A back story establishes Indonesia as a site where rebellion has festered and a UN task force is charged with trying to deal with this. Much like the single player portion of the game, this backstory, while plausible, is very much optional as the game's focus is on multiplayer mayhem.

M4 on the floor action.

Using a similar engine to Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, Joint Operations places you in combat with teams of up to 32 players a side spread over maps several kilometres wide. With 64 people on a server the combat is never too far away, even without riding vehicles into combat. This is very much Novalogic's answer to games like Battlefield 1942 and the game mechanics share a healthy degree of similarity. Both feature single-player modes that are more about learning how the engine works and rudimentary tactics before letting you loose in the multi-player environment where you quickly learn that life is short and respawning frequent.

Catching a lift in an APC- the fastest way to travel in small arms fire zones.

Game modes range from Team Death Match, Assault (where flags in important structures are fought over to gain the match-winning points), Team King of the Hill (where a single flag is fought over) and Co-operative mode where your team is pitted against a multitude of computer-driven opponents as you try to achieve a mission. We at Gameplanet had the most fun with the co-operative missions as they quickly promoted a sense of team play amongst the humans as the AI can be most brutal. In all of these modes you have a selection of classes you can play as which affects the weapons and other equipment you carry.

Somewhere in those trees, someone was shooting.
Hiding behind the buggy seemed the only safe thing to do.

Successful play requires you to realise what class your team needs the most and play that at the right time to make those skills count. However, as noted, initially the engagement range and lethality of the weapons mean that often you never see who killed you or indeed even survive long enough to make a difference as a team member. While medics can usually revive a fallen soldier on the field, this requires having a clued-up medic nearby - which is where the strength and weakness of this games lies. Play with a co-ordinated team and you will have a lot of fun; play with a team that either doesn't know what it is doing or, worse yet, has members actively trying to undermine the game and it all turns to custard quite quickly.

Inflateables allow you to whizz up shallow rivers quickly.
Just beware the noise factor of the outboard motor.

What does mitigate this somewhat is the fact that the game server lists are maintained in a propreitary service run by Novalogic, called Novaworld. People who misbehave too much can be banned from this service which goes a long way to curbing the worst behaviour. But you will still have to deal with idiots and overly jumpy teammates who will shoot before identifying their targets. (If only we could get a dollar for everytime a teammate shoots us in the back. Oy vey!)

The other corallary of being an online team game is that your connection matters. With relatively few New Zealand-based servers for the game and the pretty hefty demands 64 players can make on bandwidth, Joint Operations isn't suited to dialup players. The extra ping time alone to Australian servers makes for a frustrating experience even on fast narrowband. Adding an extra thirty milliseconds minimum thanks to a dialup connection would be hellishly bad, especially with the usually first shot lethal arsenal.

Squad commanders can use this map to set
waypoints and give commands.

A saving grace is the extra physics modelling the game does which gives you some grace in the form of accuracy penalties. Bullets will drop due to gravity over their trajectory, making long-range firing a trickier affair than many FPS games and regularly requiring you to volley your shots by firing above the target.

Your combat stance and whether you have braced the weapon against your shoulder further factors in to how accurate your fire is. This can often give the higher ping player something of a fighting chance, but in our opinion it just isn't worth the pain. Vehicles, as well, are very senstive to the ping time to server and driving them requires a steady ping to let you compensate with your reactions. Expect to do a lot of flying into hills and driving into trees till you get the hang of it.

Briefings are often quite detailed and interesting to read.
Certainly they ease the waiting while the mission loads.

That said, if you have broadband and want fast-paced combat this game does fit the bill extremely well. The thrill of riding on the exterior seats of a Littlebird helicopter into a hot landing zone, jumping off and, with your teammates, securing the landing zone for the transport chopper to come in is quite high. When the team work comes together like this, gameplay is a lot of fun despite the sometimes lunatic odds thrown against you. (One mission sees you coming back out of a mine to be greeted with 60-odd AI soldiers swarming your position. To say that Joint Operations gets intense is understating matters somewhat.)

Some of the dusk levels are quite pretty.
Nightvision is an essential tool on these missions.