Conflict Zone (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.0 stars Mediocre
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 4.4 (2.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Craig Beers
• Reviewed on: 11/15/2001
• Released on: 10/31/2001
• Originally published on GameSpot: Conflict Zone (PC) Review

Conflict Zone is a modern-day military real-time strategy game that has a unique resource system. It also touts its advanced artificial intelligence. The enemy is supposed to react to your actions in different ways every time, and you can have computer-controlled commanders help you in battles. It all sounds great in theory, but in practice, you'll find the AI only sporadically makes intelligent moves. Conflict Zone has a number of other problems, too. When the first wave of frustration passes, you'll realize that Conflict Zone is a subpar RTS game whose few good ideas just don't add up.

Conflict Zone is the stage for a war between the International Corps for Peace (ICP), a peacekeeping force like NATO, and GHOST, a secret self-serving group of nations. You can choose to play as either side in both the campaign and skirmish missions. Both sides are presented fairly well in the campaign missions, and the story is told through mildly amusing cutscenes. But while the ICP and GHOST are ideologically different, they are almost identical in terms of units and structures. The ICP scenarios are mostly peacekeeping missions in which you have to rescue civilians and then eliminate GHOST forces. These get so repetitive that, before each mission, you'll start to feel as if you're getting ready to go to work again on Monday morning after the weekend. The GHOST missions are a bit better because less emphasis is placed on rescuing civilians. It sounds boring that both sides have the same units, and it is. When playing a skirmish map, you might as well flip a coin because it basically doesn't matter which side you're on. Actually, that's not entirely true--the ICP and GHOST take slightly different approaches with regard to civilians and the media.

The resource model in Conflict Zone is interesting and unique. One of your resources is "popularity." It determines what level of units and technology you possess at any given moment. It's supposed to represent the trust that your leaders have in you, so a higher popularity means that they'll let you have bombers and submarines. The media directly influences your popularity by observing the actions you make in the game.

Popularity is the biggest differentiating factor between the ICP and GHOST. The ICP is able to increase popularity to high levels quickly simply by rescuing civilians and taking them to a refugee camp in their base. The downside to this is that the ICP also loses popularity quite easily. First, people generally don't like long wars, so the ICP's popularity slowly decreases over time. Next, if your forces suffer humiliating losses, the people back home aren't going to like you. Lastly, lots of civilian deaths at your hand will bring down your popularity big-time. A few civilian deaths are acceptable, though. But you're still going to have to avoid many battles near towns, because explosives have area-effect damage that can cause civilian casualties easily. And town buildings resupply civilians, so you don't want those destroyed.

Raising the GHOST's popularity takes more work than raising the ICP's popularity. Instead of a refugee camp, you have an enlistment camp. When you bring civilians there, they are converted to a random infantry unit on your side. This will raise your popularity to 50 percent, but no higher. As a mercenary general, you have to impress the GHOST leaders with favorable footage of successful battles. You can recruit cameramen to follow your troops. But if you're routed in combat, expect popularity to drop.

The main resources you get are command points. While the popularity resource is interesting, the command point system is frustrating. It seems to take forever to gain enough command points to build a decent-sized force. Granted, some waiting is involved in just about all RTS games, but Conflict Zone takes this to extremes. You can increase the rate of command point acquisition through rescuing civilians, but most of the time, they're behind enemy lines. And there are not many structures in the game, so building your base won't take much time at all. Therefore, you're going to just sit there twiddling your thumbs until you have collected enough command points to build troops. It's perfectly viable to get up and brew a cup of coffee or watch TV for a while and then come back to the game. The computer will rarely attack your base with a threatening force, so you don't have to worry about that. The command point system gets even worse in skirmish mode. All the combatants will get command points at a relatively equal rate, so there's no way to disrupt an opponent's economy. This means that there will be a lot of stalemates unless someone makes a really bad mistake.

The gameplay doesn't make up for the poor resource model. You're supposed to be able to make diversionary strikes at enemy forces, causing the enemy to reinforce that area and leave another area largely undefended. This works only once in a while, so you're back to the basic RTS ideal of winning by squatting in your base until you have enough troops to completely overwhelm the enemy positions. Infantry are largely useless because they die so quickly and move slow compared with vehicles. Since explosions will kill an infantryman instantly and infantry usually clump together, one tank shell or bazooka shot will send bodies flying. It leaves you to wonder why you can build a medic to heal injured troops, since troops never seem to survive more than a single hit.

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