conflictglobalterror_ps2boxboxart_160w.jpg ( 10.89k ) Number of downloads: 91

Console/Platform: PS2, XBox, PC
Personal Rating:  rating_4.gif ( 1.09k ) Number of downloads: 24


I have had the joy of writing a few reviews here and at other sites on the web, and when it comes down to gaming, I tend to like the "1st Person Shooter", any of the "Gran Turismo" games and a few choice RPG's.

To date I have played:

1. Conflict: Vietnam
2. Conflict: Desert Storm
3. Soldier of Fortune
4. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
5. Medal of Honor: Frontline
6. all 4 Gran Turismo games
7. Final Fantasy 1 through 3 for NES and SNES
8. Final Fantasy 7 through 9 for the Play Station
9. Final Fantasy X & X - 2 for PS2.

So far, only 3 - 1st person shooter games have actually challenged me:

1. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
2. Conflict: Vietnam
3. Conflict: Global Terror

In this time out (if you are familiar with the series the characters retain the same names minus one or two from game to game) our boys are set as a "Black Ops" team fighting global terrorism. From the deep jungles of Columbia to the streets of Korea to the cold snow-swept mountains of the Ukraine to the much disputed Pakistan/India border known as the Kashmir, these guys cover all types of terrain.

To begin, you simply save a profile, that anytime you turn off the game you need to reload. The profile tells the game what difficulty mode you are in and saves some vitals like your name, height, age, eye color -- At first there are only 3 difficulty levels:

1. Easy
2. Normal
3. Hard

I chose "Normal", as I thought "Easy" would be too easy for my gaming experience. That, and I had been told by a friend that if you finish the game on either "Normal" or "Hard", you get a surprise at the very end of the game, but I will get to that later.

Next, I selected "New Game". Immediately afterward, I was redirected to a loading page and then on to a nice cinematic clip of you and your team members are free-falling from about 20,000 feet (also known as a H.A.L.O. Jump -- High Altitude Low Open -- which means you drop from a perfectly good airplane at very high altitudes, and don't open your parachute until you are VERY close to the ground/water) landing in a jungle; completely surrounded by insurgents. After being taken captive, one character "Conners" manages to knock out his guard. At this point, this is where the game actually starts for me. I take the knife from the guards belt and head down the corridor and exterminate another guard that is due back to the cell I was being help captive in.

After I get my team reassembled, we embark on a series of operations spanning the globe in order to stop terrorism. At one point, I even lose my best sniper "Foley", and is replaced by a woman -- sheesh of all the things to happen to a guy!! -- j/k !! Actually, she can handle a sniper rifle very well and, up to this point, has actually achieved a higher rank than the rest of the team. On to Korea, where we are setup as a guard detail for some ambassador from some country. His motorcade is ambushed, and our mission is to help him to safety. Then his daughter is taken hostage, and we get the honor of rescuing her from these terrorists....

So far, this game has delivered a very nice gameplay. All-in-all, I would say this ranks number 4 on my all time "Hardest to Complete" list. The one thing that didn't necessarily sit well with me was when I have a character sighting down the barrel of whatever rifle or weapon they have currently in-hand, and the weapon doesn't move up/down left/right with the character's breathing or length of time holding the weapon in that position. Please understand, when holding a rifle in one position for more than 30 - 45 seconds -- your steadiness starts to degrade rapidly, causing you to move the weapon in all directions. That didn't happen in this game. So strike one. One thing that I did like seeing was when the weapon was fired, there was recoil action going on -- that is a natural occurance, and even the best marksman will tell you that recoil cannot be stopped.

Another aspect, that I liked about this game - the accuracy of weapons themselves. Not the "I aim, I shoot, I kill in one shot" accuracy -- although, when I had the sniper on deck, she received many "Stealth Kill Bonuses" when equiped with a silenced sniper rifle No, I mean the name/type of weapons used by the characters of the game. Even the weapons of the enemy were true-to-life. Some weapons to mention:

1. M60E3 LMG -- M60 Light Machine Gun
2. Makarov Pistol
3. Desert Eagle .50 Cal Pistol
4. Beretta 9mm Silenced Pistol
5. MP5 SD# Silenced Small Machine Gun
6. M4A1 Assault Rifle
7. AK-47 Assult Rifle -- and too many more to name.

Now that I have given you a quick rundown, let's get to the surprise I mentioned earlier. As I was finishing up this game on the normal level, I was starting to wonder what the surprise was going to be. after about 15 tries at the last half of the last mission, I finally got through and finsihed the game When all of the cinematics were finished, the game asked me to save my profile -- ?? I read a little further in that little box, and it said -- "so you can unlock the "Extreme" difficulty level".

-- Extreme level?? I had a handful playing this on NORMAL!! EXTREME!?!? -- seriously, -- I love it when programmers add stuff like that. The harder the challenge, the more I want to play to try and get through it!!

After everything is said and done, I give this a 4 star rating.

1. Difficulty is very high, even on normal -- check
2. Storyline and Progression are fluid -- check
3. Weapon type accuracy -- check
4. Bonus difficulty levels for finishing game -- check
5. Some flaws with gameplay - realism when holding weapons in one spot for too long - non-existant -- uncheck

Give it a go, see what you think. After all, the game is only as good as the player thinks it is