Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: August 22, 2002

Most recent military simulations share one thing: they deal with conventional warfare. Admittedly, major conflicts typically involve huge, organized forces, but most warfare you read about in newspapers can be classified as small-scale “guerilla operations.” Keeping that in mind – and fresh off the success of last year’s Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis – game publisher Codemasters has surrendered to the public’s desire for increasingly realistic scenarios using the flexible Flashpoint engine. First came Operation Flashpoint Gold Edition, which included a Soviet campaign, and now the developers at Bohemia Interactive have released their second official add-on campaign, this time establishing players as freedom fighters facing overwhelming Soviet forces. Their newest release, Operation Flashpoint: Resistance, once again breaks new ground, bringing forward one of the first realistic guerilla warfare titles of its kind.

Resistance takes place a few years prior to the events in Cold War Crisis. During the early 1980s in the Independent Republic of Nogovna (a fictional island nation loosely based on the Balkan region near Russia), ex-special forces soldier Victor Troska has a civilian life and job – and is happy to be away from the horrors of war. Suddenly, the local radio reports that Soviet forces have decided to invade Nogovna and install their communist rulers in place of the democratically elected government. Although the President of Nogovna frantically requests assistance from the international community, other countries do not wish to lock horns with the powerful Soviets, and Nogovna falls. Victor finds himself forced to take up arms again as he joins the resistance to win back his country from its invaders.

Bohemia’s title contains many of the award-winning elements of Cold War Crisis along with some new additions. Players control their character from both a first- and third-person perspective, and can switch to a special overhead command view in order to instruct units on the battlefield. Numerous vehicles can be commandeered, from civilian cars and tractors to military tanks, transports, fighters and helicopters. Resistance also adds new vehicles like motorcycles, cars and boats to the equation as well as several new weapons, including the Sa61 Scorpion, the Glock 17 and the XM-177E2 rifle. Graphically, the developers have revamped the Flashpoint engine, allowing for higher-quality textures, detailed trees and foliage, and realistic faces. The island of Nogovna itself consists of 100 square kilometers of all-new territory, complete with dozens of towns and villages.

As in Cold War Crisis, there are three modes of gameplay: Campaign, Single-Player Missions and Multiplayer. The Resistance campaign follows Victor through 20 branching scenarios as he leads his rebel troops to win back Nogovna from the Soviets. Five bonus single-player missions also come with this release, including attack helicopter and transport piloting, humvee driving, convoy protection and a massive combined arms assault with dozens of units. (The last mission requires at least a 1 GHz machine.) Finally, the multiplayer mode in Resistance is quite improved from its predecessor, incorporating nine new maps and a built-in GameSpy matching service.