Conflict: Desert Storm

I had all of the Conflict games on PS2 and used to maniacally play them between 2002 and 2007. I must have finished each and every one of them (there were 4 games if I remember right) at least 4 times and they were very enjoyable. Sure they had problems and they looked way behind in terms of graphics, but the gameplay was solid and they were rarely cheap in terms of difficulty (in fact Vietnam was the hardest because of a few memorable bottleneck situations where you're up against tanks without being able to outflank them). I was searching a few weeks ago for a complete edition that was released a couple of years back, but had no luck finding it. I'm happy the first game is here, I hope all of them arrive, and I hope GOG will implement a bundle price for such releases soon.

Some people are being ridiculously hard on this one. Sure, it's not a timeless classic like Deus Ex or Thief, but it's definitely not "abysmal" or a game deserving a one-star review. I personally remember having ridiclous amounts of fun -albeit on console- playing this in four player co-op. Setting up small ambushes, crawling to my wounded buddies for help in a hail of fire, missing the last RPG shell and having to improvise and sneak up to a tank with some C4... Despide the linearity, the co-op mode allowed for some fun emergent gameplay. It's very consoley, but for some mindless, ps2 gen shooter action, you could do a lot worse.

If you have at least two friends to play this game with and you don't take your gaming too seriously, you're in for a good time. The game is difficult enough that teamwork is important, but it has features that are forgiving enough to eliminate tedium - soldiers are incapacitated for a while before dying, and every squad member carries a few medkits to help each other out. This is a game where, if one of your friends is being annoying, you can kill him, take everything except for his knife, revive him, and tell him to go clear an enemy base by himself. And he just might do it.

The amount of one-star reviews on this game sadly reflects the fanboy elitism element of the GoG community. Anyone who is here just to buy games, looking for a blast from the past, please ignore the haters. The true meat of the game is this: it's a modernized version of Hidden & Dangerous set in 1991. It copies mechanics from H&D exactly. If you have played Hidden & Dangerous before, you know precisely what kind of game is going to be, and if you liked H&D, you will love this game. This game was a favorite of mine growing up. The very familiar Desert Storm aesthetic combined with an emphasis on planning and tactics as opposed to running and gunning is what caught me. The game features a great variety of weapons and equipment, much more so than H&D. The enemy AI is of the "shoot at you for a bit, then charge directly at you" variety, unfortunately. The most annoying feature of the game, regarding the AI, is that once an alarm sounds, enemy soldiers will constantly respawn until you reach the next area. This can be very frustrating and immersion-breaking at times. Continuing the comparison to H&D, there is no planning stage, inventories are not customizable before the mission, and all missions are played out in a linear fashion. The missions generally revolve around moving to an objective, taking out small enemy patrols along the way, and then once there, positioning your men to best defend the area as the objective is completed, and then retreating all of your men safely in order to reach and extraction point. It's not nearly as in depth as something like Ghost Recon, but when it works, it really works. Unfortunately when it doesn't, it involves seeing enemies respawn directly in front of your face as you move through an already cleared area searching for a very vague objective. If you can get past its shortcomings, the game provides a rewarding and fun experience, highly reminiscent of Hidden & Dangerous, that really takes you back to the far away time of 2002 (heh!). If you are a fan of squad-based shooters, take a spin on the direct descendant of the grand-daddy of them all. After this, you might want to check out it's own offspring, Full Spectrum Warrior.

Believe it or not, i love this game, the story is not memorable, nor are the characters, but the simplicity of this game makes it good, this is tactical fun, you command a group of soldiers, all with their own gun skills. one is a normal soldier, one is a heavy gunner, then a sniper, and etc. the controls are not hard to get used to (at least they weren't for me, but you can change em in the options menu anyways so who cares) the gun play is good, sometimes if you screw up it can get pretty intense and you find yourself switching soldiers almost all the time to back up the others, also the levels can go from short, to very long, which may bore some people, but bottom line, if you are a forgiving person, and want to find the good in the bad, then this game will be a blast for you, if you don't think this looks good or interesting, its a pass. overall 4 out of 5 stars.