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Conflict: Global Storm (PS2)
by Thebaker50
Conflict is a series of game following 4 soliders (although in the newest installment 4 becomes 2). What is supposedly great about this is this make multiplayer campaign mode awesome, especially if you have 3 mates who want to come round and play... Sadly I do not have 3 mates who want to come play this with me... as its an outdated ... game. This does ruin the feel of the game just a tad, because instead you are left to content with your allies AI... which to say the least is not very bright.
Ok, in this game, there are 4 soliders as a team. A demo and special forces expert, sniper, heavy weapons and rifleman. You have to go on a quest to basically stop terrorists all over the world, and you end up chasing down the bosses. You have to go through back street jails in war zone, to grand drug lord mansions in your quest to stop various nuclear threats and so on.
The game starts with your team dropped in a war zone (cant remember exactly, but it might have been bosnia), and you are ratted out, and taken to a jail. You must escape, and get to the LZ (landing zone). SPOILER during your escape the sniper (Foaly) is left behind (presumely dead, but again I have heard that in the newest installment you find out that he is still alive and is being tortured).
Anyway, whats good about this game?
I love the way this game is about you being an elite squad, and its all about teamwork. However it gets dull in the fact that if you play alone, you spend 50% of your time setting up your allies in the correct position. I imagine in 4p mode, this wouldnt be an issue.
There are lots of guns as well, and they shoot really realistically. Be is a druganov sniper rifle, or a bazooka, you know its gonna be fun to shoot. ALso i like the way the spec ops solider can shoot smgs better than the rifle, even though any solider can have any weapon. It make the game feel slightly RPG style, especially as the soliders can rank up and level up indivudally (although i am not sure this makes any difference to the gameplay). You can also drive vehicle, such as car and tanks, but there are not that many you can drive, but its just an added plus. Another plus is the stealth aspect of the game. I ued to love going as the spec ops guy, adding a silencer, and scouting ahead. I would have liked to be able to stick the sniper in a place to help me if things got tough, but sadly he would just start shooting automatically, and ruin all the stealth. Still, its the though that counts.
One thing though is that the enemy AI is not very bright either, although to be fair I only ever played easy mode. I would play hard etc if I had someone who wanted to play with, but for an old game like this, there are better games out there.
So in summary, if you and 3 mates want a good 3rd person shooter to play, this is the one. Sadly though, its rare you will have 4 people all willing to play an old 3rd person shooter these days with things like online gaming.
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Red Faction (PS2)
by DanielBebb
There are very few games which have bought me as much joy as the original Red Faction, which is a First Person Shooter. One of the first PS2 games it pushed the bounndaries of the console both in terms of gameplay, storytelling and phsyics.
The story follows Parker, a mineworker on Mars who is in the middle of a revolt of ... miners and must fight to survive with the the resistence led by the mysterious EOS. The games starts out in the mines of mars and takes you to places that you never thought it would go. Its full of twists and turns that you don't see coming and for that reason it is a fantastic experience.
The geomod system allows you to blow up chunks of the scenery. This is one of the most original aspects of the game and why it became an iconic (if now forgotten) PS2 title. It is fun just to see how much you can blow up!
The game includes multiplayer (bots and people, but no online mode). The graphics are very good too but not by todays standards but the original gameplay still holds up and by the end you will really want a remake on the PS3 or Xbox 360!
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Star Trek: Conquest (PS2)
by mundy5
A fun strategy game that will keep you entertained for a few hours.
In this game you play as one of 6 races in the star trek universe. The federation, klingon, romulan, cardassian, breen or dominion. The games campaign mode has no story and there is just one map so it is more of an instant action game. You start with one home ... system depending on your race. The system has an advanced starbase and a mining or research facility also depending on your race. You start with a fleet comprised of 1 cruiser vessel.
The main goal is to capture and secure other systems in a turn based strategy screen. When battles occur you can choose to pilot a ship yourself though this makes the battles take up to 5 minutes where as the simulation mode usually takes about 1 minute. In the arcade mode where you pilot a ship you can reroute power from shields to weapons and visa versa and from sensors to engines and visa versa. In simulation mode your options are extremely limited to just switching between offensive and defensive mode. Instant is what it says on the tin and give you no options and instantly shows the outcome of the battle though this usually goes in the favour of the enemy when using this option.
There are only 5 stations in the game. Starbase, Advanced Starbase, Defense platforms, Mining Station, Research Station. Each Race has 3 ships, a scout, cruiser and dreadnaught. The federation have the defiant, intrepid and galaxy class ships and the other race's follow with familiar ships like the bird of prey and romulan warbird. The dominion are the most powerful race in the game as they are situated in a good position, have the most powerful ships and the best technologies. Also the only way to get to there home system is through the deepspace nine station which is the most powerful station/ship in the game and is closest to the dominion.
