucking Crap".
As for me I will be "Proceeding immediately to Ebay or Gamestation to initiate operation 'rid thyself' where it involves selling it quickly and playing a game that actually works."
I don't think mine was a solid copy !
Sell now - Perhaps someone else will enjoy it.
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