G4TV

Conflict Denied Ops is the sort of game that will sit on shelves at full price for while, politely minding its own business, being completely ignored until it falls into the bargain bin. There is a reason for that. This game has no personality because it is filled with predictable, relentlessly average design. Sadly, even the boring design actually manages to struggle, thanks to a few key flaws.

Denied Conflict

Heavily focused on cooperative gameplay, even in the single player campaign, Conflict Denied Ops gives you the controls of a country boy sniper, Graves, and a badass ghetto homeboy, Lang. Graves is the older, gruff, silent type, while Lang is the trash-talker urban thug who prefers a heavy machine gun and rocket launcher. Both characters are unbelievably blatant stereotypes, spouting off terrible dialogue while mowing through hundreds of ex-Soviet bloc and African bad guys.

The convoluted story deals with missing nuclear weapons, leading the dynamic duo through wastelands like Rwanda, Siberia, factories, bases, city streets, and the tanker at sea cliché. Although the inclusion of tanks, jeeps, and hovercraft (surprisingly well done) adds some variety; the level design is merely conventional.

Mission goals are never complex—find switches, blow things up, escort duties. The gameplay inevitably boils down to killing a horde of bad guys, while moving from point A to B. The teamwork element lets you indulge your sniping urge as well as go postal. As long as you’re ok with constantly switching characters, the action is reasonably rewarding. Machine guns and heavy weapons are appealing, but Graves holds his sniper rifle like a drunk. Fine aiming is frustrating, but Graves is still excellent for clearing out a large area, provided the enemies don’t magically appear.

Forced Upgrades

As you progress through the missions, the game automatically upgrades your weapons. Graves gets a shotgun attachment. Lang gets an under the barrel grenade launcher. You’ll also earn weapon enhancers, different grenades, and mines. There is no user selection, though. You use the same basic weapon layout in each mission, can’t pick up enemy guns, and never run out of bullets. Despite infinite ammo, you’ll still have to reload. Re-equip chests dot the level, since you can run out of explosives munitions.

Conflict Denied Ops is certainly a visually attractive game. Though there’s nothing spectacular, the characters and levels look good—when you can actually see them. Many of the levels (especially indoors) are insanely dark. Even with the gamma slider turned up, you’re forced to rely on night vision goggles. Aside from the stupidly lame dialogue, the audio mix is excellent. The ambient effects and sounds of battle echo all around you, helping make the many firefights more engaging.

As a single player game, most of these flaws could be overlooked for anyone looking for a quick action fix. Unfortunately, the biggest defect is the AI. Your partner is, in general, a frustratingly unreliable idiot with a death wish. It doesn’t matter which character is AI-run, either. Usually, the behavior just seems broken. Their inability to take effective evasive action means you’re constantly forced to give first aid and to tell the AI to follow you.

Enemy AIs are somewhat better, because they don’t usually live long enough to be so stupid. They duck, use cover, sound off alarms, and throw the occasional smoke and flash grenades. Beyond that, the enemy AIs are idiots too. Especially annoying, the enemy AI seems to know when you are about to snipe them and can take absurd amounts of damage. There is no reason why you would have to shoot four or five times with a sniper rifle to kill.

Conflicts are Hell

Granted, if you’re multiplayer centric, the cooperative play will improve your opinion, but good luck finding players online. Conflict Denied Ops might not be awful—it’s certainly not as bad as Soldier of Fortune Payback. Unfortunately, even without AI flaws and other problems, there’s nothing here to suggest the developers wanted to do anything more than just rip off Rainbow Six, SOCOM, or Ghost Recon. Sadly, Conflict Denied Ops doesn’t have anything close to the polish of those games.

Review by: Jason D'Aprile