Déjà vu all over again?...oh god.

Hello it's me DubaiMario , so...... when I was given the chance to play Kane & Lynch on the PS3 a few months back, I was absolutely appalled at how bad the game was, given the amount of marketing hype that went into promoting the game (cue Gamespot flashback). Still, after managing to sit through it, I thought that never again would a developer create such an absolutely abysmal game and sell it off to the eager public. Sadly, I have had to sit through yet another disappointment, in the form of Conflict: Denied Ops.

This game is the fifth intsallment in the Conflict series, and thankfully doesn’t carry over any of the plot from any of the previous games. Denied Ops pits you as two special agents working for the Special Activities Division within the CIA - Lincoln Graves and Reggie Lang (isn’t it ironic that your department is called SAD? But I digress..) As normally expected, each agent would have their own special abilities, but sadly the only difference between the agents is the size of the gun they’re packing. Graves carries around a trusty sniper rifle, while Lang prefers a heavy duty machine gun. Each agent does have a pistol as a standby weapon, but its firepower is about as effective as a fly swatter.

Cue the predictable and depressing storyline – a third world dictatorship has decided that it’s had enough of crap from the world and wants to gain nuclear weapons, “just in case”. Your task is obviously to stop them and come home for the big hero parade. While your missions span over three continents and subject you to a variety of environments, your missions soon become terribly linear and repetitive. Most of your missions just involve you sneaking into a facility and stealing data from a computer, or taking out a specific target. Though this may not sound challenging, it actually is, considering there is absolutely no radar, GPS, or signposts telling you where things are. All you have on screen is a blue arrow that is supposed to point you in the right direction, but it often tends to have a mind of its own. Apparently the removal of the HUD is supposed to be a good thing according to the game’s manual, but it would be nice to have some sort of visual clue where your enemies are hiding out, apart from when the jump out and turn you into swiss cheese.

Dead storyline and gameplay aside, let’s focus on our friendly agents, who are as good a couple as Elton John and David Furnish. The two agents constantly bicker, with Lang being the typical macho man in charge, and Graves trying to stand up for himself (do I smell domestic disturbance here?). Not only are they a match made in heaven, but they’re an absolute pain to control. Because you’re responsible for both agents and can freely switch between then, you will have to leave the other agent in the hands of the spastic AI. Most of the time, your AI partner will crouch behind a crate and return fire at enemies, but the rest of the time you will find your friend wandering around trying to remember what your last command to him was. Considering there’s only two commands – “Move there” and “Form on me”, that shouldn’t be too hard to remember. But your AI friend will happily walk into a barrage of bullets, or stupidly stand around taking in the historical sites. And should your friend happen to ingest one too many bullets, you have to run out and inject him with adrenaline, and he will pop back on his feet (why we don’t have this solution in real wars I’ll never know…think of the savings in hospital bills!)

Another annoying part of the game is the limited firepower you have. You’re pretty much stuck with the sniper and machine gun for the entire game, with free upgrades to both weapons added on after each successful mission. Some of the upgrades are genuinely useful, such as Graves’ ability to shoot over and around objects. But even with these upgrades you don’t feel any real sense of combat – you get more of a thrill by running up close to an enemy and cracking their head open like a walnut. If you get tired of all the running, the game does occasionally give you the brief thrill of driving a vehicle. You’re given the chance to drive a tank, an APC, and a hovercraft, all of which drive like they’re made of lead. Controls are unresponsive, and if you’re playing in single player mode, you have to keep switching between driver and gunner positions, leaving you in the open for enemy fire. Oh and annoying thing number 87 about this game – driving over your partner. Frequently.

If you feel that you’re just too frustrated with the game, you do have an option to bribe a friend to join you in a co-op mode, or you can team up with a player online to go through the game together. This eliminates the brain-dead AI from controlling your partner, so at least you can have someone competent covering your back. The game also includes a multiplayer option, which has standard Deathmatch and Capture the Flag levels to try and hold your interest. But these too lack any originality or new weapons, and I found it quite difficult to find anyone who was playing this game online.

Graphically speaking, the game looks like it was developed for the PS2. Everything looks grainy or too bright, and the models animate more like stick figures. The voice acting is simply terrible, and some of the accents are just downright painful to hear. There are some good sound effects for the explosions and when firing, but that’s about it. One thing the game does do quite well is physics - the game boasts ‘Puncture Tech’ technology, and while I have no clue what this means, it’s easy to figure out what it is. Nearly every single thing in your environment can be torn to shreds, ranging from water towers to pickup trucks, to wooden crates. Explosions are frequent and handled easily by the PS3, which makes for some sort of visual distraction from the terrible gameplay. But honestly speaking, the developers went a bit too far with this ‘realistic’ engine, applying it to nearly every single object in the game, even to fallen soldiers. Shoot a corpse and it will instantly buckle over and flop around like a rag doll. Because the physics engine has been used too extensively in the game, it loses its sheen after a while and just blends in with the rest of the game.

Conflict: Denied Ops is a truly painful game to play, and makes even the worst FPS game look better in comparison. With boring missions, unattractive graphics, and a multiplayer mode that no one seems to be playing, this game doesn’t look to be selling many copies any time soon. If you’re looking for a good FPS for the PS3, look elsewhere.