Ah…The buddy genre. We all loved it in films like Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys and even Thelma and Louise; now videogames have jumped onto the buddy bandwagon with upcoming games such as Army of Two from EA. Developer Pivotal Games and Eidos Interactive are blasting away with their own buddy adventure, Conflict: Denied Ops, a game that really may make you hate your buddy by the time you get through it.
gameplay
Pivotal’s previous Conflict war games have all been third person, so Conflict: Denied Ops is their jump into the FPS arena, and the main issue with that is that it plays like an older first person title from last generation. In this game two macho soldiers are paired up, one is black and one is white (wow…very original concept). The black guy, Lang, is the heavy gunner, and the white guy, Graves, is the sniper, and the boy do these guys have it out for each other with their constant “farm boy vs. city boy” remarks.
Basically, the set up has these two bad boys trotting the globe on special missions that no one else will take, like going into enemy territory to do recon, finding missing nuke warheads, and destroying weapon of mass destruction facilities. The main gimmick in the game is the ability to switch from Lang and Graves at the tap of a button depending on the situation at hand. If you’re in a heavy firefight, then Lang is your man, blowing away anything moving with his machine gun and then taking out tanks with his rocket launcher. When you’ve got a sniper situation then Graves is your guy, crawling into position to make the perfect headshot.
Lang and Graves must start and complete a mission together, because if one dies then the mission has failed. When one of them gets shot and goes down, you must switch to the other then quickly rush to his side before his heartbeat flatlines by giving him an adrenaline shot (hey, didn’t Kane and Lynch do that?). Most of the time you will be playing as Lang because his weapons are more powerful, and Graves will be second fiddle in every mission unless you specifically need to snipe a target.
Like in a Rainbow Six game, you can give your partner commands, and vice versa, but they’re your basic ‘Follow me,’ ‘Go there,’ ‘Open fire’ and ‘Hold fire’ commands. There are various times when you’ll be playing as one guy and make it far into a level, then completely forget that your partner is still standing at point A, far back. There should have been something added to the AI that will let the other guy know that he has waiting around long enough and needs to haul ass to find you.
Overall there are 10 missions spread out through various trouble spots across the globe, but most of them feel like rehashed missions from a Ghost Recon game. The enemy offers no challenge whatsoever; they just keep shooting until you finally shoot them down. They won’t even get out of the way when you toss a grenade in their direction. And when an enemy soldier gets shot there has only been one animated motion programmed, where they just bow and fall. After finishing a mission, by the time the next one loads, you’ve completely forgot about the last one you’ve just played.
There are certain moments when you will both have to take control of a vehicle, such as an armed hovercraft, where one drives and the other takes the gun performed by switching from one character to the other. Does this make the action more exciting?…No. And good luck with controlling the vehicle, because it may take a lot of effort to get you to your destination. The problem with this game is that every area of ground that a past FPS has conquered is attempting to be fresh here. So what you can switch between characters, the gameplay is still lame. And the biggest issue is that these two guys are unlikable and in no way cool at all like Kane and Lynch.
Once you chug through the single player mode, which should take no more than six hours, you can grab a friend and play the split screen co-op mode. Again, there’s nothing exciting here unless you and your buddy provide your own one-liners to get through gameplay. All you’re going to find yourself doing is shooting senseless goons, planting bombs, blowing up things…Repeat.
This is not the game you would want to be stuck in a room with too long, and if you’ve played Call of Duty 4, don’t even press start on this one. Conflict: Denied Ops really doesn’t have much going for it, and is a rental at best.
graphics
The graphics in this game are right out of the last generation, looking like a mix between a PS2 and an original Xbox game. The textures are muddy with little detail, and the backgrounds look flat. Come on Pivotal, you can do better than this. Even first generation Xbox 360 titles like Call of Duty 2 blow this out of the water, and that was three years ago. And when there is a lot happening on screen, just watch as everything slows down and hiccups.
sound
The constant chatter between Lang and Graves attempts to be humorous and clever, but actually just turns out being annoying and boring. The sound effects seem to have been cut and pasted from various other old games, so all you’re going to get is Boom, Bam, and Kaboom.
replay value
With only 10 missions, the single player game is quick and can be played through in roughly six hours. There’s a co-op mode that can be played through split screen and system link, or if you can’t bribe a friend to play you, you can always play a two-player co-op with a complete stranger over Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network, and you may have a couple of fun moments. Other than that, there are the basic deathmatch and team deatmatch multiplayer games that you can play with up to 16 players. They’re better than the single player games, but nothing to brag about.
bottom line
Conflict: Denied Ops works better as a rental, because the competition in the gaming world is way too big, and gamers have played some incredible FPS titles already. Maybe Pivotal’s next Conflict game will be more fine-tuned, because Denied Ops leaves a lot to be desired.
[Second Look: -editors note-: I am going to have to step in here. I want to make the point that the Conflict series' main focus has always been on multiplayer. The first 4 titles on Xbox/PS2 were all available to play with 4 players co-op. And they just took the series online with Conflict: Global Terror (the fourth in the series). Switching between characters is nothing new to this series, it's just expected to be here (which it is). However, this time (Denied Ops) they decided to not only cut down the team to 2 players only, but also this is Pivotal's first take with the FPS genre. For those looking for a comparison on the previous titles, here goes. You can't pick up enemy weapons. Unless we're missing something, while playing co-op with veterans of the series, I couldn't pick up any other weapons then the two I had by default. This game stays true to the original's when you have to heal up a wounded teammate. I found the game to be extremely difficult (even on easy), and there isn't many checkpoints, so it can be frustrating to go back and play the same area over and over again. Furthermore, I strongly disagree with this: "The enemy offers no challenge whatsoever". The enemies kept coming up from behind making one player stay back while the other player pushed forward. Bottom line: this series doesn't get the recognition it deserves. For these reasons, I am bumping the score from 6.5 to a 7.0. -Steve Melanson]
Review by: Johnny McNair
Posted: 03/20/2008
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Gameplay:
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7.0 |
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Graphics:
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6.0 |
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Sound:
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5.5 |
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Replay Value:
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7.0 |
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Bottom Line:
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7.0 |
