Learning curve is high and so is the fun!
User Rating: 9 | Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising PC
the good: 1) story / setting: there's no single player mode to this game accept the training missions which are fun but not the selling point of this game. the multi player is what joint ops focuses on and i do like the setting and brief story. you are in indonesia which is a nice change from all the ww2 fps games or the sci-fi settings of other fps games. the weapons look and handle better than most of the other games with a far more "real" feel to them. 2) multi-player: the biggest selling point to joint ops is it's ability to host up to 150 players. joint ops was not marketed very well imo but there are enough gamers who jumped on board to fillup a 150 server during prime time hours. the game modes are awesome and a ton of fun. there is much emphisis on team work in this game as being the lone gun-man will only serve to get you owned. maps have a great amountof detail including many interesting ways to attack and defend areas of importance. 3) maps: as far as war games go in the fps genre these are the best maps i have ever played. they are lush with lots of detail. the graphics are not the highest quality you will ever find but they colors they used and how they worked the artwork makes the graphics in this game superior to a few of the boastfull high-end graphical packages like far cry or half-life 2. the maps are huge and filled with "cool" little things like rice patties that you can swim through and really make for spotting enemies difficult. 4) day & night: joint ops does a great job at slowly changing day into night and night into day and you feel it happening. in joint ops you have to adjust heavily for the change in time and it adds to the game greatly. 5) challenge: to become a competitive player in joint ops will take skill. this is not a load it up and blow *&^% up game. this is a game where one player who gets 100 kills in one round being the difference between your team winning or losing. you have to learn how to use the character classes in this game and use teamwork. 6) co-op: more fps games need this. joint ops fps is good but i wish you could do more adjusting on the amount of enemies and their level of diffculty without having to "mod" the game. 7) vehicles:there are a ton of vehicles in this game and many maps allow for all of your favorit types meaning water, land, AND air vehicls all in the same map. you get almost any kind of vehicle you can think of and it's a BLAST to drive and gun them. you are not safe in them either as pretty much every other fps allows. you can and will die while gunning or even driving. bullets fly through glass in this game and a gunner is not protected by some imaginary armor you are fully exposed. and vehicles play a HUGE part in multiplayer maps where you need to get from point A to point B as fast as you can where foot takes you several minutes and you die as opposed to a minute in a vehicle...then die. 8) graphics: graphics are great. they game doesn't have far cry or doom 3 callibur graphics where your video chip will pass out but they make up for it in great artwork and design. you will see lush jungles and forests, shores, beaches, villages in the middle of no where and man do they look like it to! the bad: 1) death: yes death is a bad thing, really? in this case i refer to the ability to die not death it self. you die very quickly in this game and it will take even the most advanced gamer considerable time to figure out how to stay alive. one shot seems to be all it takes to send you to the ground. shrapnel is about all you can take without collapsing imediatly. this does add realism to the game but i think too much. a bullet from some of the weapons in the game would not penetrate kevlar from long range or even kill a man without kevlar as easily as this game dictates. when you first play the game you will die A LOT. 2) co-op AI: they didn't include a way to up the amount of enemies you face in co-op without modding the game really. co-op can be very easy and joint ops could have been a game who's value is unmatched if you could have done this. 3) exposure and number of gamers: the word got out but not pushed hard about joint ops. the amount of advertising i think was weak and could have really made joint ops a game mentioned with the likes of counter-strike. you will find plenty of players just not the enormous amount many of us are used to from playing some of the other big boys. the ugly: 1) lag: there are times on a busy server you will get some realy bizzarer things happening. respawning in odd places, vehicles warping, players dying, guns not firing, things crashing, this can be a problem at times. doesn't happen to the point where you throw your monitor at the wall though which is a good thing. bottom line about joint ops is thatyou will have incredible fun playing this game with friends. this is also the best lan party fps i know of. with co-op and the huge maps it's easily a winner at any lan party. 
