operation-flashpoint-2 posts

It's been known for a while that developer-publisher Codemasters has been developing a follow up to 2009's military shooter Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (shown above). Now that game has an official name: Operation Flashpoint: Red River. The title was revealed by Computer and Video Games via the new issue of the Official Xbox Magazine.

Unfortunately there's little else that's been revealed about the game other than a release date of sometime in 2011 and that the magazine feels that "the sequel is a tighter, more focused game" than Dragon Rising. Certainly the 2009 game was massive in terms of scope but it got mixed reviews in terms of its final execution.

Operation Flashpoint's original developers Bohemia Interactive seem to be doing well with the release of their own game ArmA II; it's been at or near the top of the digital download sales lists for Steam and Direct2Drive. Now its big rival Codemasters gets to see what they can do with the "official" sequel Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

The military shooter, previously known as Operation Flashpoint 2, now has a October 6 release date in the US with an October 8 release in most European countries. The UK gets the game on October 9. This makes the game Codemaster's big fall/holiday release and it wil be interesting to see how their approach to a massive open world military shooter fares next to ArmA II.

Codemasters' long-in-development Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising title was announced about two years ago. We thought we might get to play the military shooter follow-up sometime this summer but a new chat on IGN has revealed we will have to wait a few more months before the game is released.

The interview with the game's executive producer Sion Lenton has him state, " . . .we're now investing additional development time on the project. We'll be working right through the summer to deliver all formats this autumn." In addition to the revised release time table Codemasters has released new screenshots for the game that we've added to our gallery.

Bohemia Interactive's semi-feud with Codemasters could be coming to a head soon. Bohemia, who created the original Operational Flashpoint game for Codemasters before going on their own with their own military shooter series ArmA, has announced that the sequel, ArmA II, will now be released on June 26 in Europe (no US release date has been revealed).

Bohemia also sent over new screenshots from the game showing off more of the pretty realistic looking action from the full version. As we have reported before, Bohemia has objected to Codemasters using the Operation Flashpoint title for their own realistic military shooter Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, even though there's actually very little Bohemia can do to stop it. Codemasters's game is due out sometime this summer.

Codemasters' upcoming military shooter Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has been getting a lot of attention this year. Today the publisher issued six new screenshots from the summer 2009 title. showing off more of the
extremely realistic near-future war on an island between United States and Chinese forces.

Until very Codemasters had been using the title Operation Flashpoint 2 to identify the game with Dragon Rising as its sub-title. It now appears that Codemasters has dropped the "2" when referring to the game on their official web site and in press releases. Earlier this year the original game's developer Bohemia Interactive, slammed Codemasters in an official press release for calling Operation Flashpoint 2 the "official" sequel (even though Codemasters made their intentions clear when they announced the game two years ago).

Codemasters is hard at work developing Operation Flashpoint 2 (even if the developers of the original game have some issues with that) and now comes word that gamers will get a chance to get a sample of the upcoming "realistic" military shooter.

According to a post from a Codemasters community member on the game's official message boards, "Just wanted to confirm that as is the case with almost all of our major releases, OFP: DR is planned to have a demo released prior to launch for all platforms." No other details on the demo have been released but at least we know this won't be one of "those" games (you know, where the developer releases a demo months after the game itself is out and thinks they are doing us a favor).

Bohemia Interactive originally developed the first Operation Flashpoint game for publisher Codemasters. That game was released in 2001. Since then Bohemia has struck out on its own and made their own military shooter games under the ArmA title. The first was released in 2007 and the sequel, ArmA II is due out later this year. Codemasters, however, kept the rights to the Operation Flashpoint name and in 2007 announced their plans to release Operation Flashpoint 2, using an internal development team at the company.

Even though Codemasters made their intentions clear two years ago, Bohemia Interactive is just now going after Codemasters over their claim that Codemasters is making a sequel to Operation Flashpoint. In a press release today, Bohemia Interactive stated they have sent Codemasters a letter from their attorneys " . . . protesting Codemasters' marketing tactics which tout Codemasters' upcoming game Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising as the "return of" or "official sequel to" the genre-defining game Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. "

Gallery: Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Gallery: ARMA 2 Screenshots

Codemasters' own in-house development team is making Operation Flashpoint 2 and this week the publisher sent out some new screenshots from the military shooter. Codemasters said in their press event this week that the game will be coming out later this summer.

Codemasters is aiming to give players a highly realistic military action game experience with Operation Flashpoint 2. The publisher decided to make the sequel themselves rather than work with the game's original developer Bohemia Interactive. That developer went ahead and created an all-new military shooter, ArmA: Armed Assault. It's sequel, ArmA II, is also due out this year alongside OpFlash 2.

This behind-the-scenes video goes into detail about 'Ego tech', the technology that powers the realistic look of Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising. The technology allows the game to take advantage of multi-core processors, giving players the best possible experience no matter what platform they're using. The developers also discuss the game's map editor in the video.

Download HD Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising 'Ego Tech' Video (192 MB)
Check out all Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising downloads

Christmas is now over and we are now just a few days away from the start of 2009. As with the beginning of any new year there is a feeling of excitement of what the next 365 days will bring. For the PC game industry the new year is already looking very bright with a ton of highly anticipated game titles due to be released in the next 12 months.

Big Download has looked into our crystal ball (ok, it's actually a Bioshock bobble head doll) for all of the games we hope to be playing in 2009. The result is a multi-part preview we will be running in the last days before 2008 is over with that will give you some idea of what to expect. Keep in mind that our preview is not meant to be totally comphensive as there are a number of games our there that have yet to be announced. Also, release dates for games can and do change so many of the titles in our feature might not make 2009 (in fact we have put in some games that we know won't be released this year)

We even have some exclusive new screenshots to some of the games we are featuring in our preview article. One such shot is above from the upcoming Raven Software-id Software-Activision shooter Wolfenstein. For our first part of our 2009 PC game preview we take a look at a number of upcoming action and first person shooter titles. Stay tuned on Saturday as we will preview even more action games in the works.

Update: The second part of our action-FPS preview is now live

Click on the image above to continue reading our 2009 PC game preview on action and FPS titles