The AI in OFP is one of the best we've ever seen. Enemy as well as friendly soldiers seem to react to nearly every situation in an appropriate way. They often use real military tactics to achieve their goals and this proves to be highly effective (and very annoying when it's used against you). This is the first game where you can be part of an AI squad and still feel like you're playing alongside real human players. They fight smart, give cover-fire, follow commands very well (even saboteur missions can be done by AI) and even make (human-like) mistakes.

It isn't all about shooting, of course. There are also mines and bombs that you can use. Some missions will require that you plant explosives on selected targets. You will also have to, at various times, hack into computers, disable security systems, pick locks, and turn off alarms. Watch out for security cameras! They are more dangerous than an enemy sniper.

Gameplay in the single-player mode consists of maneuvering one’s Delta Force operative (yes, the U.S. army has apparently decided that in the future all commando operations will be conducted solo) around until a black speck appears on the horizon. Then it’s switch to sniper mode, verify that the dot is a terrorist, eliminate him, and move on. I’m serious. In addition to the ability to snipe from over half a mile away, enemy AI is ridiculously easy in this game. And I don’t just mean that the bad guys cannot coordinate their efforts to get rid of a lone Special Forces soldier. I mean that if a player turns a corner, sees an enemy, and then retreats the terrorist will probably act as though nothing happened. [...]

Ever since Spec Ops appeared on the shop shelves there has been a steady flow of soldier sims hitting the market. All offer tactical squad based gameplay viewed via both a first and third person perspective and most support multiplayer LAN and online gaming. But Operation Flashpoint :Cold War Crisis to give it if’s full title has one major element that no other soldier sim can boast. You can drive vehicles. Not just land based ones either oh no. Everything from jeeps to tanks, PT Boats to troop carrying helicopters. You can even fly a Super Cobra chopper.

Q3. How many maps can we expect for single and multiplayer gameplay?

A3. First of all, all the maps are based on locations in Korea. Instead of exact replications of the locations, we've decided to modify them so that they are suitable for gameplay. Take-Down will have a total of 26 maps excluding training maps. Our fundamental development concept for the Scarlet Project is to put a greater emphasis on multiplayer gameplay, so you will see more multiplayer maps than single-player campaign maps.

What special features can we look forward to from Operation Flashpoint?

Huge and detailed outdoor 3D environments. Real time commanding of up to 12 soldiers. Over 30 playable vehicles, including cars, tanks, helicopters and even planes and boats. There's also an extensive selection of infantry equipment from the Cold War period. The game's open architecture enables the gaming community to create their own missions or even campaigns with complex AI and physical simulation.

Stomped: What can your tell us about the gameplay features of Normandy?

Namaksy: For the most part it is your standard FPS style shooter. It just happens to have a historical background. One of the major things we did was work with the AI to come up with a cover node system. It allows the enemies to have the ability to run to locations and use the terrain / buildings as cover. Enemies just do not run at you, if they know they can shoot you from corner of the building they will use that.

GameSpy: Could you describe the inspiration behind Lifeless?

David Rivera Lagettie: The song Lifeless has a very strong meaning to myself personally as well the people involved in the Lifeless story. Lifeless was actually written for a soldier who tragically died in 1971 in Vietnam -- Sgt Thomas Birnie -- he served in 2 tours of Vietnam. The second tour he met up with my father and became extremely good friends over a few years as part of the 173rd Airborne. They were helping each other survive this war to get home to their families and to lead a normal life. [...]

If you are the type of gamer that enjoys a story line, this game is perfect for you, as you progress through the levels, you learn more about what is going on which makes for a great sense of involvement and achievement, this game is completely enthralling.

Bohemia Interactive Studios has a unique insight into the subject matter - it is based in Prague and the development team is said to include ex-army members. Possibly as a result, Flashpoint is more like Counter-Strike than Quake - you can be killed by a small number of hits, and running around firing from the hip is just not accurate at all (or sensible). Well-produced and potentially epic in scale, OFP is aimed at the gamers who enjoy strategy, tactics and straightforward FPS bloodlust.

GP: How many weapons character can carry at once? Do the weapons have primary and secondary fire-mode?

