Okay, so I'm not too big into realism. Getting shot once and dying is a pretty frustrating experience (so I'm told) and recreating that when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself doesn't seem to mesh very well. But! Fortunately for me and my $40, OF:DR doesn't make me want to kill myself in frustration.

OF:DR is a "hard" game. Bullets will fall realistically as they travel over long distances, enemies are likely to see you before you see them, and just making the mistake of not taking cover when you should can get you (or your teammates) killed; and that's the difficulty on normal mode. Hardcore takes it up a notch with a non-existent HUD and forcing you to use your map to figure out where your supposed to go. On top of that, the damage system is somehow more unforgiving and being told an enemy is in a certain direction means nothing because you have no visible compass. Despite all of this, the game never feels unfair.

Well, that's relative. Some will say that walking along peacefully, only to have the back of your skull blown out with no warning is unfair. And it is... to a degree. But chances are that you shouldn't have been frolicking about all willy-nilly and to the NPC that shot you, it likely looked like you were begging for it.

Yet it's these high stakes and sudden death scenarios that makes OF:DR so compelling.

The campaign provides a wide range of ways in which to taunt death, from blowing up enemy generators, destroying radar towers, to what is arguably the first non God-awful escort mission I have ever had the chance to play.It is short though (probably around 6-7 hours if you play with friends, like me), but definitely enjoyable, which makes the brevity agreeable. Furthering this is the bonus five or six missions that unlock later on, giving you another few hours of gameplay (all of which is available through co-op).

Replayability shows its wonderful, shiny face here too, with each mission allowing multiple approaches - even if the outcome is most always the same. This is in part due to the massive island, Skira (sounds like a monster movie), on which you play. The map and draw distance is impressive, upping ESIV: Oblivion in scale and quantity of foliage. Seriously, there is so much grass. So much. It's intense. Lying prone on the ground will often make you angry as the grass can and will get in your way, just like real life.


[So much grass!]

Speaking of lying down, the game does a great job of making you feel like people are trying to kill you and/or that you are being killed (if slowly, at times). Dirt splashes the screen when wild bullets smack into the ground next to your face, bullets sound appropriately lethal as they smash into the tree you're hiding behind, and the rattling and shaking when artillery hits near you is fittingly jarring. Suffice to say, the game can feel intense at times, delivering for once on giving you a legitimate feeling of the tension found on the battlefield.

However, the game has some obvious, glaring faults. Of the few technical problems I've run into, the most upsetting is that there are times when bullets simply won't do any damage. After seeing my blood crop up on my screen twice in a row with no consequence, even I was disappointed I wasn't dead. Similarly, the game alerts you to a proper hit with a small animation using your cross hair. White means wounded, red means they're dead. After seeing the same white animation literally eight times after firing on a man on the ground, I gave up in frustration. So did the rest of my team, who was also repeatedly puncturing the poor guy.

Gameplay faults reside in what are just poor choices: you can't move your head while you drive, it takes about a second for it to register driver movements, the command wheel is awkward and clunky on PC (likely to get you killed, more than anything), and for a game about realism I am incredibly annoyed that they follow the Half Life mentality of "your lower body not being at all visible = no problem."


[These things drive like poop]

The only other issue of note is the lack of (as of this writing) dedicated servers for the multiplayer, leaving most matches (particularly international servers) very, very laggy. Typical ping starts at 180 and seems to only multiply by 2 from there. Even so, game types (only two: Annihilation [Team Deathmatch] and Infiltration [Assault / Search and Destroy] ) are well done enough to be fun and the gameplay makes it feel different than most deathmatches you've engaged in before. Rumor has it that more modes will be available later on. This would be more forgivable if there were more than four maps, two per gametype, out of the box.

Quite frankly, what the f***? This dearth of content is unacceptable for a game that many have waited years for, and it just seems really cheap overall. The maps that are provided (and the geometry of the game in general) are well done however, if admittedly uninspired. That is to say that the one game that has legitimate reason to use the gritty brown-brown-gray color palette is the first I'm kind of disappointed is using it. That's because it doesn't represent real life very well, which is more than just dark, squint inducing colors.

But, all told, the game is fun. Difficulty obviously may discourage some players, but the game has made certain concessions so that fun can be the primary objective: a medic can remove all your wounds with the world's most amazing syringe, (on normal difficulty) enemies appear on your compass so you know their general direction, and you can stop yourself from bleeding out no matter where you're shot... somehow.

So, basically, it's good. OF:DR provides a fresh experience for those who want a brief realistic interlude before they jump back into the bullet sponge world of Call of Duty and it gives those who just want to really get a feel for a (fairly) accurate representation of real world combat. It has it's problems, but most of them aren't something that can't be patched later. In the mean time, none of them are deal breakers, just confusing as to how they managed to make it into what is an otherwise polished and solid game.

FOR THOSE IN NEED OF A GENERIC RATING SCALE: 7.9