Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (Windows)

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Description

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis is the first game in two separate and independent game franchises: the Operation Flashpoint series and the ARMA series. The game has been published both under its original name, as well as under the title ARMA: Cold War Assault. Notwithstanding the name change, the game is the same.

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.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

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

Part of the Following Groups

• 3D Engine: Real Virtuality 1
• Covermount: PC Action
• Games with game altering copy protection
• Genre: Tactical shooter
• Operation Flashpoint series
• PC Gamer Presents Games
• Software Pyramide releases
• Tank: M1 Abrams
• Technology: amBX

User Reviews

Options, options, options....	Viktor Kovacs (15)
War is not nice	Isdaron (726)
Another "realistic" First Person Shooter	Evil-Jim (175)
It looks like that you are the middle of the battlefield	Timber Wolf (4)	unrated
A comprehensive war shooter.	gilgamex (131)

Critic Reviews

GameGenie	2001		100
Svenska PC Gamer	Jun, 2001	95 out of 100	95
Power Unlimited	Jun, 2001	92 out of 100	92
ActionTrip	Jun 26, 2001	90 out of 100	90
PC Action (Germany)	Jun 18, 2001	90 out of 100	90
Adrenaline Vault, The (AVault)	Oct 21, 2001		90
Krawall Gaming Network	Jul 01, 2001	89 out of 100	89
Gameplay (Benelux)	May 31, 2001	83 out of 100	83
Fragland.net	Sep 18, 2002	81 out of 100	81
Jeuxvideo.com	Jun 18, 2001	16 out of 20	80

Forums

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Trivia

1001 Video Games

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

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.

Easter Egg

If the system clock reports a date of December 25, some trees in the game world are replaced by decorated Christmas trees with presents.

Franchise

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis is the first game in both the Operation Flashpoint series and the ArmA series, and has also been released under the alternate title ArmA: Cold War Assault.

After the success of Operation Flashpoint, publisher Codemasters bought the rights to the brand name. Codemasters and the original developer, Bohemia Interactive, parted ways, and each continued the series on their own, effectively forking the game into completely separate, independent series. Codemasters continued the Operation Flashpoint series with its own development team on-site in England, while Bohemia Interactive continued its take on the series under the ArmA name.

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.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • April 2002 (Issue #213) – Game of the Year
• GameSpy
  • 2001 – PC Action Game of the Year
• GameStar (Germany)
  • Issue 02/2002 - Best Action Game in 2001

Information also contributed by Clive Lindop, Entorphane, Felix Knoke, Macintrash, phlux, rstevenson and Sabri Zain

Related Web Sites

• Axle Online (A fansite that covers Operation Flashpoint.)
• BiStudio (The developers' homepage)
• Codemasters (The publisher's official web page.)
• Coldwar Flashpoint (This has been the first inofficial web page featuring the game.)
• Flashpoint 1985 (This is the official web page for the game.)
• Operation Flashpoint Network (Well designed fan page that is working on an additon to the original game, called "Operation Vietnam".)