It's difficult for me to express just how significant I think Operation: Flashpoint is in the FPS genre. Let me start with a phrase that even Chet can understand: It's the Grand Theft Auto 3 of FPS games. Except the on-foot component doesn't suck, and there's no sex with whores. So really it's better.

This game does so many things I have never seen any other FPS game do: The best simulation of gun aiming ever. The fantastic AI, which easily rivals if not exceeds what we saw in Half-Life. The best simulation of a realistic first person viewpoint to date. The utterly, completely open-ended nature of the gameplay. The huge game world. AI teammates that are actually useful and interesting. In short, it is the most immersive first person gameplay experience I've ever had. The sense of "you are there" is almost overpowering.

I picked up the Gold expansion to Op: Flashpoint at Best Buy a few days ago. On sale for $9.99 from $14.99. It's downright criminal, practically giving away an expansion for that price!

I'm enjoying the expansion, but word of warning. It's difficult. The second mission is far harder than I expected, and I used my only save up way too early. And am I nuts, or is there no way to restart a mission, unlike the previous campaign?

It didn't take me long to fall in love with OF all over again. I could regale you with plenty of anecdotes of the amazing gameplay experience even through the first three missions of the expansion.. but I'll just pick one.

I was playing through the first mission, and we fought a bunch of civilians. We're Russians and we're bad, you see. Anyway, we completed an objective and piled into the truck. Except the truck wouldn't go. "Oh no," I thought, "another mission bug." So I piled out. Piled back in. Shot the truck once with my gun. Nada. Hmm. As I was sitting in the front of the truck pondering this, I see through the windshield a guy CRAWLING towards us with his leg all shot up. Sure enough, we were waiting for the last surviving member of the squad to make it to the truck. Heh.

Op: Flash is so good, I actually bought two copies. The only other game I did that with was Total Annihilation. The only downside to the game is that the learning curve is quite a bit steeper than most FPS games. Not quite sim-level, but it's so, so worth it.

The 'one save game per mission' rule ruined this game for me. Hey, if they want a 'hardcore' mode, at least make it optional, for heck's sake. Dying from a stray bullet at the end of the mission and having to go back to around the middle again just doesn't cut it for me. Too bad, it really does seem like an excellent game.

DeanCo--

You can save as often as you like by alt-tabbing out and copying the save file and renaming it. There is at least one utility to automate this available. I agree it's stupid that the developer imposed this limitation on us, but even though I'm usually outraged at this sort of thing for some reason in the case of Flashpoint it didn't bother me much.

If you're going to leave a loophole like that, why make players jump do the extra work? Just make a it a feature! For example, BG2 changed the game rules after finding out that players were just reloading until they got the outcomes they wanted (wrt to hit points, spell memorization).

- Alan

There are at least four automatic retry points in the mission I described. Maybe even five. Plus your single user-save on top of that. So it's not like the developers were stingy; the mission is just difficult.

Besides, It's so much fun to try different strategies that I don't mind a bit of replay. That is a key differentiator in my mind. If the gameplay is really open-ended, then retrying isn't quite the burden it is in other more linear games. It's not "retry the exact same set of actions", it's "retry with a different approach." Big difference.

Forgot to ask. Does anyone know what's up with the "unable to restart a mission" deal? I can do it on the first campaign but not on the expansion campaign. What am I missing here? It sucks to reach a retry point at an inopportune time, then have to carry that forward through the mission..

What do you mean? Can't you just go back to the campaign logbook and click on the mission briefing, or did they change this for the expansion?

- Alan