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[/box][/float] The internet is saturated with reviews for Portal, Modern Warfare, Duke Nukem, and Socom. What else is left to write about? Let's delve into the archives, and explore the fifth installation of Pivotal Games's Conflict series; Conflict: Denied Ops.
Launching the game and joining a co-op game is almost as easy as getting a tooth pulled. You start by skipping the 5 splash screens, loading your profile, logging into Gamespy, and confirming your choice to login to Gamespy. Enter the IP of your friend's computer (port forwarding is very necessary), allow the planets to align, and then the Gamespy gods will come together and possibly grace you with a connection. Maybe. The game starts abruptly, with no back story and no mission briefing, just a 15 second cut scene of a chopper dropping you off in a mountain pass. If you were expecting a tutorial of some sort to get you familiar with the controls, you are sadly mistaken.
There are only two characters to choose from, and while upgrades from guns do occur, the individual play mechanics of that character remain the same. Graves either has to stand back and pick off enemies off with his sniper, or hit them point blank with his barrel mounted shotgun. Lang depends on hurling masses of bullets in the general direction until the enemies die from lucky strays. Aiming your weapon is not a requirement.
The controls in Conflict: Denied Ops are horrid. Even after remapping almost every button, it feels like you are controlling a brick on a Segway. There is no jump button, which may work in the Legend of Zelda, but not in a first person shooter. Ladders are worthless; the character climbs slower than a Modern Warfare 2 player, takes 4 seconds to turn around before descending, and both players can not use the same ladder at the same time. While taking fire, the kickback is so extreme that it becomes impossible to shoot straight. Getting hit by a single bullet results in your crosshair jolting half way across the screen.
There are no save points in the levels. If you die on the way to the extraction chopper, prepare to restart from the beginning. As if that wasn't bad enough, every death requires a quick visit to the multiplayer lobby; there is no way to "retry" without reloading the entire map again; and trust me, you will need to restart a lot because the enemies all have laser-eyes. As soon as you exit cover, even the slightest bit, the enemies are all over you. They can spot your big toe from 200 yards and they rarely seem to miss ranged shots.
The enemies are always behind you and they are always rushing at you. Even if you sweep every hall twice on your way through a map, and enemy will still appear from no where, just as you are trying to revive your teammate. This results in a frustrating game of "Can I revive my partner before an enemy rushes around the corner and takes us both out?" Unfortunately, the revive process cannot be aborted once started, so the answer is usually "no".
To counter-balance this obscene difficulty, the game developers decided to over-equip Lang to the extreme. Not only does Lang's machine gun have a built-in grenade launcher, he also carries a rocket launcher with three rounds which can be replenished at any re-supply point. This is rarely useful however, because it is extremely easy to kill yourself with them.
While we were evaluating the game, the difficulty became so excruciating at one point that we were forced to lower the difficulty (from Medium to Easy). Unfortunately... there is no way to switch the difficulty once a campaign has been started, so a hex-editor was required. For a game with an abundance of menus, it seemed silly to be missing such a basic feature.
I enjoy nice linear gameplay as much as the next guy, but Denied Ops takes linearity to a whole new level. All of the levels follow an extremely predictable pattern. Lang and Graves are deposited at a dropzone filled with lazer-eyed radicals of some sort, battle their way though to a edifice of some sort, and breach the structure with some help from C-4 or a scripted airstrike trigger. Once inside, it is up to the duo to eliminiate all of the baddies camping who-knows-where thoughout the area before obtaining documents, or hacking a computer, or planting a bomb all to foil the current wacko's diabolical plans. Once all of the objectives have been completed they must fight back through the same level, facing fully replenished waves of enemies, and clear a overrun landing zone so a chopper can get you the hell out of there.
Let us talk about vehicles for a second. I LOVE drivable vehicles in games so I was thrilled when we got plopped down into a level next to a hovercraft with a mounted machinegun on the back and were given instructions to move towards an enemy base. Unfortunately, the vehicles suck. The driving wasn't terrible, but the gunning seat is useless. The bullets do no damage (about as much as the standard machine gun), and aiming the gun is almost as easy as throwing a bowling ball through a key hole in the middle of a hurricane... which is not easy.
One thing I really loved about the game was the interactions between Graves and Lang. Their predictably whitty groan-off one liners made this game incredibly entertaining for me in the same way that Duke Nukem's idioms remain ever classic. Another notable thing to look forward to is the enemie's exclamations, most of which involve profanity. It seems that rather than developing a better plot, the studio spent it's time hiring voice actors to yell obscenities into a microphone.
So what made this game bearable? Maybe it's nostalgia. This game reminds me of better times and terrible games past. If it was released 6 years earlier, this game would have been and awesome genre-shattering adventure for two players. The simple plot and mindless waves of extremists have you always wondering where your demise will come from. Maybe I am just a glutton for punishment. After a while you get used to the tedium of replaying a level so many times, tweaking your route and anticipating enemy cues. Trying to make it through becomes something of a pilgrimage. Many times you may ask yourself "Why am I still playing this terrible game?" The only answer is, "Why stop now?"
