Conflict: Desert Storm

"A good game depending on how much you paid."

A lot of warfare games have been coming out for the past few years, and they seem to be a very popular current genre. Gotham and Pivotal Games bring you Conflict: Desert Storm and hop on the war game bandwagon. In my opinion, the results here can be good and bad depending on how much you paid for the game.

First off, lets go to the graphics. The game is not quite a looker, especially toward Xbox standards. Conflict features a few details that are nice, but not many. Some textures are quite nice in the game, which are mainly the textures found in the city levels such as concrete and clay tiles. Wall textures have some cool looking bumpy features to them from a small distance, but the closer you walk to it, you can notice the real lack of bump mapping used, mainly just a texture trick used in a lot of PS2 games. Patches of thick fog is another thing people tend to complain about, but if they attempted to go into Iraq in the desert, they would notice that it's very hard to see due to the sand storms. I take the so called ''fog problem'' as a nice realistic touch. Player models are decent, but could use work in the facial department. Enemy models are pretty bad though. The game's smoke effects are nice, but explosions could have used work. Gun firing effects also need work in Conflict.

Next up is the control department. The game has an easy to learn basic control scheme with the addition of many other schemes to fit the player's needs. My complaint here, is the jerkiness found in maneuvering the characters. When turning, the character seems to click into places rather than a smooth turn. Also, in large areas of detail like towns, the running seems way too jerky. The lack of sensitivity settings and an option to turn off the look spring and auto aiming hurts as well. These are simply things you must look past to enjoy Conflict. Auto aiming tends to be annoying in this game too.

Now we move on to the sound. The game's soundtrack is a decent effort with some tunes to fit the game pretty well. I feel a little more work could have been used in the soundtrack though by making the songs a little more war oriented. Luckily, there is a custom soundtrack feature. Players who are fans of war movies will probably use this feature to play some tunes found in movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, ect. I fear that too many people will take this feature to extremes, by listening to music that will not fit this game, like Tupac and Incubus. Sound effects used in Conflict could use work too. The weapons do not have a very powerful sound to them like the effects found in games like Ghost Recon. The voice acting sounds faint and blurry in Conflict too.

Lets get to the most important aspect of any game, which is the gameplay. The game consists of a team of four soldiers in Iraq completing various objectives. Objectives range from eliminating enemies, saving other soldiers, destroying objects, ect. Pretty typical war game objectives are used here. Blasting enemy soldiers is not as fun as one might think in this game, because usually the team members kill everyone before you get a chance to fire off a shot. Most of the time the player has to destroy objects and tanks, because the AI on the team members seems to rather stand and get blown up by tanks rather than helping take them out. The player mise well just set the team to shoot at will and take care of the explosives their selves. Issuing commands to the team isn't as effective as games like Ghost Recon and Brute Force, but it works. The game is definitely enjoyable, but I wish the player had more of a chance to shoot enemy units rather than the team taking them out so quickly. Medals are awarded for good performance, and there are a good number of medals to earn. Earning medals also makes the soldiers more acurate at how they fire weapons and use equipment too. This strengthens the game a little bit.

Finally, lets talk about replay value here. The game features co-op modes for 4 players, which is always a great feature. The game seems more enjoyable with others playing, but more slowdown is involved when this happens. With a game looking this bad on the Xbox, there is no excuse for so much slowdown. Single player folks will breeze through this one quickly, and multiplayer folks will probably give the game a few good play-throughs with friends before boredom sets in. Earning medals in the game can give the single player mode a little more depth and might cause people to play through the game again. Conflict has a mixed bag here. If you are mainly for single player, not much replay value is involved. Multiplayer folks will find more replay value here.

Overall, the game is fun but not as fun as it could be. If you paid more than 30 bucks for this game, you will probably feel cheated. Personally I feel the game is good if 30 bucks or less is spent on it. I picked the game up for $15 and I am happy with it for the amount I paid. Conflict: Desert Storm has some problems, but enjoyment can be found here. Lets hope the sequel can improve things.

6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/14/03