Conflict: Desert Storm Review

Developer	Pivotal Games
Publisher	Gotham Games
Genre	Action

I was but a wee-lad when George Bush “The Original” had our country engaged in the actual Operation: Desert Storm. And due to a lack of quality history classes in my educational experience, I don’t really know much about it. That’s OK though, because Gotham Games recently released “Conflict: Desert Storm”, a third-person tactical shooter that takes me (via my Xbox) through the conflict. What they’ve come through with is a title that is the start of a new genre, and pretty fun to play.

Gameplay – I’m going to come right out and tell you the impression that Conflict: Desert Storm gives. It seems like a cheesy military training simulator. The drill sergeants that you’ll encounter in the training mode are over-zealous and the whole game seems like a military-training-video-wanna-be. That’s fine though, because it seems to work out.

You’ll begin (should you choose to) with the training mode. I actually recommend it, because you’ll need all the help you can get when you jump into the actual missions. The first level of training does a good job of getting you accustomed to your movement. The drill sergeant will remind you of the guy from Full Metal Jacket (only slightly more PG-rated), but you only have to put up with him in the training mode. He’ll have you tap-dance and spin and crouch for him until he’s satisfied. One down thing is that it seemingly takes forever for the sergeant to actually realize you did something. For example, he’ll tell you to turn around. Once you do, he seems to stand and think about it before moving on to the next instruction. Just a minor gripe.

Once he’s satisfied, he’ll show you to his obstacle course. It’s nothing hard, and just gives you a taste of different situations that you may encounter and ways to overcome them. After he insults you, you’ll move on to artillery training – basically just a shooting range – where you will become comfortable with the functions of the different weapons you’ll use. Heavy Artillery training follows, and then squad tactics. I’m especially thankful for this last training session. It’s very intimidating to learn the commands for your four-man squad, but a little practice here gets you well on your way. The training mode itself is very well done and does a great job of giving you some exposure to the different situations you’ll encounter throughout the game.

After you’re done with boot camp, it’s time to hit the missions. You’ll be greeted by a bland blue screen that will run down the background information pertinent to your mission. Then you’ll be given some intelligence on the mission and the various locations you’re about to visit. This does a good job of making sure you don’t just run aimlessly through the desert. Of course, you still can, if that strikes your fancy.

The missions themselves aren’t anything you’ll remember from CNN during the actual Operation, but they do seem to follow the same timeline as the real-life conflict and revolve around actual incidents in the war. The missions are fairly varied – but all seemingly stay in the same “Find this and blow it up” bubble. That’s fine though, because it’s the most fun to do in the game. Variety comes through strategy. You’ll have to use each member of your team to the best of their ability to complete some of the later missions. A typical squad includes a medic, heavy artillery specialist and an explosives specialist. Each is very good at their respective specialty, and aren’t really worth the dust on their boots in any other capacity.

Control of each character works surprisingly very well on a console controller. You can issue commands for your entire squad, or individually. You can also change control to a different aqud member simply by rotating through them with the D-pad. Holding the left trigger and pressing an action button will assign the entire squad a command, ranging from “fire at will”, “hold position”, and “follow (you)”. Once you get good at it, it’s actually a very nice system. You can even send members to other locations, even detailing which direction you want them to face while going there.

To keep up with the well-being of your team, you’re given a roster of sorts in the bottom left corner. Here you’ll see a cute little picture of each squad member, along with weapon information and a health bar. It also functions well as a way to keep track of which squad member you’re currently controlling. The squad-control scheme is the first one I’ve experienced personally and is very comfortable once you get a chance to tinker a bit.

Movement of your character is somewhat annoying. He can’t… just… run… straight. He always seems to want to move to the left or the right – never straight. Strafing is useless, really, as it’s so slow that it doesn’t really provide any benefit in a heated confrontation. Weapon firing is simplistic and intuitive, though. The right trigger is the primary ‘fire’ button for every weapon you’ll use. Pressing in the right joystick will zoom your scope on weapons that have one, except for the sniper rifle which also uses the left joystick.

Firing itself is intuitive. The auto-aim is very helpful in the game. Pushing the left joystick will automatically move your crosshairs to the next unfortunate bastard and makes the action move on very smoothly. I don’t really have any gripes with the aiming and firing scheme, so I won’t go into great detail. It works well here, and that’s what’s important.

Any function you’ll have to perform throughout the game is done very simply, right down to planting C4 explosives. Driving any vehicle is similar to driving the warthog in Halo – a good system that works well here as well Nothing is made more complicated than it should be, which makes this a very accessible title for any level of gamer. The missions aren’t incredibly varied – but they’re all fun to play. No matter how frustrated I got in this game, I was always having fun. That’s not something I can say for a lot of titles these days.

Graphics – The landscape in C:DS is about what you would expect: boring. Fortunately, that’s what a desert is, so it works out nicely in this case. The land is unvaried, save for some hills and a few half-dead bushes here and there, but it accomplishes being barren, which is exactly what Gotham was aiming for. This is not to say that there aren’t some nice effects; for example, the dust in the desert. As your squad runs, walks, and strafes across the desert, you’ll stir up plenty of dust in your wake. Bullets hitting the ground stir up dust, and enemy bodies hitting the dirt put off that nice “poof” of dust. It’s an effect that’s achieved to almost-perfection. The cities you’ll encounter are also surprisingly well-done. The buildings don’t repeat themselves on every city block; a nice change of pace from other, similar games

Speaking of the enemy bodies though, I was disappointed that they didn’t have more varied animation to that extent. It seemed that everyone I shot just… fell. They bled too, but seemingly always in the chest. I’m getting picky again, though. Firing your weapon is fabulous. The burst fire from your assault rifle looks great, but they go out of focus at long range – again, a minor gripe. The explosion effects are nice – almost under-done. For example, in the first level you’re assigned to blow up a bridge. The fiery part of the explosion looks good, but the bridge being destroyed doesn’t look so hot. Most animations, in fact, suffer from a lack of polygons. Fortunately, aside from the cutscenes, you’ll hardly notice.

Sound – Sound in the game is underdone, which is a shame. This game would benefit so much from the inclusion of Dolby Sound. I wish I’d be able to hear the gun fights I was approaching, rather than just randomly walking into them. For this purpose, the directional sound is terrible. Sometimes it’s honestly hard to figure out which direction enemy fire is coming from, unless you see their bullets.

Speech, when it comes along, is decent. My only complaint is the drill sergeant in training mode. Tell that guy to back away from the microphone a little before he blows the circuits. DANG! Sound effects are good, aside from the whole non-directional problem. After a few missions, you’ll be able to recognize certain guns based solely on the sound and pattern of their firing noise. Overall, the sound is good enough to get by in this game.

Overall Value - As I previously mentioned, I had a lot of fun playing this game. Keep in mind though, this game probably won’t please the hardcore of it’s genre (tactical action). But for Joe Q. Gamer, Conflict: Desert Storm is a very nice diversion. It probably won’t be able to compete with the bigger tactical titles coming out during the holidays – but, it’s out now – so it’s worth checking out if you can’t wait. If you’re looking for tactical action that doesn’t require an over-analytical mind, give this game a shot. It’s definitely fun if you let it be.

Review by Greg Joachim