I remember playing Conflict: Global Terror a few years back for a review on another site. It was (at the time) one of the worst-produced games I’d ever seen, and filled with all sorts of stupid quirks and annoying little things done wrong. Despite that, it was a staple in our multiplayer gaming sessions, and probably got played more than GRAW. To this day I have no idea what it was about Global Terror that captured our attention and heart so much, despite the fact we all constantly talked about how bad it was.
So that’s why I was curiously excited when Conflict: Denied Ops came in the other day. Would it be a repeat of that same magical experience my friends and I shared which has yet to be recreated by a game? Or would it merely suffer from the same sorts of issues that Global Terror did?
Unfortunately, there’s nothing magical about this one. Surprisingly, they managed to make it take a step back further than any Conflict game yet. Coming to the realization that people may have been put off by the squad command system and four squadmates in previous Conflict games, Pivotal instead went the route of two player co-op shooting. In a bold and original move, one of the two (Lang) is an agent using words straight from a stereotypical “cool cat” from the 90s, while the other (Graves) is a rugged experienced agent who hates his new partner. A fun-loving and sometimes “against the rules” agent and a gruff, hardened, “this is serious business” one who has to deal with his partner? This could very easily be a game for any number of 80s or early 90s buddy cop flicks.
The rest of the game doesn’t fare much better. In the first current-gen outing of Conflict, things couldn’t have been worse. There’s horrible hit detection, horrible vehicles, and almost no fun or variety to be had. Lang uses a machine gun, Graves uses a sniper rifle, and that’s that.
Even that would be enough to critically hurt any FPS game, but Denied Ops doesn’t stop there. The graphics look like they should be on an Xbox title, and there are so many FPS clichés I felt like I was playing The Simpsons Game all over again. I never counted, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more explosive barrels than any other model or object in the game.
When you mix in some absolutely horrible AI (your computer-controlled partner in single player can’t drive and almost never shoots, and the enemy AI loves to take cover behind the aforementioned exploding barrels and run in circles) Conflict Denied Ops is just a total exercise in frustration for any hardcore FPS gamers.
While the previous Conflict games were saved by some entertaining multiplayer, Denied Ops has no such luck. Multiplayer boils down to short and boring co-op or deathmatches in the single player levels, and that’s it. Conflict: Denied Ops is a cookie cutter FPS game which uses dough well past its expiration date. If you’ve played every other current FPS on the market give it a shot; if you haven’t, there’s much better gaming available.
