As I find myself rather bored to say the least with the current games I have and have a condition known as being "piss-ant broke" I find myself still wanting to entertain myself with current games but not being able to afford them. Therefore it seem the obvious choice to try a few demos available mostly on Steam so I can either calm my impending frustrations at not having any money for any new games or simply strengthen my resolve that nothing decent is out yet anyway.
Conflict: Denied Ops is a game that reinforces the latter and although I am of course reviewing it based solely on the demo there is one factor where a full game can always be criticised by only it's demo.
It lagged like a motherfucker.
I of course realise that my computer is hardly top of the line, in fact it is nearing it's second birthday at which point I will force-feed the disk-drive birthday cake in an effort to have an excuse to treat myself to a new PC but regardless of this and in defence of my reliable machine and to give you an example I can run Bioshock in full graphics only suffering a little lag. I am not vain enough to suggest that I can run any game on full graphics which is why I tried to drop the graphics from high to low or even medium but for some reason the demo wants to force you to have high graphics causing your computer to run like it was constipated. This is not encouraging for the full version especially when any example of AI was few and far between and the graphics only looked slightly better than Hitman: Blood Money.
The graphics don't even look like they should be demanding although the game does state that the environment is destructible which could have perhaps explained the problems but once again like any political figure you care to mention game developers don't live up to their promises. What destruction I could achieve was limited to the few gas canisters that the enemies, (who were obviously planning a barbeque in honour of them acquiring a derelict ruin to use as a base,) scattered about and of course the obligatory "barrel with flammable symbol on it" which in my opinion enemies should have learned by now NOT to hide behind. This was incresingly obvious when one could get through a lot of the demo level by simply shooting anything flammable, (the nonsensical rocketing of the canisters and barrels was the most redeeming thing about the game,) to kill everyone in a room. Also in terms of destructible things there were also a few crude barricades reminiscent of a three year-old me building cardboard-box forts in the backyard at a few points, the kind of thing that can be splintered to matchwood if one should cough in it's general direction.
In previously mentioning Hitman: Bloody Money I also wanted to convey that as well as looking remarkably similar it plays very similarly too. Oh sure it's a first person shooter with gunfire and explosions and it is set in a war-torn shithole rather than a FBI protected suburb or a Playboy-style Christmas party this doesn't take away from the fact that the relationship is definitely there, (although where the Hitman style of play works remarkably well with Blood Money and results in a true gaming icon in this game it just makes it confused and lazy.) It is of course produced by the same company, Edios Interactive, which shows in the fact that although this is meant to be a first person shooter game one still has not mastered the ability of jumping. Instead the spacebar acts more of a sort of wildcard key to perform actions depending on what you're standing next to or alternatively the melee attack button. Obviously this is an annoyance when you're trying to perform an action only to be not quite standing in the right spot and instead giving your teammate a mouthful of rifle-butt.
Not to say that your teammate doesn't deserve a rifle to the face especially because from what I can tell one's a complete Dickhole and the other is a walking cliche. This may open the way further down the line for character development in which they start to understand each other in a true example of camaraderie and brothers-in-arms yadda yadda bullshit etc. but really since from what I can tell the game's just really interested in action rather than storyline as you can pick and choose which missions you take, not to mention that the game's predecessors see storyline only as a way to vainly find a reason for people to be in these shitholes of places to begin with. There's the Sniper who is the aforementioned Dickhole and the gun-toting psycho who's the cliche. Their relationship is reminiscent of the relationship between Chris and Gary in "Team America" except the puppets seem more human and are a lot funnier. I wasn't aware that military branches took tips from "Survivor" but they clearly pick their agents exactly how the producers of that show do, picking those who are most likely to explode at nothing or simply piss everyone else off resulting in a definitive vote-off at tribal council.
There is no obvious need to have two people here with two skills anyway, they play exactly the same and although the game boasts that one can play how they like either "stealthy" or "loud" I found there to be no need or way to be stealthy so it just came down to shooting bad guys like every other game. It is also meant to be a co-op game which I'm sure would help as the other character generally just sits around and picks his nose unless he's told to get of his arse and do something.
But really this game is just an example of a console game, and as I have before made clear I am not a console person. I've also been caught saying that first person shooters do not belong on consoles which is my way of venting my feelings of inadequacy that aiming with those fiddly fucking thumb joysticks always brings up. However this game, first person shooter or not, belongs on a console and very much should stay there. Obviously game developers heard my cries of how games that should be made for PC as well as consoles and decided to arse-rape me with this example of how horribly wrong I am.
In conclusion I can't really recommend this game to anyone. It's not graphically brilliant for those who like eye candy, it's not deep enough for those who like storylines and it doesn't offer anything the foamy-mouthed adrenalin junkies haven't had before with better quality. It doesn't even entertain those who just like murdering animated characters for the hell of it as the enemies are so stupid that they practically kill themselves. Perhaps I don't identify with this game because as previously mentioned it is really a console game and I'm not a console person but in that case Conflict: Denied Ops simply gives another reason for me never to waste my money on the damn things and reinforced my view that FPS consol games are either for certified gaming retards or people who's free time is taken up by gaming and gaming alone - and of course those with disposable income or rich parents so in that case I would suggest that I know of a poor student in New Zealand who could really use some extra cash.
