Conflict: Desert Storm II - Back to Baghdad

"George Bush should go to war with Gotham Games for releasing this terorrizing piece of crap"

When the original CDS (Conflict Desert Storm) came out, it piqued my interest but the low scores it received kept me from checking it out. When CDS2 hit the shelves boasting improvements across the board, my friend and I thought it would be a good co-op game to spend the night with. Boy were we wrong... CDS2 just fails to be enjoyable in most any sense. There's nothing absolutely horrid about it, but hey; when you build something with mediocre parts, the result will be a mediocre product. The fact I spent $6.88 to rent the stupid thing didn't make me feel any better...

Concept: 0/10 At a Gotham Games board meeting: ''Guys, why don't we take advantage of the patriotism craze and make a sequel to that Desert Storm game from a few months ago? We'll just recycle the plot, throw in some generic gameplay, uninspired missions, and a slightly outdated graphics engine! Who cares if it isn't that good? We'll still make money!'' Hence the score...

Graphics: 7/10 They really weren't all that bad, to tell the truth. They just weren't good, either. I think average is the adjective I'm looking for. The environments were detailed enough, but the real problem was variety. When you have so few objects in the game, it isn't hard to make them look reasonably good. Everything you see can be summed up here: sand, rocks, brownish bricks, and the occasional stone wall of an installation. Oh yeah, and you can't forget barbed wire and the occasional vehicle you come across. Wow. On an even dimmer note, the enemy character models looked putrid. They lacked any semblance of detail, and you could count the number of them on one hand. The models in Half Life looked more impressive than this. They also include some blood and burning bodies(I'm not sure how they did that and still got the T rating, maybe because you're the good guy?) but it isn't anything impressive or over the top. Not to bash the game too much, your character models actually looked quite good, and you could tell one from the other. (That's right folks, they varied in size and appearance.) I also liked the way environments shifted from day to night, this was done very well. You can tell how intense the sun is in Iraq's desert wasteland, and at night you can see your character's breath. This touch of realism adds credibility to the game. The cutscenes were fairly good too. I just loved the opener, where the camera zooms in on an Iraqi soldier just in time for him to take one right in the kisser (blood splatters and all) courtesy of your sniper.

Sound: 7/10 Just like the graphics, this has run of the mill written all over it. Gunfire is fine, but nothing that will knock your socks off. The soundtrack is low key and to tell you the truth I can't remember any of it. There are explosions, yet they are all somehow unsatisfactory. The booms just weren't big enough, I guess. Lastly, I would have liked there to be more spoken dialogue throughout the course of the game, especially during combat. I never heard any Arabic (though I'm not saying it isn't there at all since I did not finish the game) and your teammates must be deaf mutes, because they don't talk either.

Gameplay: 6/10 Ugh. What happened here? Managing your squad is an abysmal experience, with patchy AI and a less than perfect command interface. It's even worse in multiplayer, where you must manually control 2 team members, and the other one does nothing unless you take command of it. In a sense, it's like having only two squad members in multi because you can't control more than one player at a time. Worst of all there isn't any 4 player. (This game would be SO much better if one person could take command of each character.) The controls are bad, movement is disorienting at first and the auto aim is an annoyance and a godsend at the same time. Annoying in that it often targets enemies in the distance even if you have someone six feet in front of you and a godsend in that I can't imagine trying to hit anything in this game without it. Everything in CDS2 is a chore, even using items and switching weapons. Collision is also somewhat suspect. Vehicle driving is reminiscent of Halo; think the warthog which could be manned by multiple characters. The controls were also EXACTLY the same, which makes me wonder if this is something that they stole. Not only are your allies no so bright, but the enemy AI is bad, too. It's basic scripted ''shoot and pursue'' stuff which isn't that bad, but you'd think street combat would be a little more tactical. When you sum it up, CDS2 is playable, but by no means fun, which leads to...

Entertainment: 6/10 this score. It isn't anything to boast about, either. When it comes right down to it, CDS2 just isn't that much fun. Sure, it has some novelty because you're hunting Sadaam, killing evil Iraqis, and all that jazz; heck, you can even be a British SAS team instead of plain ol' US Delta Force, but it's still just a bit of icing on a crap flavored cake. When a game like this can't manage to be fun in multiplayer, when will you ever enjoy it? If you thought this was going to be a solid squad based combat title, you thought wrong.

Replay: 4/10 Replay? Who just said that? Nobody, I'd hope. My friend and I got about half way through this before finally coming to the conclusion that it sucked and we needed to play something else. When I got home, I tried it in single player to see if it was any more entertaining, and it really wasn't. There's no reason to play this game more than once, if that, and you certainly don't want to play it with your buds. Better experiences are to be had with Ghost Recon and Socom, don't waste hard earned dough on this.

Closing remarks: What can I say? I certainly bashed this game enough during the review. If you absolutely have to try this one out, I suppose a weekend rental will suffice but you'll still feel ripped off. Let's just hope a CDS3 isn't in the works.

Overall Score: 5 (an average)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/03