Code of Honour 2: Conspiracy Island – what does that tells you? An island full of mysteries and intrigue? Well that's a total conspiracy in itself as this game has absolutely nothing to do with conspiracy as it plays a typical run-of-the-mill shooter. Also being part of a French Foreign Legion and having all the guys and gals sporting American accents, I'm not sure what's actually true…well at least Code of Honour 2: Conspiracy Island lived up to its title as it's got nothing to do with French people or mysteries of any sorts.
So the plot goes something like this – kill all the bad guys. Take no prisoners and don't stop until the credits roll in. Actually the local is the Ile Royale, French Guiana to secure the area as a bunch of terrorists took the island as it got a neat nuclear reactor there. It doesn't take much imagination what they are planning to do with it however your orders is to silently enter the island and dispose the threat before the media gets their paws on it, and the terrorists using the reactor nuking nearby cities.
I'm not sure about entering the island silently however all I done is use the biggest badass weapons available to cause the biggest explosions available – save a nuclear blast. Then again, I probably do that too however you don't get the opportunity in this game. You get a decent array of arsenals from pistols to H&K, Mossberg 500 to name a few however you cannot pass the French Foreign Legion's main firearm, the FAMAS. Seriously this gun is a sniper / assault rifle all rolled into one – other words, it's totally uber powerful comparing to the rest and it even sports camouflage materials (like you really need it).
The game plays as your typical first person shooter (FPS) – that is, you see a bad guy, empty your clip on it and move to the next objective. Granted there's a mini map on the bottom left of the screen however I rarely use this as the maps are all linear. Sadly the game also doesn't reward you with exploration so there's nothing more added to this. I guess there are sequences where you plant bombs on items but that's as far as innovation goes.
Visually it's behind the eight ball as even though it runs on the Jupiter Ex engine, that engine needs a serious upgrade as to those who played games using this engine (FEAR 2), you'll notice that familiar getting jammed on a small rock syndrome. Also other special effects like sparks are decent however smashing glass looks a little odd as the glass seems to implode in itself. Sound quality is the same – that is pretty poor. There's not much to say about this however the worst part is the voice acting. Meaning that all the people have an American accent yet you are part of the French Foreign Legion – go figure.
There is a multiplayer option where you get to play the big three – i.e. death match, team death match and capture the flag. The maps you play these on are rehash from the single player game so there's not much balance there (especially for the CTF games). Also the entire lobby screen is a copy / paste from their other FPS titles so there's not much real though pattern / creativity for multiplayer – i.e. it's more of a tack on.
The single player game is very short – maybe five hours max however because the game is pretty easy in most cases, I played it on hard and finished it in around six hours. Note that even though the AI rarely uses cover and the game does have a crude cover system (i.e. when hugging again a wall, a small arrow appears indicating you can blind fire but why do that when you have that immortal self-heal activated) the AI are all crack shots on hard – i.e. they can use the shotgun as a sniper rifle and severely wound you from a mile away whilst not looking directly at you. But heck, that's what you expect from a budget game anyways. Take it for what's it worth however don't expect anything more from this game other than shoot.
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Gameplay: 3 (nothing innovative / cheesy storyline)
Graphics: 4 (aging Jupiter Ex engine in its bare bones)
Sounds: 5 (nice ambience sounds however why on earth are all the characters speak American when they are from France)
Value: 4 (a budget game however the single player campaign is too short and the multiplayer is just a copy / paste from their previous FPS games)
Tilt: 2 (you just shoot stuff – nothing more or less)
Actual score: 3.2