The cardassians are perhaps the hardest to play as because of there terrible technologies though the federation come close as they are stuck with in the middle surrounded on all sides.
The three difficulties are as follows. Easy: start with 200m(200 million dilithium) and no fog. Medium: start with 150m and fog of war. Hard: start with 100m and fog of war. The ai's difficulty is also changed. In total there are 32 systems in the game and 18 ships. You can only have a total of 3 fleets at a time and each fleet can only comprise of 7 ships. To build a new fleet you must create an admiral. This created a fleet with one cruiser class ship in it. Each admiral has there own special abilities and each race has there own amount of admirals. For example the klingons have 2 attack admirals and 1 movement admiral where as the federation have one of each. A defence admiral, movement admiral, and attack admiral.
Attack admirals start with +10% attack, Defence admirals get +10% defence and movement admirals get 2 moves per turn. Admirals gain experience from winning offensive battles and gain a certain amount of experience depending on the ship/stations destroyed. Once reaching a certain amount of experience the admiral levels up increasing his bonus stats. Eventually all admirals get more then one move per turn. When one of your fleets is destroyed that admiral's experience is also wiped.
Each race also has 3 special weapons that charge depending on how many research stations you have. Once the special weapons is charged you can choose one of the 3 to build. These include weapons like the genesis device, a healing device, and a warp disruptor. The genesis device causes 50% damage to all ships and stations in one system. The healing device heals all of your ships and stations in a system. The warp disruptor severs all links to your system from neutral and enemy systems for a certain amount of time.
There are many technologies in the game and I will list as many as I can remember: Ship speed (ships move faster in battles),
Ship handling (ships handle more effectively in battles),
Ship cost (reduces the cost of constructing all ships),
Mining efficiency (increases the amount each mining facility give you per turn)
Station cost (reduces the cost of constructing all stations),
Primary weapon damage (Increase the damage of all phasers and disruptors),
Secondary weapon damage (increases the damage of all secondary weapons, torpedoes),
Primary fire rate (increases the firing rate of phasers and disruptors),
Secondary fire rate (Increase the fire rate of all torpedoes and plasma weapons),
Admiral cost (reduces the cost of admirals),
Research efficiency (increases the speed each research station researches new technologies and creates new special weapons),
Ship hull (increases the maximum hit points of a ship),
Shields (increases the power of shields on ships)
Each technology has 3 levels of research and each is more powerful then the previous. Each race has 5 different technologies that can be researched during the game.
Upon entering neutral systems you will encounter indigenous species such as the borg, xindi and ferengi. Each of these species only have 2 ships each. The Borg have the scout sphere and tactical scout cube. They did not put the larger ships into the game as they would require fleets to take each ship down.
Each system in the game has a star rating out of 4. The higher the star rating the more income that system gives you per turn. There is also a skirmish mode that allows you to enter the arcade mode of a battle straight away and allows you to select the sides and ships. There are also ships in this mode that cannot be used in the campaign mode. This mode allows you to drive Borg, Xindi and 3 new federation ships (the oberth, miranda and sovereign class).
There are 3 unlockable maps and 3 unlockable ship sets (the ones previously stated that were only playable in the arcade skirmish mode)
Completing a campaign game on any difficulty with any amount of opponents unlocks the following depending on the race you play as.
Cardassian - Borg unicomplex skirmish map
Breen - Sha Ka Ree skirmish map (the "god" system from star trek V)
Romulans - Talos IV skirmish map (Planet from "The Cage/Menagerie" episodes of the original series)
Dominion - Xindi fleet set
Federation - Federation 2 fleet set (oberth, miranda, soveriegn)
Klingon - Borg fleet set.
The only downside to this game is the fact that there are only 2 game modes and one campaign map. though the 2 special buildings (deepspace nine, argus array) add a little more strategy to the game.
also the fact that there is no multiplayer mode is a big downside as this game would be great with hotseat multiplayer. It would be great to have 6 player battles using one controller even if you could only use the simulation mode in battles. Also three ships per race is a big let down as five ships per race would be much more acceptable.
I would recommend anyone buy this game but If you are going to get it remember its a budget game (£15 when first released) so don't expect it to give you hours of play time and I would say get it on the playstation 2 as the only thing the wii adds is a motion sensor pointer and the wii version is more costly. This deserves 4/5 because the price was so low when they first released it and for that price I can't give any less.
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