Have your team follow you closely, and then go through this door, where a lone Iraqi soldier will be there to greet you. Your surroundings are the same however, you're just deeper in Al-Hadar now, the town where the missing Delta-Two members are that we need to rescue.įrom the get go, you can't really go left or right, but only forward through the door through the wall ahead. It takes little time for you to switch from the first mission to the second mission. Objective Four: Complete your mission objective without losing any squad members. Objective Three: Take out the mortar crew to the north. Make your way through the town and over the river to reinforce them.ĭelta-Two Do not allow any Delta-Two soldiers to be captured or killed.
Oh, and Hidden & Dangerous II should piss all over it - if it ever shows up.Objective One: Reinforce Delta-Two Delta-Two are north of your current position. Ultimately it's an improvement over the previous game -a million light years better than Delta Force: Black Hawk Down -but it's still nowhere near as involving as Operation Flashpoint. The enemy Al works as well as your own team's, with bad guys making good use of cover, lobbing grenades to try to pin you down and generally behaving like the ill-trained Iraqi soldiers they represent. The control system, initially as confusing as the Greek legal system, becomes second nature quickly, even if it's mostly just used as a way of positioning your team to set up effective 'kill zones'. The action is relentless and challenging, even if enemy spawn points are obvious to locate and further break down the immersion factor. Dude, IraqĪs long as you can live with the overall shallowness of it all, there is a lot to admire here.
The whole game is still very much on rails, which brings the whole thing crashing down to an arcade level quicker than putting the word Extreme in the title. It's more, 'choose the best way of getting round that comer and only that comer'.
It's not freedom in the Operation Flashpoint 'do what you want, go where you want' manner. Once again, you have the illusion of freedom on offer here, something heightened by the ability to give orders to all four of your squad-mates at once, all of whom sport much more impressive Al than that found in many other games of this ilk. What's not so good is the actual structure of these levels. A couple, maybe, but the developer has listened to feedback from the first and really made an effort to keep things interesting this time round. Rescuing trapped soldiers, destroying communications facilities, escaping from capture - and barely a sand dune in sight. You may remember the original CDS: an extremely yellow game, based mostly on controlling four SAS troopers (or Delta Force operatives if you wanted the Americanised experience) blowing up SCUD missile launchers in the deserts of Iraq during the first UN foray into Saddam's playpen of death.ĬDSII is set during the same timeframe, with the same soldiers. It doesn't deserve unilateral praise either, but as a way of passing a few hours, there are worse options. Yes, I should be tearing strips from its hide, but frankly it just doesn't deserve it. It is, after all, an extremely linear arcade shooter masquerading as a deeper, tactical, strategic military simulation, and nothing, nothing, gets my goat more than arcade mutton dressed up as simulation lamb. In my heart of hearts, I can't help but feel that with Conflict: Desert Storm II I should probably be dancing naked around the bonfire of negativity, throwing burning sticks of hate on to the rising flame of critique.