Looks like I'm in for a bit of a walk...
Last weekend as I was browsing my local games shop I came across a copy of Operation Flashpoint : Dragon rising. Now I've never played any of the previous titles in the series before, so I bought a copy for my 360.
The case promised that the game would put you as close to war as you would ever want to get, and now that I've played it I can certainly agree with them. However if I was going to get close to war in my decidedly un-military trained self then it would help if I had a bit of assistance, especially as I'm placed in charge of three other men.The first mission of the game placed me directly onto a very nicely rendered landscape with my 'squad', having been told to take out a target on the map. I spent a few seconds moving myself around, seeing what the world had to offer and then was ready for what they had to throw at me. Now the game is pretty realistic, too realistic some might argue especially as I spent the next 20 minutes walking to a target some distance away only to be killed at my first encounter with the enemy.
Unfortunately the games makers have neglected to provide the new gamer with much in the way of training or hand holding apart from the odd line of text here and there. Having played the same mission for the next 30 minutes or so I finally worked out that actually they wanted me to proceed to a target which was considerably nearer, about 30 seconds walk away from where I was dropped.
You might be reading this thinking that I must be pretty new to gaming to get fooled by such an easy problem, but having spent many years playing games, with first person military themed shooters being a favourite of mine I would have to disagree with you.
Operation Flashpoint has garnered some pretty good reviews and at the time of writing has a metacritic score of 76 out of 100, placing it a good way up the list of game reviews. I think that once you get into the game it will turn out to be an enjoyable experience, but the distinct lack of a tutorial at the beginning means that it has a very steep learning curve which is likely to put off less experienced gamers.
Now being a person that conducts gameplay research on many different game types I can almost guarantee that if the game had been run through some usability testing with gamers of a wide range of ability, not just expert players, then this would have been picked up very quickly and an in-depth tutorial could have been added relatively easily to the game, widening its appeal.
As the game stands now it is a great example of an in-depth military shooter I just wonder how many more people could be enjoying it if had a made itself a bit more accessible with a good quality tutorial. After all if your are going to be thrown out into the middle of a war zone you would hope that you would receive a bit more help than "here's your gun, now go and shoot the bad guys…"
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