by:	November 08, 2005

Out of the unnecessarily and uncountable number of counter-terrorism games out there, it can be hard for fans of that genre to choose between what’s the real deal and what isn’t. Pivotal Game’s entered this genre in mid 2003 with their game, Conflict: Desert Storm. Since then they have introduced, Conflict: Desert Storm II Back to Baghdad, Conflict: Vietnam, and now Conflict: Global Terror. If you are a fan of this series, you will obviously notice some changes to the gameplay and the overall game itself, but for gamers just getting interested, keep reading because you may just be interested in Global Terror, maybe.

Conflict: Global Terror is significantly a single-play game that spans 14, lengthy missions that just like the title suggests, takes you all across the globe in an effort to thwart terrorism. Each mission takes place on a quite impressive scale with the size of the level itself and no loading times within the level, the number of enemies it can hold and the fairly immaculate level of detail. For the most part each mission follows a fairly similar pattern in which you and your squad must complete a number of objectives that can or cannot change through the course of the mission and reach a certain point on that level to complete it and move on to the next. Depending on your skill level and difficulty setting, each mission will take on average from 20 – 45 minutes, so while some are short and sweet, others can be seriously drawn out and you will either like that or hate it.

Gameplay
Single-player consists of you controlling a group of 4 characters at the same time where the computer will basically do whatever you tell it to with the remaining 3 characters while you operate one of your choice. What’s great about this setup is that not only can you switch between characters, but you can do it easily and instantly. By simply pushing ‘left’ or ‘right’ on the D-pad, you can instantly switch between either of the 4 characters and take control of the entire squad all over again with whomever you chose. Here is where one of the game’s biggest problems lie however. When the computer is controlling the other 3 members of your squad, you might as well throw your Xbox right out the window because that might just be better than letting the computer do as it sees fit. The friendly AI is unbelievably stupid at times to the point where throwing your Xbox seems logical. Sure they are smart enough to the point of where to go and crouch when you crouch and so forth, but each member is very trigger happy and will quickly dispose of all of their ammo, and then complain about it when they are out, and then guess what…their dead.

The only real solution to this problem is to get on Xbox Live, make some friends and play on-line co-op with up to 3 other people and then go through each and every level. Xbox Live is actually set up very nicely and quite user friendly. So of course playing co-op with friends is A LOT more fun than letting the computer control your fate, because there is a much better chance any human player is much smarter than the computer. Xbox Live basically features 2 different types of gameplay, co-op and a sort of deathmatch. Co-op is definitely where it’s at for the fun, while deathmatch just seems a little too expectable. There is also a ranking system that compares your skill to everyone else’s in the form of numbers in certain areas including overall rating, mission scores, headshots, stealth kills and so forth.