The game does not allow you to save anywhere and has a checkpoint (rally point) system that operates differently based on the difficulty. There is Normal (still hard), Experienced and Hardcore.

On Normal you can have your wounds healed, dead teammates revived at checkpoints and various in-game aids will help you to find and eliminate your targets. On Experienced things get harder, the team no longer respawn and you still have a lot of your helpful aids. On Hardcore, you’re on your own in terms of game aids and all the previous rules of Experienced apply. Hardcore is the mode that you really want to play the game in if you’re a fan of the original or that you think the game’s too easy on Normal or Experienced. It’s vicious and it’s brutal, just like war.

Graphics

The Ego Engine manages to do a pretty good job on the 220 kilometres squared map of Skira. It’s putting down a decent frame rate with only one noticeable hiccup through a lot of different play-tests from various maps and heavy engagements. It creates a varied terrain with lots of different engagement areas and static emplacements/villages/towns on the massive island. Dense packed forests give way to lush valleys and there’s a real feeling of Skira being a true place in the world. The water looks slightly rough and there’s a lack of detail on many of the textures, but it’s a king compared to Operation Flashpoint and so on. The day/night cycle and various touches as a helicopter picks up dust from its rotor blades on the ground below are all well done.

A moonlit night is something to behold in the game, with the stark white of the moon washing the ground below in an almost ghostly light. The lighting is one of the high points of the game, the next high point is the use of smoke, smoke in this game is truly excellent and it doesn’t impact the frame-rate one little bit.

Character models are nicely done and there’s a lot of authentic detail here on the weapons and equipment. The vehicles are likewise, very accurate. There are some nice touches such as working navigational lights on the choppers and various control surfaces display proper movement.

Animations

There’s a nice level of animation detail here, they don’t look stiff and from the soldiers to the vehicles, there’s a lot of detail that the developers put in to make things look authentic. Setting up a Javelin for instance, it doesn’t just appear on your shoulder, this thing takes time to get up and running. Reloading and swapping weapons has the same meticulous attention to animation detail too. There is a nice level of physical animation too, when soldiers are hit by gunfire, they react to it, it’s a solid oomph and sometimes a powerful weapon and knock them off their feet or tear limbs off in the case of the Light .50 cal anti-material sniper rifle.

Physics

Dragon Rising offers something a little different in terms of physics; it offers you a fairly realistic take on it. Bodies do not obey the laws of Hollywood Physics and nor do vehicles, though it’s possible to get the engine to do some odd things now and then when you hit a rock at the wrong angle in a Hummer and end up flipping A-Team style through the air only to land on the roof and have to search for a new vehicle. Yeah, no Halo-style flipping here, once your vehicle is in a position you can’t recover from, it’s pretty much useless and no amount of trying to bump into it with other vehicles will right it. Especially helicopters, so you have been warned. You can repair damaged vehicles though, which is good if you can still gain access to them. Weapon hits are modelled realistically too, bullet drop, mass and weight as well as wind are all taken into account and if you’re using a sniper rifle, and it’s time to learn how to use the sight too.

AI

The AI in Dragon Rising is a curious thing. On foot, it’s pretty damn good. The allied AI is useful and often they will make sure you survive, coming to help out if they’re close enough and you’re down. Sometimes they have a moment where they forget how to help you, even though you’re screaming for a Medic and in this respect they’re almost scarily human and like playing with certain human allies in cooperative. They use their tactics and setting a squad to a Wedge Formation with a Combat Spread allows you to see USMC tactics in action, used to cross open ground and so on. In a vehicle they can be decent as well, when they’re not parked across a couple of rocks on the beach trying to move a stuck car. There’s a fairly decent obstacle avoidance AI in action and when it works, it’s actually pretty slick. When it fails though, you’d wished you’d driven the damn car yourself.