rant rant rant... I'll stop now.

Actually you were raving!

It was one of the first games for me that didn't leave me thinking "Wouldn't it be cool if they had put in....". It was rough, sometimes ugly (though the sunrises on Nogova tended to be quite pretty) but the combination of a very easy yet powerful mission editor and a diverse set of vehicles that all were great fun in their own right... man, that game just worked so damn well.

The only thing I wished they could have fixed was the view distance, without resorting to editting a mission and sticking in the setviewdistance command.

The guns felt real (in my limited experience) and in my mind it set a new benchmark in MP Coop play.

rant rant rant... I'll stop now.

Ever try to hit anything with the cannon on the A-10?

Numerous times. Ships, APCs, etc. Fly slow and strafe the targets.

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Teamwork is essential... it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.

Yes OFP was a great example of an incredibly wide ranging game that wasn't at all polished but was so much fun that it got away with it, and not only that, was a brilliant fun game too. Reminded me of Hidden and Dangerous in that respect.

I just loved being able to drop into the mission editor, find a decent town, put some tanks coming in and a couple of men with me (or under my command) and in that respect it was (almost) infinitely replayable.

And it was a modern(ish) war game! More of them, please.

Whatever you do, for the love of God please, please, PLEASE do NOT change the deep, rich, open-ended realistic gameplay. No dumbed-down console version or "accessible" crap. It'll ruin it.

Although the new name sounds like it came from a random name generator, it won't matter if the gameplay is still there. But why would you give up the name recognition of such a widely acclaimed franchise? It just doesn't make any sense from a marketing perspective.

The soldier models still look off and strangely hunched over, but that was always the case with the first one too. Wish they'd fix that. I don't mind "last year" graphics as long as the gameplay's there. OFP 1 was no beauty queen either.

One thing I'd like to see is better aircraft control. Ever try to hit anything with the cannon on the A-10? Impossible. Also give us multiplayer that joins while a game is in progress instead of waiting an hour for the round to finish, and let server admins decide respawn values. Setting it in the map editor is all wrong. And let us play the SP campain in co-op!

http://ofp.gamezone.cz/

This is a fantastic website. I've downloaded tons of new content from here. You will find enough to keep you busy for weeks, if not months. Kudos to the amazing Operation Flashpoint editor.

I don't think OFP has horrible graphics. I've been playing this game since it came out. It's easily the most flexible and wide-ranging game there is. Check out this website:

http://ofp.gamezone.cz/

Scroll down to their headline about the pics and they show a lot more pics. It's good stuff.

Mmm... X-Com.

Change the name, change the publisher, change the developer - I don't care. But please, in the name of all that is holy, PLEASE don't change the gameplay. I loved the first one. It ranks with X-Com, Starsiege: Tribes and Half-Life on my list of favorite games.

oh man, well...i have to agree on several points. i'm excited about the new flashpoint...but a lot of things can go wrong. Like its been said, if they go the more accessible route they could really screw the game up. I dont even have to mention how bad deux ex: invisible war was (one type of ammo...are you serious?)

the entire game relied on the gameplay...if you noticed, never once did the same mission play out twice the same way. the graphics for the original are horrible...but, the gameplay was so awsome i just didnt care.

all the game really needed was a graphical face lift...and a few tweeks with the ai (sometimes the game seemed so open ended that you couldnt figure out what to do, or if you had triggered the next action yet).

and im glad to know that blue might be looking forward to flashpoint 2...

w00t

Remember that English isn't their first language. It probably sounds a lot better in Czech, and this is the translation which loses the nuances.



The Jedi Master

As far as the peons that can kill with one shot from 50 miles, I'm not sure we're talking about the same game. Ghost Recon? Yeah, sure. But what I liked about OFP was that there was definitely a medium range where you had to to be cautious - where fire was suppressive but you had time to react and get cover. Remember, most battles in OFP were taking place at 100-200m, and in real-life, people can drill you pretty good with assault rifles at that range as well.

Istari

Maybe I'm overreacting, but this has the "console" smell about it. A change from a sequel to a generic "mass-market friendly" name reminds me of Thief: Deadly Shadows, DX: Invisible War or Rainbow Six: Lockdown.

The name itself is meaningless, but what worries me is that this also signals a change towards more "mass-market" friendly and "accesible" gameplay. It was the realism and the challenge of OFP which made it unique - I sincerely hope they're not going down the same path as the Ghost Recon series.

Istari

As long as the graphics are just-about keeping up then that's good enough graphics for me. Bored of graphical gizmos, want gameplay.

Hope gameplay is anything like as good as OFP. Hope they stick with the whole game being on a couple of huge islands too. Hope they continue their insanely long-term idea's about support, though hope it isnt quite needed so much this time...

But most of all, hope they fixed that thing where even peon enemies can kill you with one shot of an AK from 50 miles away without even needing to see or hear you

It looks infinitely better than Flashpoint for sure. I just hope the modding doesn`t get outta hand again. There are so many mods now for FP, I can`t keep up with them. I`d have to say gameplaywise, FP delivered more game than just about any I have played. Most bang for buck. If they stick to the same recipe, Armed Assault should be very cool. Not to mention, I wonder what strides they have made in the A.I. department? FPs A.I. was the best at that time. Surely over large terrain expances, they were the best I have played against. Vietcongs comes in a close second.

Bohemia has always been about scanning custom faces on the character models, maybe that is why the odd look. Agree with thoughts on crappy name though. After reading the blurb I thought i'd be seeing this game in an arcade next to Silent Scope 18. I am pretty sure I had read somewhere that they were making a new engine. I hope they are.

I remember them saying a while ago that they were just going to work over the old engine rather than start anew, and those screenshots really show that. There's probably still some way to go, but I'd like to see them work on the polish considering how rough OFP came out. Things like improving the model and vehicle animations and implementing decent shadows would bring the graphical quality up a few notches.

Also, the name is really poor. It sounds so 'arcade' to me, and I hope that change hasn't transferred to the gameplay too.

(edit):
On second viewing, those screenshots do show a lot of improvement, especially the two with the soldiers by the tank in the thick foliage. However, the buildings still have that strange look to them because they don't really blend with the rest of the scene, and the models look quite scary. I guess it would all come together in motion, so I'm looking forward to a video.
This comment was edited on May 16, 13:22.

Just out of curiosity, what makes for a bad publisher?

Screenshots:

You don't read the morning screenshots section?

Screenshots:

http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/screen.asp?id=9062

looks like they were grabbed from a movie off of a monitor. looks ok though the character models look a bit strange, particularly the faces.

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