Through a single-player campaign of 11 missions you take control of a four-man squadron of US marines, taking on the Chinese army in an effort to free a Russian island taken over by the PLA. Each mission is divided into a handful of objectives, which you are free to make your way towards in pretty much any fashion you see fit: direct, as the crow flies through enemy machine-gun emplacements, or via sweeping detours around the island. The emphasis on realism means that, despite the contemporary weaponry, you're not guaranteed a headshot just because you lined one up perfectly. For players mollycoddled by recent FPS military titles this will be a rude awakening. Want to switch from an assault rifle to a bazooka? Then you'll have to sit through a painstaking 10-second animation in which you lay the weapon on the ground before uncasing a rocket and gingerly loading it. Every manoeuvre has to be carefully plotted, closing distance before attacking, making use of terrain and the islands copious foliage cover, thinking like a soldier rather than an action game hero.
As with all of Codies' recent output, Dragon Rising's presentation is sparse yet exemplary. The studio knows how to create maximum impact at minimal expense and as such, the simple, economic motion graphics the flit across the screen, introducing the background to the conflict, or displaying campaign stats during load times pack more impact than a thousand pre-rendered cut-scenes. There's no soundtrack in the game outside of the haunting melody that backs the menu screens, but the game's front-end is so effective that it colours the whole experience, setting the tone for the missions it embeds.
Dragon Rising also features a multiplayer mode. In storyline co-op mode, up to 4 players can play through the singleplayer campaign together. There are also the pure multiplayer modes Annihilation and Infiltration