Operation Flashpoint is designed as a realistic simulation of the modern army. The game takes place on large islands where you have to battle an enemy force with a group of teammates. You can use a large amount of different weapons, including the AK-47, the M-16, hand grenades, a LAW, RPG and more.

Unusual about this game is the possibility to drive vehicles, such as jeeps, helicopters and tanks. You can take place on the driver's chair, or on the back with one of your teammates driving.

The game also supports internet multiplayer, wherein 2 teams have to battle each other in a large battlefield, again with the use of the vehicles, where you can annoy some real players carpooling in your helicopter by colliding with the earth.

When playing as normal soldier the game acts very realistic. You can't shoot properly when running, and when crawling you can't shoot at all. Also you walk on a very realistic speed which means it takes a lot of time to cross the landscape.

The landscape contains trees, towns, seas, roads and army camps, with everything on a very large scale. In single player you can also experience cut scenes rendered in the 3d engine. The game also contains speech and filmic music.

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Alternate Titles

"闪点行动：冷战危机" -- Chinese Title (Simplified)
"Операция Flashpoint: Холодная война" -- Russian title
"Poseidon: Operation Apocalypse" -- Working Title
"OFP" -- Common Abbreviation
"Flash Point 1985: Status Quo" -- Working Title
"CwC" -- Common name

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Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform	Price
	Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis	Windows	$0.18
	Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis
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User Reviews

Options, options, options....	Viktor Kovacs (15)
War is not nice	Isdaron (681)
Another "realistic" First Person Shooter	Evil-Jim (151)
It looks like that you are the middle of the battlefield	Timber Wolf (4)	unrated
A comprehensive war shooter.	gilgamex (113)

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The Press Says

Peliplaneetta.net	Jun 20, 2001	93 out of 100	93
Eurogamer.net (UK)	Jun 19, 2001	9 out of 10	90
GamersMark	Oct 19, 2001	9 out of 10	90
ComputerGamers.com	Nov 11, 2001	90 out of 100	90
Gamesmania	Jun 23, 2001	89 out of 100	89
GameSpot	Sep 04, 2001	8.7 out of 10	87
GameSpy	Sep 16, 2001	83 out of 100	83
PC Gameplay (Benelux)	Jun, 2001	83 out of 100	83
Game Informer Magazine	Nov, 2001	7.5 out of 10	75
PC Gamer	Nov, 2001	70 out of 100	70

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Trivia

Copy protection

Before releasing this game, Codemasters announced that they would be using a new copy protection technology called FADE which should make the game unplayable after a while if run off a copy. It is unknown whether that technology really worked or not as there were many bugs in the game which caused the game to be unplayable even with original CDs.

Demo

Just one week after it was online, the demo has been downloaded over a million times.

Development

Operation Flashpoint survived bouncing between 3 different publishers during its development. Originally the game was to be published by Interactive Magic, then Ubi Soft, and finally Codemasters.

Franchise

After the success of Operation Flashpoint, publisher Codemasters bought the rights to the brand name. That's why the second game of the development team was released under the title ArmA: Combat Operations and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising was developed by a Codemasters team on site in England.

Military

Operation Flashpoint was regarded to be so accurate that its developers produced the Virtual Battlespace Systems 1 (VBS1) - a version of the Operation Flashpoint engine for use by the military for training purposes. The first military customer for VBS1 was the United States Marine Corps. Its users today include the defence forces of Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

References

Codemasters has confessed that many of the characters within Operation Flashpoint are based on personnel within the company. The firm's chairman Jim Darling, for example, appears within the game as the evil General Vasilli, while Codemasters' UK MP James Plaskitt also makes an appearance. (Source: MCV, Friday, July 20 2001)

Scenario

The islands featured in the game are based on real world locations. A forum competition was held to discover if anyone could figure out the exact locations.