What further hurts is how it's almost completely infantry-focused. The game and its trailers do a good job of teasing you with constant images of glorious multi-role assaults involving swarms of infantry, tanks, jeeps, and aircraft, yet almost all of the missions are set up with the expectation that you'll burn through without using any of these vehicles. Sure, in a few of them you can either assassinate the crew of a jeep and commandeer it, or hop in the driver's seat of a friendly tank and boot the existing crew out, but the setup of the missions rarely provide you with the opportunity to do so. On one occasion, we even saw the scripting of a mission break because my partner and I approached an enemy base from the 'wrong side' using a tank we had stolen in co-op mode, resulting in 30 minutes of driving around aimlessly until we finally found the missing trigger to fix the scripting and continue the mission.

Squad control, another strong point of the other games, has been seriously cut back as well. You only control up three other squad members at any given time (with an occasional fourth 'group' for controlling hostages or VIPs in certain cases) using either a four-direction "command wheel" system, or a mouse-driven waypoint system from a map screen.

Using these you can issue specific orders such as to flank a given, change formation and rule of engagement settings, follow a given target, and so on. Unfortunately the system is still a bit clunky; I had a hard time consistently finding the option to get the team medic to heal me without having to jump to the map screen, and while you can tell your teammates to mount vehicles, you can't explicitly specify which position you want them in. This is extra-annoying if you rolled a jeep up for the sole purpose of laying down fire support and you want someone else to get in and man the turret while you flank around on foot.

I would've been happier with more of a balance between the console-friendly approach, and the "YOU, go HERE and do THIS" system the other games have used. In addition, be prepared for the AI to behave a bit unpredictably to some of your orders thanks to some rather 'interesting' pathfinding code.

And that's ultimately the problem with the game. Yes, it's quite pretty and does a fairly good job as a run-and-gun shooter. It's a lot more action-oriented, and feels more like Rainbow Six: Vegas in some respects than the old, slightly clunky movement system the other games in the series have used (there's no 'cover' system per-say, although your character can take a lot more punishment before going down). And yes, it even ships with a full campaign co-op mode, which is probably the only reason I kept playing it for as long as I did.

Yet somehow, the entire experience feels hollow. I never quite felt as immersed as I would with the previous games (the slightly skewed field of vision may have had something to do with it), and the missions just start feeling too repetitive to be consistently enjoyable over the long-term. The game does have a complimentary mission editor which is fairly easy to get up and running (and thankfully is a lot more verbose than I was expecting; console owners will be missing out here), but sadly a game's merits can't lie exclusively within its ability to support user-created content.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a decent game. You'll undoubtedly get a fair amount of fun out of the combat system, co-operative play, and the vehicular action (for the rare times you can actually get your hands on a vehicle). Beyond that however, expect to be let down by the limited number of repetitive missions, the awkward AI and squad management, and the almost nonexistent storyline. Codemasters has proven that you can take a game like the original Operation Flashpoint, put it on the consoles, and make it playable - but that alone is not good enough.