No my dearest, not the face!
Something very odd happened to me while playing Conflict: Denied Ops on PC. I went from looking scornfully down my nose at arguably the most generic shooter I’ve ever played, to cackling gleefully as I blew up countless explosive barrels and killed the same poor soldier for the thousandth time, foam forming at the corners of my mouth. This is in no way a testament to the game’s charm, more to the fact that I was forcefully in the game’s company for so long I inevitably began to enjoy it. That’s right; Denied Ops gave me Stockholm Syndrome.
I hate Conflict: Denied Ops. When I play a game, I want it to feel as little like a game as possible. I want an experience I’ve not had before, to be drawn into the mindset of intriguing, moving characters and a thought-provoking plot. Just for a few hours, I want to forget about the real world and enter an entirely new one that tickles my imagination and tinkers with my emotions.
In every conceivable way, Denied Ops refused me all of those things. Instead it grabbed me from behind, strapped me to a chair and began to beat me about the head with rampant stereotypes. The storyline is a faded collection of scars in the back of my head about globetrotting terrorists, stolen nuclear weapons and some Venezuelan bloke called Ramirez.