Conflict: Denied Ops is a game that reinforces the latter and although I am of course reviewing it based solely on the demo there is one factor where a full game can always be criticised by only it's demo.
It lagged like a motherfucker.
I of course realise that my computer is hardly top of the line, in fact it is nearing it's second birthday at which point I will force-feed the disk-drive birthday cake in an effort to have an excuse to treat myself to a new PC but regardless of this and in defence of my reliable machine and to give you an example I can run Bioshock in full graphics only suffering a little lag. I am not vain enough to suggest that I can run any game on full graphics which is why I tried to drop the graphics from high to low or even medium but for some reason the demo wants to force you to have high graphics causing your computer to run like it was constipated. This is not encouraging for the full version especially when any example of AI was few and far between and the graphics only looked slightly better than Hitman: Blood Money.
The graphics don't even look like they should be demanding although the game does state that the environment is destructible which could have perhaps explained the problems but once again like any political figure you care to mention game developers don't live up to their promises. What destruction I could achieve was limited to the few gas canisters that the enemies, (who were obviously planning a barbeque in honour of them acquiring a derelict ruin to use as a base,) scattered about and of course the obligatory "barrel with flammable symbol on it" which in my opinion enemies should have learned by now NOT to hide behind. This was incresingly obvious when one could get through a lot of the demo level by simply shooting anything flammable, (the nonsensical rocketing of the canisters and barrels was the most redeeming thing about the game,) to kill everyone in a room. Also in terms of destructible things there were also a few crude barricades reminiscent of a three year-old me building cardboard-box forts in the backyard at a few points, the kind of thing that can be splintered to matchwood if one should cough in it's general direction.
In previously mentioning Hitman: Bloody Money I also wanted to convey that as well as looking remarkably similar it plays very similarly too. Oh sure it's a first person shooter with gunfire and explosions and it is set in a war-torn shithole rather than a FBI protected suburb or a Playboy-style Christmas party this doesn't take away from the fact that the relationship is definitely there, (although where the Hitman style of play works remarkably well with Blood Money and results in a true gaming icon in this game it just makes it confused and lazy.) It is of course produced by the same company, Edios Interactive, which shows in the fact that although this is meant to be a first person shooter game one still has not mastered the ability of jumping. Instead the spacebar acts more of a sort of wildcard key to perform actions depending on what you're standing next to or alternatively the melee attack button. Obviously this is an annoyance when you're trying to perform an action only to be not quite standing in the right spot and instead giving your teammate a mouthful of rifle-butt.
Not to say that your teammate doesn't deserve a rifle to the face especially because from what I can tell one's a complete Dickhole and the other is a walking cliche. This may open the way further down the line for character development in which they start to understand each other in a true example of camaraderie and brothers-in-arms yadda yadda bullshit etc. but really since from what I can tell the game's just really interested in action rather than storyline as you can pick and choose which missions you take, not to mention that the game's predecessors see storyline only as a way to vainly find a reason for people to be in these shitholes of places to begin with. There's the Sniper who is the aforementioned Dickhole and the gun-toting psycho who's the cliche. Their relationship is reminiscent of the relationship between Chris and Gary in "Team America" except the puppets seem more human and are a lot funnier. I wasn't aware that military branches took tips from "Survivor" but they clearly pick their agents exactly how the producers of that show do, picking those who are most likely to explode at nothing or simply piss everyone else off resulting in a definitive vote-off at tribal council.
There is no obvious need to have two people here with two skills anyway, they play exactly the same and although the game boasts that one can play how they like either "stealthy" or "loud" I found there to be no need or way to be stealthy so it just came down to shooting bad guys like every other game. It is also meant to be a co-op game which I'm sure would help as the other character generally just sits around and picks his nose unless he's told to get of his arse and do something.
But really this game is just an example of a console game, and as I have before made clear I am not a console person. I've also been caught saying that first person shooters do not belong on consoles which is my way of venting my feelings of inadequacy that aiming with those fiddly fucking thumb joysticks always brings up. However this game, first person shooter or not, belongs on a console and very much should stay there. Obviously game developers heard my cries of how games that should be made for PC as well as consoles and decided to arse-rape me with this example of how horribly wrong I am.
In conclusion I can't really recommend this game to anyone. It's not graphically brilliant for those who like eye candy, it's not deep enough for those who like storylines and it doesn't offer anything the foamy-mouthed adrenalin junkies haven't had before with better quality. It doesn't even entertain those who just like murdering animated characters for the hell of it as the enemies are so stupid that they practically kill themselves. Perhaps I don't identify with this game because as previously mentioned it is really a console game and I'm not a console person but in that case Conflict: Denied Ops simply gives another reason for me never to waste my money on the damn things and reinforced my view that FPS consol games are either for certified gaming retards or people who's free time is taken up by gaming and gaming alone - and of course those with disposable income or rich parents so in that case I would suggest that I know of a poor student in New Zealand who could really use some extra cash.
[Blinking eyes thing]
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/tzyon
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/tzyon
