Once again folks it is time to read a review from the squad based shooter genre, second only to racing games in their sheer numbers of late. This one is Conflict Global Storm (known as Conflict Global Terror in the states) the fourth game in the series by developer Pivotal Games, the others being Conflict Desert Storm, Desert Storm 2 and Conflict Vietnam. The other three games have a reputation of being solid yet unspectacular games so does the fourth time hit the spot or is it just another wannabe in an extremely crowded market?

The meat to this game comes in the form of 14 large levels of world saving, terrorist hunting squad based fun. The game takes place in 2006 with a terrorist group known as the March 33 Organisation who as you guessed it must be stopped at all costs or it will be the end of the world. The people who you control to stop these terrorists are Sgt. John Bradley, Corporal David Jones, Corporal Paul Foley and Corporal Mick Connors. As the name of the title suggests in this game you travel all over the world in your four man (and one woman who joins the team later on) war on terror. You will do battle in the jungles of South America the Himalayan mountains to the South Korean streets and a few other choice locations from around the globe in between.

Each of the games 14 missions provide there own challenges for you to complete and you will need to use all four members of your squad to get it done. In this game you take control of one character at a time, but with a press of the D Pad you can take over from any of your team mates. You can give your team orders by holding down the left trigger and a menu will appear with your options and you can then point to where you want your squad to move to, fire at will, hit the ground, to follow you and to heal any of your squad with health packs. These options do come in handy in battle and give the game an element of strategic depth that some squad shooters can't match. The other main element of the gameplay is the combat. Each of your characters is capable of handling the variety of weapons on offer which includes old favorites like the Uzi 9mm, the sniper rifle, combat shotgun, AK 47, combat knife, grenade launchers, frag and smoke grenades as well as claymore mines. To use any of your weapons you pull the right trigger, same as any other shooting game, but choosing your weapon is a little more awkward than it should be. You hold the Y button down, then with the D Pad you scroll down a list and release the Y button to confirm your choice. Coupled with this while you have your weapon selected, a press of the Left trigger will change your weapons firing mode. It is a complicated system and takes quite a bit of getting used to. The game also features now standard equipment in Thermal and Night vision goggles and it seems you can't have a shooter these days without them.

The actual combat to the game is a bit of a mixed bag. This is mainly due to the questionable AI of both the enemy and your own team mates. On occasions the enemy will use tactics such as flanking and take cover, but most of the time they will simply charge straight at you. This makes giving orders to your team nigh on impossible as you simply don't have the time to set up a plan, you just start firing and this can be a big problem as sometimes your team mates seem completely unable to hit a target directly in front of them. Although this also applies to your enemies who sometimes can't hit you from point blank range but for some reason enemies never seem to be too far off target when they throw their grenades. This usually leads to one or two of your team being wiped out. I said wiped out and not killed, because even though they have just been blown up by a grenade or shot by a rocket you can call one of your surviving team mates over to heal you 100% with a med kit. The only way the game over screen appears is if all four members are killed.

Swapping between each of the four characters does not provide as much gameplay variety as it should of. Some characters are specialist snipers while others are better with the tank busting heavy weapons, but all characters handle all weapons with only the slightest bit of difference ever noticed by the player. The missions themselves are pretty standard fare for this type of game, you are usually sent to gather info on the terrorist groups and uncover their latest plans or search for weapons. The 14 missions are long though and they provide quite a challenge. The challenge does not come in the form of the computer AI being bright or that there are any puzzles to solve, no this game provides challenge three ways. The first is by throwing plenty of enemies at you, the second is making the levels huge, the third and most annoying of all is the fact that you only get to save each level 4 times. This can be a real pain considering you don't know how long the levels are and when to use your saves and I found this particularly annoying. Games with length missions should really let you save whenever and wherever you like, that's why the Xbox has a hard drive right?

Once you finally complete the single player campaign in Conflict Global Storm there is also a four player co-op mode which can be played either at one console or over Xbox live. This provides an answer to your dodgy team AI by having real humans help you out and if you only have two players, you and your mate each both take control of two characters. The games Xbox live features are very limited compared to other live titles but do provide a few options to make it worthwhile. The best being the difficulty selection, you can make it so fallen players can be revived or once they die that's it they are done for the rest of the game. The game also supports system link up as well and could be fun at LAN parties.

Conflict Global Storm looks pretty good and although is easily the best looking game in this series so far, is no match for other games on the Xbox. The jungles, mountains and city levels all look great and really give the game a nice looking atmosphere. One downer is the character animations; they look really dodgy at times especially the enemies who move very stiffly and are pretty unconvincing. Other graphical glitches like characters getting stuck in objects also lower the experience a notch as well and this is just another aspect of the poor AI in place.

The sound in this game is also a bit of a mixed bag although the character voices are really well done. Your teammates are also sometimes helpful in what they say, they tell you if they are out of ammo, or if they have thrown a grenade and will tell you if they have spotted an enemy. All of the weapons sound pretty weak though and they don't give you the satisfying feeling of firing high powered modern weaponry. They seem to lack just that extra bit of punch you would expect and won't really give your sound systems much of a work out.