PS: Always only one primary weapon (according to specialization assignment), one secondary weapon (handgun), a knife (or shovel for the Russian Spetznaz!) and also according to the specialization the support weapons and devices like grenades/grenade launchers, silencer for both main and secondary weapon, optics, surveillance devices…

Each mission will have specific objectives in terms of infiltration, execution, and exfiltration. The last part, exfiltration, is what made Medal of Honor so brilliant. What this means is the mission isn't over once the objective has been completed. In order for you to be successful, you have to be able to get out of hostile territory and back on safe ground.

Later on you get to play with a tank and an assault helicopter, the latter giving you a sense of the size of the theatre you're playing in; each level's enormous. It's gratifying to get up to a high altitude and rain missiles down on ant-sized tanks, knowing that you could always land the helicopter, commandeer your own tank and take them on at ground level.

Current design includes well over 20 different vehicles, all of which can be controlled by the player. Every vehicle has its own, distinct physics model. Planes fly, tanks crash through barbed wire, and a battleship can hold up to four players at once, each operating gun turrets or anti-aircraft artillery.

1. Fixes the wrong team/wrong name issue when people join/leave while a server is cycling.
2. Adds player ranks to the player list in the game, assuming it's stat-hosted.
3. Adds a scroll-down feature to the player list so you can see everyone's scores in a 50 player game.
4. MP5s now do decent damage against Kevlar, so they're viable weapons. Use 'em, abuse 'em.
5. Speed cheat no longer works.

Project IGI is a refreshing take on the tactical shooter market but ultimately a flawed one. Great ideas like flight sim quality terrain and viewing distances, innovative entry points, open-ended approaches to solving missions and great weapon modeling are hampered by bad AI, over scripting, the lack of the ability to save during a mission and the complete lack of multiplayer of any kind. Oops, forgot to mention that last one. It's a minor point, but co-op multiplayer would've been fun. Buy IGI at your own risk and know what you're getting, a flawed gem in the tactical shooter world.

Redstorm Entertainment has confirmed with the Adrenaline Vault that it is in discussions to release a Korean-developed Rainbow Six title in the U.S. Featuring 26 Korean-themed maps and scheduled for a June 2001 release, the game is being created at design studio Kama. Keep a watch on this space for further news regarding this product. The Rainbow Six series is comprised of first-person tactical combat offerings in which gamers lead a multinational unit dedicated to stamping out terrorism around the globe. The most recent release in the series was R6:COE, in which gamers learn about counter-terrorist activities via reference materials and then administer the information in actual missions.

"Sniping has been modelled to near perfection in Land Warrior, not only is ability specific to a character your shooting position also effects your aim. Shoot standing up and your aim wobbles, kneel down and the wobble is reduced, lie down and its steadier still."

Possibly the biggest 'gimmick' that this game uses is the engine. It will quickly become obvious after a few missions that the engine is based on a flight simulator -- the maps are huge . And these huge maps are dotted with generous numbers of buildings, fences, walls, enemies, tanks, and underground lair entrances.

The intuitive gameplay is backed up by an impressive game engine, which gives you entire islands to roam over, complete with villages, dirt tracks, forests and mountains. At first the photographic textures can be rather jarring, and the good old fashioned bitmapped trees look a little of place, but before long you won't even notice.

Overall the effect is highly immersive, with vast draw distances, detailed terrain and vehicles, impressive lighting effects and a true day and night cycle. Animations are mostly very good, and the soldiers move, shoot and die in a believable way. Even the menu features impressive real-time rendered scenery in the background, complete with rusting burnt out trucks, marching soldiers and glorious sunsets.

Again, all this could be due to the DF: Land Warrior emphasis on realism. Maybe terrorists are so thick that a single, well-trained soldier can wade through a few dozen in a period of minutes without suffering more than a callous on his trigger finger, but somehow I doubt it. This simple-mindedness of the enemy AI heavily undermines the feeling of tension in missions, defeating the entire point of the game.

It's a pity that the designers didn't spend more time on the AI because, in many other ways, they've done a great job. The levels are big and if there is a genuine element of tactical strategy in the game, it comes in the player deciding how use the rolling territory and various weapons to their greatest utility.

Although IGI sports a vast array of weaponry (for a full run down, see box), the low-tech combat knife, the peerless silenced HK MP5 and the Dragunov sniper rifle will get you through practically anything. Surprisingly, the HK is the only silenced weapon available in the game; this attribute alone should make it the first weapon of choice over medium or short distances. The HK also boasts a secondary zoom function and, while it is nowhere near as potent as that sported by the sniper rifle, it is extremely handy when it comes to ensuring pinpoint accuracy and one shot, one kill takedowns.

