Shades Of Twilight

Back in 2001, a new game hit the market – “Operation Flashpoint”. It was a new concept in First-Person gaming. It was eerily similar to an earlier game – SpecOps. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say it was a new and improved version of DID’s “Wargasm”.

In short, you play the game as a soldier. However, your soldier can climb into vehicles and enter buildings. Now, prior to 2001, games just didn’t allow you to do this. If you’re a foot soldier, you’re a foot soldier all the way through the game. Yes I know, games like Battlefield and Call of Duty all can do that, but they were all made AFTER 2001, after Operation Flashpoint led the way.

Now somewhere along the way, the developers of Operation Flashpoint (ie the people who did the programming), Bohemia Interactive Studios (or BIS), had a falling out with the publisher, Codemasters. The result of this falling out was that Codemasters kept the title “Operation Flashpoint”, and thus BIS couldn’t use it anymore for any of their future games. So BIS changed the new versions to “Armed Assault” (in America it’s called “Combat Arms”). To the gamers, the name didn’t matter – what mattered was that BIS made new and improved version of the game we loved – Operation Flashpoint.

At this time, Armed Assault is already in its second incarnation – Armed Assault 2 (or ARMA2). In total, BIS produced 3 very successful games – Operation Flashpoint, the original, Armed Assault, and Armed Assault 2.

8 years later, Codemasters finally caught up with BIS, and released the SECOND Operation Flashpoint game. Affectionately referred to as “OFP2” for “Operation Flashpoint 2″, Dragon Rising is a totally different beast from BIS’s versions.

First and foremost, what comes to mind immediately was the awkwardness of issuing commands in OFPDR. When you are busy fighting, running, shooting etc, hitting the command key stops you dead in your tracks. Not only that, because the command radial uses the same WASD keys to select your commands, you often end up issuing the WRONG command to your squad. I have had it happen to me many times when I wanted to order them to FOLLOW ME and ended up telling them to MOVE somewhere else just because I was panicking and pressed W to go forward, and forgetting I was still in the command radial. All the time I’m in the command dial getting my fingers all knotted up, I’m standing still in the game world, being shot at. Read more »

Yes, we got Assassin’s Creed 2 before North America. Singapore had it since Thursday, 4 March 2010. I received an SMS (that’s “text message to you Westerners) from my regular game shop at 1pm saying that it was in Singapore. By 6pm I had a copy in my hands, and by 6.30 I was already home and installing it.

<RANT value=”copyprotect”>

The copy-protection on this however, is a little too extreme. It says it “requires” a constant Internet Connection for it to work. That’s lame, because what happens if you’re not on Broadband, but on dialup, and each minute you’re on dialup costs you money?! That is irrelevant in Singapore since everyone is already on Broadband, but it affects people in other locales.

Secondly, what happens if Ubisosft servers are experiencing heavy loads? We can’t connect to “authenticate” and thus we can’t play it? The North America launch is coming on 9th March, that is tomorrow. You can expect a sudden spike in users trying to authenticate to your servers, Ubisoft.

That’s exactly what happened to me the other day – Ubisoft Servers actually went down (see “Related Articles” below). The game just quit suddenly to desktop, and when I tried to relaunch, it was stuck at he Login screen of the launcher for about 5 mins. Then when the game started and I chose “Story Mode”, the game went to a screen saying “please wait, contacting server” and the only option available at that screen was “Exit To Windows”.

At least Bioware doesn’t force the requirement on the user. Dragon Age, for example, just says the achievements and scores won’t be updated on your web profile. Mass Effect 2 just tells you that you won’t get Cerberus goodies if you don’t have an internet connection. They do NOT stop you from playing their game!

And game companies wonder why people continue to get pirated copies.

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This is now my FIFTH run-through of Mass Effect 2. ME2 now holds the record for the most number of replays an RPG ever got from me. Basically all I’m doing is trying to do everything I didn’t do the first 4 times around.

The amazing thing is that I keep discovering small bits and pieces of funny things I never saw the first 4 times. The video below is a compilation of the majority of the funny bits:

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