For all the hoo-ha about switching Operation Flashpoint to a more action-orientated position in its third iteration - the looming spectre of Modern Warfare's success perhaps a little bit too much for Codemasters to resist - I still found myself face-down in a puddle of my own blood within six minutes of starting the game. Seriously, who could have guessed bullets were so dangerous. Realism is a word often bandied about in the games industry without any genuine consideration to what it means. Is Operation Flashpoint: Red River realistic? No, because no matter how many times you get shot in the chest you can, provided you're still clinging to life, recover by waving a closed medikit around in front of you for fifteen seconds. Advertisement Compared to Call of Duty and its ilk, however, Red River presents a fairly authentic portrayal of a contemporary middle-eastern conflict, albeit one where you spend the second half of the game knocking back wave upon wave of Chinese soldiers. Bullets drop the further they're asked to travel, enemies crumple to the ground after being shot once, and the wide-open expanse of natural geography is not precisely coordinated for maximum set-piece potential.


Minimum Requirement: Windows XP SP3/Vista/7 Pentium 4 2.4 GHz 2 GB RAM 2 GB hard disk space Video Card (ATI hd 4670 or vga 9600gt)