Conflict Zone

Conflict Zone is a war-themed real-time strategy game, developed by MASA Group and published by Ubi Soft for Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Windows.

This article is about the 2001 video game. For conflict zone, see War. For other uses, see Conflict zone (disambiguation).
Conflict Zone
Developer(s)MASA Group
Publisher(s)Ubi Soft
Platform(s)Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Windows
ReleaseWindows
  • NA: October 31, 2001
Dreamcast
  • NA: December 15, 2001
  • PAL: April 12, 2002
PlayStation 2
  • PAL: August 16, 2002
  • NA: October 19, 2002
Genre(s)Real time strategy
Mode(s)Single player, multiplayer

Story

In 2010, the majority of the world's developed countries have formed a centralised organisation, known as the International Corps for Peace, dedicated to bringing about world peace through worldwide media. However, not all developing countries are keen to be involved. Ghost, a secret organisation, seeks only the economic interests of its members without any attachment to morals thus does not hesitate to create crisis situations which the International Corps for Peace is forced to solve, through humiliation, and healthy propaganda.

Gameplay

There are two playable campaigns in Conflict Zone: the Ghost campaign, and the International Corps for Peace campaign.

Missions take place in locations where fictional conflicts take place such as: civil war in Ukraine, wars between Indonesia and Malaysia, India and Pakistan and Nigeria and Niger. Most missions usually require the player to build a base (or a 'camp' in Ghost's case) and complete objectives in order to successfully complete the mission.

Unlike most other traditional real-time strategy games, where a main resource pool is used to produce units and buildings, Conflict Zone uses a unique system where innocent civilians are the centerpiece and that the two factions have two completely different strategies that offers a unique challenge to master. Conflict Zone's main innovation was the use of propaganda, which was crucial in the game, with money second. Coming in the form of Popularity Points, players have to exploit the media in order to gain more PP to unlock units and buildings to help turn the fight in their favour, which faction the player may choose affects the way they are gained.

In some cases, the player may also employ artificial intelligence commanders who can be delegated duties. Each commander is tailored to a specific strategy: attack, defend, specialist and commando. By allocating resources, units and bases to a commander, the player can have him/her perform various operations with whatever is at hand.

The International Corps for Peace uses an arsenal of high end, fully trained forces and can easily overpower their Ghost counterpart in brute force but the commander is forced to 'appeal' to humanitarian efforts by rescuing Civilians, from neutral towns within the map, and take them to built Refugee Camps to gain PP. However should the player accidentally cause civilian casualties or fail to rescue them, the player's PP level may drop.

The Ghost however do not care of civilian welfare and are more ruthless but depend on the people to help them win.

With a weaker arsenal but bigger unit capacity, Ghost players have the freedom to cause havoc wherever they please; whether by deliberately attacking International Corps for Peace forces near civilians, shooting down their rescue efforts, directly destroying their refugee camps or actively fighting off attacks, the organisation gain popularity by turning the country's people to their cause. To also help gain this, Ghost commanders can even 'enlist' civilians by taking them to enlistment camps where soldiers, dressed as civilians, can help hamper their oppressor's rescue efforts but the only to do this is employ their own cameramen to capture their motives.

Reception

The Dreamcast and PC versions received "mixed" reviews, while the PlayStation 2 version received "generally unfavorable reviews", according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[1][2][3]

References
  1. "Conflict Zone for Dreamcast Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  2. "Conflict Zone for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  3. "Conflict Zone for PlayStation 2 Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  4. Bye, John "Gestalt" (June 7, 2001). "Conflict Zone (PC)". Eurogamer. Gamer Network. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  5. Shoemaker, Brad (January 11, 2002). "Conflict Zone Review (DC)". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  6. Beers, Craig (November 15, 2001). "Conflict Zone Review (PC)". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  7. Retrovertigo (December 24, 2001). "Conflict Zone". PlanetDreamcast. IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on January 25, 2009. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  8. Suciu, Peter (January 5, 2002). "Conflict Zone: Modern War Strategy". GameSpy. IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on June 29, 2004. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  9. Chau, Anthony (January 7, 2002). "Conflict Zone (DC)". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  10. Blake, Bill (December 3, 2001). "Conflict Zone (PC)". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  11. Dunham, Jeremy (November 26, 2002). "Conflict Zone (PS2)". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  12. Rybicki, Joe (December 2002). "Conflict Zone". Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. Ziff Davis. p. 158. Archived from the original on June 26, 2004. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  13. Poole, Stephen (December 25, 2001). "Conflict Zone". PC Gamer. Future US. p. 76. Archived from the original on October 6, 2003. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  14. Pratchett, Rhianna (2001). "PC Review: Conflict Zone". PC Zone. Archived from the original on June 24, 2007. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  15. "Review: Conflict Zone". PSM. Future US. January 2003. p. 42.
  16. Bemis, Greg (December 4, 2002). "'Conflict Zone' (PS2) Review". X-Play. TechTV. Archived from the original on December 16, 2002. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
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