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Conflict: Global Terror Review for Xbox |
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| Sunday, November 06, 2005 |
| | Title:
Conflict: Global Terror
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System:
Xbox
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Genre:
Action/Shooter
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Publisher:
2k Games
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Developer:
Pivotal Games
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Release:
10/1/2005
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Online:
Yes
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ESRB:
Rating Pending
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Every now and then, a game comes out that you know is bad, yet you can’t help but love it. Conflict: Global Terror is one of those games. The newest addition to Pivotal Games’ Conflict series, Conflict: Global Terror takes a change of pace from the former games. In the past, the games took place in wars—or warzones. In Global Terror, Pivotal made the focus of the game a different kind of war: the War on Terror.
Gameplay
Global Terror is a squad-based tactical third person game. Like other games in the genre (most notably SWAT on the PC), a high amount of gameplay is focused on issuing orders and executing plans efficiently, so that you don’t get wiped out by the enemy forces. This is especially the case on higher difficulties, when enemies tend to be much less susceptible to body shots, and much more likely to spot you in the shadows.
In the single player campaign, you take sole control of the squad of commandos. Each of the four specializes in a different skill, so most gamers will find themselves gravitating towards one of them most of the time. There’s the guy who is better with machine guns, the explosives guy, the sniper, and the rifle user. While everyone can use any weapon, the people who specialize in it do more damage.
One of the aspects of Global Terror that makes it unique (and one of its few well-implemented ones as well) is the ability to switch between the four characters. With a simple press of the D-pad, you can alternate between anyone on your team, taking control of that soldier. This is helpful, especially in situations where you need to shoot someone or something, blow something up, sneak up and assassinate someone, etc. Why is it such a helpful maneuver? Because the squad-control in this game, coupled with the AI, is one of the worst ones I have ever seen.
During the training, you may think to yourself, “Wow, you sure can issue a lot of commands!” And at that time, it’s true. You can tell soldiers to move to a spot, fire at a spot, sneak up to an area via hiding behind objects, fire at will, and even delay their movements to set up an ambush. The problem? That’s all you can do, and it takes a while to issue commands to everyone. During a hectic firefight, you don’t have time to issue commands to all four of your members. More likely than not, you’ll either switch between the four and do all the fighting yourself, or just issue a fire at will command and let them go out, guns blazin’.
That’s another issue in Global Terror that causes some frustration: the AI. You would think such large groups of terrorists would at least have decent intelligence when it comes to fighting, right? Well, they don’t. While you do run into a few enemies who have some sense of worth (who actually sneak up on you, or lay down cover fire for retreating comrades) almost every fight involves the enemies just running straight towards you firing, or staying in the same spot firing. In most games, the AI scales up with the difficulty. In Global Terror, though, the AI stays mostly the same. I would guess that on easy, maybe nine out of ten enemies employ the kamikaze tactics, and on the hardest difficulty maybe eight out of ten do.
Where Conflict: Global Terror does shine, though, is playing co-op with friends or online. You can play with up to four players on a single Xbox, or online via Xbox Live. When playing with friends, the problem of bad squad AI and hard-to-issue commands disappears. Instead, you can find yourself telling your friend to sneak up to a turret while you lay down cover fire. Not only does the gameplay improve dramatically, but it’s incredibly fun, as well. I can’t remember a game since Halo 2 that involved so much shouting with friends, and yelling at the TV.
Graphics
The graphics in Global Terror are ok…but nothing great. Environments can be stunning at times, and the levels vary greatly. You’ll visit locales ranging from the jungle, to industrial bases, to mountains. Each area offers something new, too, with more or less amount of cover, and varying levels of sight. The character models, though, aren’t so great. The game boasts an impressive ragdoll physics engine, but it’s too ragdollish. When you shoot an enemy who is standing on a roof, he’ll fall off completely limp with limbs flailing around in ways they shouldn’t move.
Explosions in the game are also lacking when it comes to the smaller ones, like frag grenades. Larger explosions are well done, and even have pieces of flaming shrapnel shooting out (which caused my demise many times…), but the smaller ones are little more than a puff of smoke with a small amount of dirt flying up. For a game based on military combat, you would think explosions would be one of the better graphic issues. What they did do well, though, are headshots. When you can manage to get a headshot, you get rewarded with a large cloud of blood, followed by the enemy dropping do his knees.
One aspect of the game that can either frustrate or make you happy are the different visions. In total, there are three: normal vision, night vision, and thermal vision. Night vision is well done graphics wise (it’s very realistic), but you’ll rarely use it once you get thermal vision. Thermal vision does what it sounds like: it shows you the heat patterns of the things around you. This is what you’ll use most of the game, since it labels your allies with their name and makes it impossible to accidentally shoot them. If you pay attention, you’ll notice little things about it that work nice, as well. For example, bodies on the ground show a spot missing where the bullets went, and things like flash bangs can end up throwing your vision out of whack for a while, making you temporarily blinded.
Sound
The sound in Global Terror is nothing good. A lot of the heavier weapons sound like a pistol when firing, getting little more than a “pop”. In large fights, though, the sound is well done mixing in the varied gun noises, allowing you to be able to nearly tell what guns the enemy is using.
Your squad also talks throughout the mission; especially when a man is down and needs healing. At these times, it can seem like something out of a war movie. People banter back and forth, call each other names, issue commands, etc. And when they’re down, you can hear them cursing under their breath, screaming in pain, and begging for help. All of these add a level of realism to the game, which due to the poor AI and sporadic squad controls it needs badly.
One thing does take away that realism instantly, though: the music. As you go through levels, sometimes you may notice hearing music in the background. A few times, this is coming over radios at the terrorist bases, or scattered around the area. Most of the time, though, the music doesn’t fit the mood, and detracts from the experience.
Overall
In the end, Conflict: Global Terror may not be the best squad-based game, even just sticking to the Xbox. The bad AI and lack of variety when it comes to squad commands makes the single player campaign more of a chore than a fun experience—something no video game should ever accomplish. However, when played online or with friends, it becomes an experience that throws all conventional beliefs out the window. Here you have a game that you know isn’t well made. You know it should be bad. But playing with three other people, it suddenly becomes a great game. Alone, this game isn’t even worth a rent. But if you have any friends who enjoy shooter or squad-based games, or Xbox Live, this may be worth a buy if you can find it used somewhere for half price, or a couple bucks off the cover price.
| The Core Score |
Overall
7.1 |
| Fun |
|
8 |
| Gameplay |
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7 |
| Graphics |
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6.5 |
| Audio |
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6 |
| Replay |
|
7 |
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