Conflict: Denied Ops

Pivotal Games has reached through Conflict: Denied Ops to the fifth game from the series. I would not be this excited by the perspective of playing it if I did not talk with two of the guys involved in its developing, with the occasion of GC2007. Probably their enthusiasm was pretty catching, since I was waiting with some interest for a game in which I had to deal with some terrorists who have nothing better to do than blowing up some continents.

Conflict: Denied Ops is a pretty special FPS (First Person Shooter), even great at first sight, and very accessible to the ones who run from the complexity of some games such as Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. At least this is the impression I got when I left the Eidos stand from Games Convention. And when you think that they did not give us t-shirts.

Denied Ops is the first game from the series in which the player controls from both perspectives a team made out of two CIA agents, unlike the previous versions in which you could control a team of four soldiers who were getting their hands dirty from the blood of the terrorists. So, the game play has changed, even if not too much, because now we can play from the perspective of any of the two main characters, Lang and Graves, anytime and anywhere, on the mountain or on the sea.

Lang is the machine gunner of the team, a pack of muscles who does not have enough brains to realize what danger means, and whose main weapon is a 5.56 mm caliber light rifle equipped with grenade launcher. Graves on the other side is the war veteran, an old man who fights with his eyes and ears perk up from behind a 7.62 mm caliber sniper rifle. In a weird way, the weapon can be used as a rifle also; an upgrade which is available only after some hours spent inside the game, and what is weirder is that the ammo for the sniper rifle is unlimited. So following, Graves who can be equipped at a certain moment even with a video camera which can be attached to the weapon so you can shoot from behind the corners without being exposed.

The solo campaign begins at Santa Cecilia monastery from Venezuela (and then through Africa and Russia), the main goal of the two being to discover the place in which is hiding general Ramirez, one of the bad guys from Denied Ops, along with his nuclear warheads. The mission’s details are extremely vague, the only thing they are certain of is the necessity to kill without too many questions all that means opponent with two legs, and then to plant C4 on a server.

If we play from Lang’s perspective, we can order Graves to deal the maneuver or to change the perspective and do the job ourselves. Of course the blow will alert the opponents and the two will find themselves surrounded, and in a real moment of action a HIND helicopter appears, which must be put to the ground. In fact, we destroyed only the gun from the helicopter, but the pilot thinks that it is better not to force a landing yet.