How many AI players can be in a multiplayer game?

Marek: In the games we're currently testing and playing, there are numbers like 20 AI soldiers in one mission with some vehicles. Basically, the number of AI units is limited by speed of server and connection. I don't think in real conditions and with current computers you can see more than one hundred units total on the battlefield in near future.

Team Factor lets you select from three different teams, each with its own subunits, soldiers, and specialized set of weapons. Once the action begins, all three teams must complete a series of objectives that have been designed in a way that prevents two teams from forming an alliance and taking on the single remaining team. Of course, you're also forced to decide whether you want to take a more offensive approach and tackle the mission objectives right away or stay back and form a defense to make it difficult for other teams to complete their objectives. How well you perform in a mission factors into what kind of weapons you have access to in later missions.

Only the Allied forces are going to be available in the single player game, but there's also a multi-player aspect. In this you'll be able to take control of either side for a desert-based ruckus. You can either supervise a team of men, as in the single player game, or take command of just one soldier. A class-based system is applied, so you'll have to careful to select a character that matches both your mission needs and style of play.

The locations in the game are small, but modern, villages and towns set in lush European countryside. When I look at these bomb damaged villages, perhaps populated only by an APC parked on the road surrounded by troops, I can't help but think of the conflict that tore apart Yugoslavia. The images are very similar. It's to the credit of Bohemian that the very realistic warfare presented in this setting never seems glorified and captures the fear and danger implicit in such conflicts. The use of photorealistic textures, beautiful realtime light/shadow effects, convincing weapons technology and natural ambient sounds heightens the sense of realism that this game conveys.

This is a drug raid, my second attempt at building custom Swat3 levels! The level is kinda small, and runs kinda slow at times. But playing this mission has been pretty fun. There are two available points of entry, some nice music, and a lot of nice little tid bits strewn about. Hope you people out there have fun playing this one, its size is close to 7Mb!

The variations of gameplay alone would make this title a winner. Levels switch between large-scale assaults to small Special Forces infiltration to the sort of vehicle attack mentioned above. As the game progresses you will eventually find yourself in charge of your own unit which you must command to complete different objectives. Luckily the title uses a radio or "squad key" system to help with communication (similar in a way to the one seen in certain Half-Life MODs). This helps to keep the information flow between groups active and can be useful when wanting to make other squad members aware of incoming enemies, neutralised threats and such.

The weapons are many and varied in Operation Flashpoint, ranging from rifles to artillery fire. Each has its own feel and you can adjust your rate-of-fire settings - allowing you crack off a single shot or go fully automatic. The weapon system is more realistic than Counter-Strike's, so it will take a while to get used to. You can also steal any weapon that you find lying around and use it for your own purposes - handy for when you run out of ammo.

The first thing that grabs you about IGI is the scenery. Now being run by a flight-simulator engine may seem an odd move for a FPS game but I think it was a good one. It’s done away with the claustrophobic indoor levels of the Quake Era and bought the FPS outside for a change. Most levels take place outside, and with the flight-sim engine, boy does outside look nice! Horizons flow on forever, mountains go up and down, up and down, and each and every bump in the horizon is still there even when you walk up to it. That’s right you can walk as far as the horizon… and further.

Project IGI is really hard. Not challenging hard, but stupidly unfair hard - living proof that the game was never play balanced. To wit: Programmers realized that you'd cut through levels like butter if you had a sniper rifle, so they denied you that equipment. They realized that a save feature might make the game too easy, so you can only save between levels. For the same reason you don't start with a sniper rifle, you don't keep equipment you've gathered from mission to mission, even though some missions all take place at the same location, one after the other.

The best feature of Operation Flashpoint is the ability to jump into any working vehicle that you find. Find a simple road car and you can steal it, so you can race across the immense map where the missions take place. You can jump into tanks, trucks and helicopters and use them to aid the American cause. So, while in one mission you may have to jump into a helicopter, in another you can find yourself charging around in a hulk of metal as a tank commander.

Innerloop has engendered some nice visual touches as well, like shrapnel that erupts from enemy fire that strikes crates, walls, and terrain. Rain and fog are employed to good effect, and the between-mission movies -- while unintentionally silly -- make effective use of the game's graphics engine.