I had not heard about Conflict: Denied Ops before today so when I saw that there was a demo released I looked up a preview online to find out more about it. The game is based around a 2 person squad and can be played entirely in co-op mode either via Xbox Live or split screen. So, from the sounds of it the game has potential because co-op is my favorite game mode. So, I downloaded the demo and gave it a try. The co-op aspect of the game is great. Even the demo allows for co-op play. I did not have anyone else to play with so I went it alone, but the game makes it easy to switch between players. Also, the make it easy to control your squad mate when you are alone. Just point at a spot and hit the left trigger and the guy will go there. Hit it again and he comes back to you. The two squad mates each have their own roll. Once is a sniper and the other has the heavy weapons. So, if you’re playing as the sniper you can sit back and send in your squad mate while you cover him. Or, if you’d rather go in guns blazing then you can have the sniper stay back and cover you. These aspects of the demo all worked well.

The demo itself is pretty short, but it has enough packed in to get to try out both team mates weapons and tactics. The weapons all performed ok, but they were nothing spectacular. All of them seemed to take a long time to reload. This is probably intentional so that you’re team mate covers you while you reload, but it was still annoying.

From here things go downhill fast. The graphics are really bad. I’m talking Playstation 1 bad. Plus, the enemy AI was virtually nonexistent. They pretty much just pick a spot and shoot at you from there. There was one point where I forgot my team mate in a previous room because I did not tell him to follow me, and I had no trouble clearing the enemies out by myself because they just stood in their spots and shot at me when I was in their line of site. I just went around the edges picking them off. The final thing that really bugged me, as if the graphics and AI are not enough, was the sound. It was bad. Really bad. The enemies would talk, but their weapons did not seem to make any sounds. Plus, you and your squad mate talk back and forth with really lame and cheesy lines. By the end of the demo I was tired of them.

The only way I can see playing Conflict: Denied Ops is if you have a little brother who wants to play a game with you and you don’t have any other split screen co-op games. This way you can play co-op split screen and have fun destroying the lame enemies. Otherwise you’ll probably want to stay away from this one.