Street battle – Conflict: Desert Storm II

We were, at least, spared the subtitle. In the US, this went out with “Back to Baghdad” on the box, making explicit the appeal to topicality of releasing a game about the last war in Iraq during a new one. It was another layer to the series’s provocation that didn’t even provoke, military glorification already too much of an accepted part of the landscape of games.

Without that element, though, there’s not a massive amount to justify Conflict: Desert Storm II having been released and succeeded in the form that it did. The Strike series quickly moved on from its initial Gulf War-inspired game Desert Strike to different scenarios and new angles; fellow slaughter-simulator Cannon Fodder went to alien planets in its sequel. Conflict, though, went for a second round of more of the same. The history element of the first game that already seemed a bit cursory was reduced further. The story likewise, although it sticks to the same initial squad names. Even the presentation stayed largely the same.

What differences are present come through in gameplay. It’s best typified by the additional feature that you can also call in airstrikes. You do this by going through your inventory and selecting a ‘laser designator’, which you point at whatever big dangerous thing the game allows you to make a target of, and wait for it to lock on before selecting the strike. This is one of the most ludicrously contrived video game concepts since whip ammo, and gave me an image of my soldiers getting out laser pointers and waving them about for a bit. It does make for a tense moment putting yourself close to danger in order to achieve spectacular destruction, though.

And that’s Conflict: Desert Storm II all round. It ups the spectacle and moves further away from tactics and further towards the war-themed rollercoaster approach of Medal of Honor. You might get put into, say, a city that looks open at a glance, but it frequently soon emerges that there’s only actually one path through. Knee-high rubble presents an impassable barrier, but one building nearby helpfully has its door open for you to move through it, shooting all the way, to the next street.

In that sense, if not on the alien front, it does feel like Cannon Fodder 2, a set of new levels that dispense with any semblance of realism in the interests of a more enjoyable gameplay challenge. Since Conflict: Desert Storm didn’t manage to coherently bring through any other elements anyway, its sequel feels both better and more honest, its ethical disconnection right up front. If I had to recommend one to play, it would certainly be this one. It’s still Cannon Fodder in 3D without the satire or the compelling simplicity, but it improves slightly on the latter. And there was sufficient public appetite for this kind of game (and approval for the original) for that unambitious proposition to be enough for success. This wasn’t even the end of it; like the Strike series before it, more than one sequel made it to the top of the charts. More on that in 2004.

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Top of the charts for week ending 20 September 2003:

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