Operation Flashpoint

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (OFP) is a critically acclaimed tactical shooter and battlefield simulator released in 2001. The single-player campaign is set in an alternate history 1985, and puts the player in the role of an American soldier in a (non-nuclear) confrontation with Soviet forces, with historically accurate weapons, equipment and vehicles from that time. Over the span of a long in-game campaign, a player will find him or herself driving trucks and jeeps, crewing tanks, and even flying helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft into combat, but most missions are infantry combat from a grunt's eye view. Weapon damage is modeled fairly realistically, making combat an extremely dangerous affair for the player, requiring caution and the use of tactics for success.

An add-on campaign Red Hammer, which was controversially designed by Codemasters (the company responsible for the distribution of the original game) instead of BIS, depicts the same conflict, but places the player in the role of a Russian rather than American soldier who (somewhat ridiculously) during the course of the campaign switches from his steadfast fight against American forces to battling his own countrymen in order to pave the way for an American take-over of the island.

Another add-on, Resistance, is set three years before the actions in the two preceding games. The player plays the role of an ex-Special Operations soldier. The player has to liberate his native island, invaded by the Soviet Union. Being the leader of a ramshackle uprising, you must use your resourcefulness to salvage and gather as many weapons and as much ammunition from your fallen enemies to supplement your supplies. The Resistance expansion pack also updates the graphics, sounds and multiplayer mechanics, adding much more than the Red Hammer expansion and thus drastically improving the original game.

Missions in OPF are not by any means limited to the usual co-operative Single-Player Campaign and conventional multiplayer missions such as Capture the Flag (two teams scoring points by seizing the flag in the centre of the map and returning it to their flagpole) and Deathmatch (all vs. all in a veritable bloodbath). A server host has the ability to choose co-operative multiplayer missions where a team of human players works in tandem to accomplish specific objectives, as well as the Capture The Island (CTI) mode where two teams of human players, or alternatively one team of humans and one team controlled by AI, have the ability to build their own bases complete with basic defences, train AI infantry units, build empty or AI-crewed vehicles and clash in large-scale battles.
There are hundreds of other game types, also.

Operation Flashpoint also includes an in-game mission editor which can be used to create anything from simple missions (with some practice and/or by using some of the extra tools that are available on the web) to professional missions or "campaigns" (groups of missions with an overall storyline). Most missions are highly scripted but take place in a large game world. The game world doesn't consist of maps as most do, rather the events happen on open islands. These islands are large; if you attempted to travel from one end to the other on foot it would take well over two hours, depending on the island.

Although Operation Flashpoint's fan base is somewhat smaller to that of wider-audience first-person shooters like Half-Life or Quake (most likely due to its realism and difficulty level being an undesirable factor for some gamers), it is still very active; a great number of missions (10000+) created using Flashpoint's mission editor are available for download on fan pages, and fan created modss (25+) and addons (2000+) have already been released as well as many still in progress.
There have also been a few user -made graphical improvements to the game, adding directx 8 and 9 effects such as reflection and so on.

Operation Flashpoint was developed by Bohemia Interactive Studio (BIS) and distributed world-wide by Codemasters.

The sequel, Operation Flashpoint 2 (OFP2), is due to come out in 2006.

System Requirements: Minimum: Pentium II 400 MHz, 64MB RAM, Windows 95/98, DirectX 8.0, 8 MB 3D accelerator, sound card, 2x CD-ROM drive, 300 MB hard-disk space - NB - Resistance and newer user made mods require higher specs.