A trend in first person shooters?
There seems to be a trend as of late to create Xbox 360 first person shooters that involve team-mates.
I played Army of two about a month ago, and I really enjoyed it. So, I decided to give Conflict: Denied ops a whirl as well.
What I got for my money was just an average offering. There wasn't all that much that really stuck out in my mind about the game, with one exception, which I'll get to later.
Don't get me wrong, it was fun, and I think it was worth playing.
The game is about two CIA operatives, one named Lincoln Graves, a former marine sniper, and his partner, Reggie Lang. The game revolves around you controlling one or the other in ten different missions, each one taking you to a different location across the globe, but all being interconnected.
Graves is a sniper, and is best to use if you need stealth, while Lang is big, muscular, and uses a machine gun. Not good for subtleness, but when you need a heavy hitter, he's your man.
Ok, the game play itself. I've said this before in several of my previous reviews about the way first person shooters are portrayed with the 360. You don't have a health meter, or an armour meter for that matter. The more damage you take, the screen becomes blurred and tinged red. The worse this becomes, the closer you are to dying.
And, as I've said numerous times, when that happens, get your rear to cover. But, there is a difference this time around. A very important difference! If you're taken down, you can switch over to control your partner and get him to come up to you and heal you.
Of course, if he gets taken down, that's all she wrote. You'll have to reload from the last checkpoint.
One thing I need to point out though - you should keep some space between yourself and your partner. There are a few areas that if you're both together, one hit and its game over man, game over! The upside is that you have three minutes to get to your partner once he's down. If you can't do it in that time, your partner dies, and the mission ends. Time to reload from a previous check point.
Switching control is a simple pull of the button, and you have only three basic commands to give to your partner. Stay with me, go to a specific location, or stay put. Use em wisely!
You really don't have much of a variety of weapons to use in the game. You start out with a handgun and a sniper rifle. As you progress the missions, you get automatic upgrades for your weapons, such as a grenade launcher for Lang, and an under barrel shotgun for Graves.
One important feature to point out is that you can never run out of ammunition, so if you want to, spray it, don't say it! However, that being said, you can run out of explosives such as grenades and mines.
But, that's not even a huge issue, as you will find places in each mission that you can restock on explosives - not only your grenades, but for the grenade launcher and the rocket launcher as well.
Your missions, as I stated above, really do take you around the globe. You start out in a small South American country (Sorry, I can't remember the name off the top of my head), in the middle of a civil war. From there you have nine more missions, which take you to a monastery, a diamond mine, the Arctic Circle, an oil refinery, a lumber mill, a submarine pen, an oil tanker on the high seas and a military base. I know that I'm missing one, so forgive me, I completed the game a week before I started to write this review.
So, you have no shortage of exotic locations to visit.
A couple of the missions do involve stealth, so I'd suggest using Graves to start and have him find the best path to take. Control Lang after you have Graves in place, don't get him to auto-follow. I don't know if it would work or not, but I felt safer controlling him on my own.
And, the stealthier you are, the easier time you'll have of it. Once you're cover is blown, the enemy will be all over you like white on rice.
There are several times during the game that you'll be given the chance to control a vehicle. You can drive a tank, hovercraft and an APC. The controls weren't the best, I found them annoying to use. One control stick controlled the direction your vehicle traveled, the other aiming your weapons. If you're not careful, you could find yourself driving backwards while firing when you wanted to go sideways or even forward.
That is one issue I've had with many of the games I've played. The programmers really need to come up with a better control system for vehicle operation.
As for the music, there really wasn't anything that jumped out and struck me as being really good. Not like Frontlines: Fuel of war. Still, it was well done, and in the background, not overbearing at all.
I have played games in the past in which the background music was so loud that I missed some of the dialogue that took place during the cut scenes. That wasn't the case with this game.
The graphics were your typical Xbox 360 graphics. Crisp, well defined, easy to watch. I didn't see any issues with enemy targets getting stuck inside other objects like I've seen with a few of the more recent games I've played.
Although, there were a couple of occasions where, when one of the characters I was controlling got taken down that his gun would be lost inside the ground, or stuck in a wall or the like.
But these were minor, and they didn't affect the game play in any way, shape or form.
The cut scenes were brief, and did help propel the storyline forward, and most of these scenes involved Graves and Lang. To be honest, I found Graves living up to his nickname during the game. The character wasn't really likeable at all, unlike, in my personal view, Lang.
You can judge that on your own, after all, my opinion is just that, mine. If people agree with it, great, if they don't, no big deal either.
Since I brought up the enemies earlier, I should mention the AI controlling them. They don't stand around. They move from cover to cover, they will attempt to flank you. If you stay in one place, watch out for grenades being tossed in your direction.
Again, also, if you stay in one place for too long, the enemy will more often than not try to come and flush you out, or get to a better position in order to make short work of you and your partner. Movement around the maps is key for survival.
Speaking of maps, some of the maps you play on are huge! There are many twists and turns, and it would be a good idea to explore every nook and cranny as quite often they will contain enemy soldiers that, once you've taken care of a group of them and you think your safe, one could come up and end your game real fast. Besides, doing that will help you find more places you can restock your explosives as well.
Another thing that really caught my interest was the destroyable environment. You could wreak as much havoc as you wished, tons of things, including many buildings, were completely destructible. In fact, you can even gain an achievement for destroying your environment.
Lastly, I didn't bother trying any of the multiplayer functions in the game. I'm a solo player and don't really gain any enjoyment from trying these games online with strangers.
In conclusion, as I stated at the beginning of the review, the game wasn't bad. It was fun, and the story kept me interested, even though it was a little confusing at times - why the team happened to be going to one specific location, what it had to do with the overall arc, that sort of thing.
Now, I mentioned one thing that really stuck out in my mind at the beginning of the review... it didn't take me five or six hours to beat the game! All in all, I played it for almost 11 hours in total.
I hate how short most games are today! This was refreshing.
Pros
- Length of the game. Ten missions.
- Destructible environment
- Smart enemy AI.
- Lots of exotic locations and huge maps to play on.
Cons
- If you don't complete a mission, when you play again, you have to start over from the beginning of that particular mission.
- Some of the levels had a serious frustration factor involved. A few extra check points would have been appreciated.
- Poor vehicle controls.
3.5 out of 5
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