Conflict : Desert Storm

Conflict: Desert Storm for PlayStation 2 is a squad-based tactical shooter developed by Pivotal Games and released in 2002. Published by SCi Games in Europe and licensed to Gotham Games in North America, it places a four-person special-forces unit in a fictionalized campaign inspired by the 1990–91 Gulf War. It was the first entry in the Conflict series, combining a third-person combat view with an optional first-person perspective. Players can enlist as a British SAS or U.S. Delta Force squad, while the mission structure follows a shared campaign of covert operations behind Iraqi lines.

Rather than assigning the player to one fixed protagonist, Conflict: Desert Storm revolves around managing a four-soldier team. The squad includes a rifleman who serves as the leader, a sniper with medical training, a heavy-weapons specialist, and an engineer equipped for demolitions and anti-armour work. At any time, the player can switch direct control from one soldier to another, making a change in weapons or specialist skills part of the moment-to-moment decision making. The remaining teammates can be given practical orders to follow, hold position, attack, retreat, or move to selected locations, so success often depends on arranging the group before opening fire.

The campaign begins with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and moves through missions built around rescues, reconnaissance, sabotage, assaults, and extraction. Objectives can call for destroying anti-aircraft defences, securing information, protecting allies, disabling military targets, or crossing hostile territory before evacuation. The game presents deserts, urban areas, air bases, fortified positions, and other war-zone environments as spaces in which the squad must balance movement, cover, ammunition, and health. Training introduces the basic weapons, squad commands, medical supplies, artillery support, and air strikes before the larger operations ask the player to apply those tools under pressure.

Combat is built around each team member’s role rather than a single universal loadout. Rifles and sniper weapons suit different engagement distances, while the explosives and heavy-weapons specialists are needed when armour, fortified targets, or demolition tasks become central to an objective. Players may also take the controls of military vehicles in certain missions, including a Humvee and Bradley fighting vehicle, while the squad can operate its weapons. This mix of on-foot action, vehicle sections, and command management gives the PS2 game a more tactical rhythm than a straightforward run-and-gun shooter, even though its missions remain direct, objective-driven scenarios.

Local cooperative play is an important part of the PlayStation 2 edition. Two players can share the campaign, each taking responsibility for a member of the squad and coordinating actions without having to pass control back and forth. The game’s wider multi-platform release included Windows, Xbox, and GameCube versions, but the PS2 version is particularly associated with its split-screen two-player option. This console release arrived during the early PlayStation 2 period, when tactical military games were exploring ways to pair accessible action controls with squad management. Conflict: Desert Storm established the characters, special-forces format, and Gulf War setting that Pivotal Games would revisit in later Conflict games.

Although the campaign takes broad inspiration from real events, its missions and characters form a fictional action story rather than a historical simulation. The appeal lies in working through that story as a coordinated unit: selecting the right soldier for a job, positioning the others intelligently, and adapting when a mission changes from a quiet infiltration to a larger firefight. For players looking for a PlayStation 2 military game with both solo squad control and couch co-op, Conflict: Desert Storm remains a defining early example of the series’ tactical shooter formula.