Denied Ops is available for PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.
Launching the game and joining a co-op game is almost as easy as getting a tooth pulled. You start by skipping the 5 splash screens, loading your profile, logging into Gamespy, and confirming your choice to login to Gamespy. Enter the IP of your friend's computer (port forwarding is very necessary), allow the planets to align, and then the Gamespy gods will come together and possibly grace you with a connection. Maybe. The game starts abruptly, with no back story and no mission briefing, just a 15 second cut scene of a chopper dropping you off in a mountain pass. If you were expecting a tutorial of some sort to get you familiar with the controls, you are sadly mistaken.
There are only two characters to choose from, and while upgrades from guns do occur, the individual play mechanics of that character remain the same. Graves either has to stand back and pick off enemies off with his sniper, or hit them point blank with his barrel mounted shotgun. Lang depends on hurling masses of bullets in the general direction until the enemies die from lucky strays. Aiming your weapon is not a requirement.
The controls in Conflict: Denied Ops are horrid. Even after remapping almost every button, it feels like you are controlling a brick on a Segway. There is no jump button, which may work in the Legend of Zelda, but not in a first person shooter. Ladders are worthless; the character climbs slower than a Modern Warfare 2 player, takes 4 seconds to turn around before descending, and both players can not use the same ladder at the same time. While taking fire, the kickback is so extreme that it becomes impossible to shoot straight. Getting hit by a single bullet results in your crosshair jolting half way across the screen.
There are no save points in the levels. If you die on the way to the extraction chopper, prepare to restart from the beginning. As if that wasn't bad enough, every death requires a quick visit to the multiplayer lobby; there is no way to "retry" without reloading the entire map again; and trust me, you will need to restart a lot because the enemies all have laser-eyes. As soon as you exit cover, even the slightest bit, the enemies are all over you. They can spot your big toe from 200 yards and they rarely seem to miss ranged shots.
The enemies are always behind you and they are always rushing at you. Even if you sweep every hall twice on your way through a map, and enemy will still appear from no where, just as you are trying to revive your teammate. This results in a frustrating game of "Can I revive my partner before an enemy rushes around the corner and takes us both out?" Unfortunately, the revive process cannot be aborted once started, so the answer is usually "no".
To counter-balance this obscene difficulty, the game developers decided to over-equip Lang to the extreme. Not only does Lang's machine gun have a built-in grenade launcher, he also carries a rocket launcher with three rounds which can be replenished at any re-supply point. This is rarely useful however, because it is extremely easy to kill yourself with them.
While we were evaluating the game, the difficulty became so excruciating at one point that we were forced to lower the difficulty (from Medium to Easy). Unfortunately... there is no way to switch the difficulty once a campaign has been started, so a hex-editor was required. For a game with an abundance of menus, it seemed silly to be missing such a basic feature.
I enjoy nice linear gameplay as much as the next guy, but Denied Ops takes linearity to a whole new level. All of the levels follow an extremely predictable pattern. Lang and Graves are deposited at a dropzone filled with lazer-eyed radicals of some sort, battle their way though to a edifice of some sort, and breach the structure with some help from C-4 or a scripted airstrike trigger. Once inside, it is up to the duo to eliminiate all of the baddies camping who-knows-where thoughout the area before obtaining documents, or hacking a computer, or planting a bomb all to foil the current wacko's diabolical plans. Once all of the objectives have been completed they must fight back through the same level, facing fully replenished waves of enemies, and clear a overrun landing zone so a chopper can get you the hell out of there.
Let us talk about vehicles for a second. I LOVE drivable vehicles in games so I was thrilled when we got plopped down into a level next to a hovercraft with a mounted machinegun on the back and were given instructions to move towards an enemy base. Unfortunately, the vehicles suck. The driving wasn't terrible, but the gunning seat is useless. The bullets do no damage (about as much as the standard machine gun), and aiming the gun is almost as easy as throwing a bowling ball through a key hole in the middle of a hurricane... which is not easy.
One thing I really loved about the game was the interactions between Graves and Lang. Their predictably whitty groan-off one liners made this game incredibly entertaining for me in the same way that Duke Nukem's idioms remain ever classic. Another notable thing to look forward to is the enemie's exclamations, most of which involve profanity. It seems that rather than developing a better plot, the studio spent it's time hiring voice actors to yell obscenities into a microphone.
So what made this game bearable? Maybe it's nostalgia. This game reminds me of better times and terrible games past. If it was released 6 years earlier, this game would have been and awesome genre-shattering adventure for two players. The simple plot and mindless waves of extremists have you always wondering where your demise will come from. Maybe I am just a glutton for punishment. After a while you get used to the tedium of replaying a level so many times, tweaking your route and anticipating enemy cues. Trying to make it through becomes something of a pilgrimage. Many times you may ask yourself "Why am I still playing this terrible game?" The only answer is, "Why stop now?"
Denied Ops is available for PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.
