Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising is a pretty cool game. I admittedly consider it imperfect and more than a bit buggy, but the game’s heart is definitely in the right place, and the co-op gameplay offered tremendous of fun for my local LAN gaming buddies. Hence, I was pleasantly surprised when Novalogic announced that an expansion for the game was impending, hot on the heels of the original release and delivering a considerable amount of new content in quite a short window of development time. Naturally I jumped all over the chance to get a first-hand report of the action through the multiplayer beta test currently running, and came away with some pretty damn good impressions – obviously outlined in this article.

To get started, Joint Ops: Escalation takes its action into new areas by branching out into different parts of Asia. The conflict with the Indonesian rebels has spilled out into other locations, prompting the Joint Ops forces to increase their deployment of troops and vehicles. Escalation promises new, original locations to fight in, including spaceports and airports, rocket launch facilities, thick jungles, and oh-so-much more, with a gamut of new vehicles and weapons to toy with. As I dived into the action, I noticed (and expected) that the game itself looked and played almost exactly the same as the original, but thanks to all of the new crap added, will the expansion have enough content to make purchasing it worthwhile? Let’s take a look at some of the stuff I witnessed during Escalation’s beta period.

The first and most significant change is the new missions. Throughout the beta, the official servers have run through a variety of new maps to show off the improvements made to level design, and I was definitely impressed with what I saw. Some of the maps I had a chance to toot around on included a competitive maps set in an elaborate jungle, with thick trees and grass that encourage close-range combat due to the impeded visibility, a wide-open wasteland with destroyed refineries, roads, and bridges, and, of course, a number of absolutely huge multi-terrain maps that demanded the use of air and ground vehicles to get from one point to the next. The map design has really been improved since the somewhat barren Joint Ops days, with the jungle-oriented maps having soupy rivers and thick levels of underbrush to wade through, the aforementioned “wasteland” level being littered with flaming debris and a generally desolate atmosphere, and even the city-oriented levels featuring quite a bit more than basic sets of buildings that have been copied and pasted. A much more significant attention to detail seems to have definitely been put into the expansion’s maps, making for a much more immersive experience. I was also granted the opportunity to play on a few of the co-operative maps the game is expected to ship with, and was quite satisfied with the implementation of vehicles, objectives, and number of no-good filthy terrorists crammed into the levels.

Of course, the next thing that most people will be fawning over is the weapons, and this expansion definitely delivers with new content in this department. A whole bunch of new general weapons have made an entrance into the game, including the G36, P90, and a couple of new pistols, but the classes have also been spiced up a little to make things more interesting. Of significant note, the generic “Rilfeman” class is no longer capable of carrying a rocket launcher, leaving the entire task up to engineers. Engineers can now select from the standard RPG or AT4 weapon (depending on which team they’re playing for), but can now also equip the deadly Javelin missile launcher for some extra anti-armor punch. A couple of other new equipment options have also been added, such as body armor for extra protection, and an automatically-deploying parachute for those irritating times when your finger accidentally pokes the “use” key while zooming around in a chopper at an altitude of 1,000 feet. Another equipment change worth noting is that bullet types can now be selected for certain weapons, so players can choose between bullets best against armor, soft targets, or a mix of both.

Of course, my personal favorite additions presented by the expansion pack are the new vehicles offered up for use. A complaint of mine about the original was that, aside from the amphibious armored transports, there was nothing that could be even remotely classified as a “tank”. That’s changed in Escalation, as each side now has their own selection of tanks to choose from on certain maps. These tanks offer three slots (driver, gunner, and a spotter manning a machinegun turret up top) and are very difficult to stop without heavy weapons and are capable of dealing a great amount of damage. The physics on the tanks was a little quirky (catching air time when I drove straight up a cliff and back down again was a little odd), but overall the handling felt very good, and it was really damn cool to see a tank column rolling across the landscape. Of course, there are other new vehicles as well, including a couple of new choppers, a mobile SAM launcher, and, best of all, dirt bikes (which made me feel nostalgic for the ancient days of Motocross GP), so I’m really happy with the sheer amount of stuff to play with, and can’t wait to see the full effect of large numbers of these new vehicles interacting with one-another when the final version of the expansion is released. On another positive note, the third person camera for vehicles has now been vastly improved (it’s a lot more than just a basic over-the-shoulder cam now, and actually shows the entire vehicle), so be sure to try out that F4 button every once in awhile once the final has been released.

While I didn’t pay too close attention to the graphical enhancements built into Escalation (the Joint Ops engine looks pretty spiffy as it is), there were a few effects that had some obvious improvements or changes. Flame effects and explosions in general have been beefed up; the new vehicles had a very nice level of detail (I especially liked seeing the treads on tanks conform to the landscape), and some cool new heat-blur effects have been built into the engine for use when a machinegun overheats (yes, mounted .50-cal’s can overheat now) or when something gets set ablaze. The new landscapes are also looking really great, but overall, the graphical improvements to Escalation appear to be minor tweaks and changes to keep the experience somewhat fresh. While these enhancements are definitely a good thing, I hope the development team also focuses on optimizing the engine a bit more between now and release. I still ran into the same weird framerate drops that plagued the original, making the game run great one second and incredibly poor the next. The combat also still feels jumpy, and I found it hard to get feedback on if I was actually hitting my target or not (usually not, as evidenced by my terrible kills-to-death ratio), and sometimes I’d even have a clear bead on somebody, but wouldn’t be able to kill him after extensively laying into him with a heavy weapon. I suppose this kind of thing is par for the course for a large-scale warfare simulator (especially one whose expansion is still in beta), but I still feel the engine as a whole could use a little touching up to make for a better gameplay experience. I’ll be sure to take a closer look at how things have turned out once a final build of the game is in my hands.

Joint Ops: Escalation doesn’t look to be one of the most fulfilling expansions out there – aside from some added vehicles, weapons, and graphical effects, the only major amount of new content fans can expect from what I can see are the vast array of new missions. That said, this expansion is coming out fairly close to the time of the original game’s release, is not expected to cost a bundle to purchase, and the additions should be more than enough to keep fans happy (especially with the recently-released mapping tools). In the face of Halo 2, Half-Life 2, and the like, the release of Joint Operations: Escalation may end up being overlooked by a number of people, but personally I am looking forward to checking out the new experiences the development team promises to offer with their upcoming release – even moreso after having a taste of the action through the rapidly-developed-and-updated beta. Here’s hoping the final turns out well.