On August 2nd 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. Three days later, President Bush of the United States declared that the invasion would not stand and a coalition was formed which would result in the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwaiti soil. The Gulf War had begun. Conflict Desert Storm is based on this war and tries to stay within the historic confines of the conflict (poetic license is used in the game though to make it more exciting).

The game can best be described as a tactical squad based 3rd person shooter. There are a variety of different ways you can approach each objective in each mission, you can opt for the guns blazing routine common to many 3rd person shooters or you can opt for the more tactical approach, whereby you use each member of your squad to the best of their abilities. For example, you might need to neutralise a guard camp before assaulting your main objective, so you have the option of rushing the camp with your squad, shooting anyone who you might see and maybe suffering casualties in the mean time, or you could move your squad into position by stealthy means - cover all available angles into and out of the camp and then using your sniper to pick off each enemy soldier in the camp. Both ways work well and it's up to the individual gamer's style of play for which will be more appropriate.

There are four specialist members in your squad. In the first mission you will be introduced to your squad commander, who has the ability to call in air strikes and artillery strikes as well as being the best equipped for close combat situations, and your sniper. Strangely enough, the sniper is already captured at the beginning of the game, even though the game starts on the morning of August 2nd (a case of the poetic license coming into action). In the next mission you are introduced to your heavy weapons specialist and the 3rd mission sees the introduction of your final squad member in the shape of your engineer, who is best suited to plant explosives and is also the best medic on the team. You can use each member in a variety of ways, for example you might find a second sniper rifle in one mission which you can give to your medic to use, though he won't be as proficient in the weapon as the specialist sniper is. Each time you successfully complete a mission, your men will gain experience in the weapons/skills they have used. So, the medic who you gave the sniper rifle to will, in the following mission, be a better shot with sniper rifles. Your men also gain in rank, and can be awarded medals in each mission. This is a nice touch since it makes you become more attached to your men, and if you lose one man in a mission he will be replaced by a rookie with little to no experience and skills. One drawback to this though is that later in the game you would rather restart a mission than continue with a rookie team member, which completely kills that particular aspect of the gameplay.

The missions are diverse, ranging from scud hunts (search and destroy) to rescuing Kuwaiti officials and escorting them from a city being over-run by Iraqi forces. A particularly enjoyable mission is one where your rescue helicopter has been shot down and you have to protect the crashed helicopter from an attack by Iraqi armoured divisions. The last few missions of the game, whilst being highly enjoyable, leave the historic context of the game totally, which is a surprise since a sequel is already planned.

Controls are well suited to the Xbox controller. Both analogue sticks are used, one to move and one to rotate your character onscreen, similar to the controller setup in Halo. You can activate a first person mode by clicking down on the right analogue stick, which is the stick used to rotate your character, and you can zoom in further by clicking down the left analogue stick when in this mode. If you so desired, you could play through the entire game in first person mode, though this way the game is a lot slower paced. You equip your weapons from an onscreen menu, which is activated in real-time by pressing the Y button and then scrolling through the various weapons/equipment with the d-pad. However, since this is in real-time, it can take quite a few missions before you have your weapons inventory memorised well enough to be able to successfully switch weapons quickly during a firefight. There is nothing more annoying than suddenly encountering an enemy tank and needing an anti-tank rocket quickly, but then having to scroll through your inventory to equip said rockets whilst the tank is firing shells at you and more than likely killing your character.

Since this is a squad based game, you have more than one character to control. You can easily, and more importantly quickly, change the characters under your control by simply pressing up or down on the d-pad. You can also issue a few rudimentary orders to the members of your squad not under direct control, ranging from "follow me", "hold position" to "open fire" (useful when you have manoeuvred your squad into position to ambush an enemy camp). There is also a command to move men into position, but this is difficult to judge correctly and most gamers will find it more reliable to move each squad member into position manually. You issue these orders by holding down the left shoulder button and then pressing one of the fascia buttons, each button corresponds to a different order. Every button of the controller is used multiple times and in different combinations and it can seem disconcerting at first. But thankfully, there is a good tutorial/training mode which quickly gets you accustomed to the various commands.

CDS is an adequate graphically performer, though it isn't pushing the Xbox as much as other games have in the last 12 months. The framerate fluctuates wildly within certain levels, most notably during levels which feature sand storms. The textures used throughout the game are repeated constantly, but since the majority of the game is set in the Kuwaiti-Iraqi desert, this is to be expected. The atmosphere in the game is set perfectly, with NPCs such as goat herders, complete with goats, abandoned vehicles and even discarded prayer mats within some buildings. You even see A-10 attack bombers attacking armoured columns in places. Maybe a few more civilian NPCs within the towns and cities would have made them feel more inhabited and less like ghost towns, but then again maybe the civilian population left the towns with the oncoming Iraqi invasion.

The animation of your squad members is effective, from the way they run, to writhing on the floor in pain when wounded. When one of your men is wounded blood stains spread on their uniforms and their movement becomes more disjointed, as it would in the circumstances, but miraculously the blood stains disappear when you heal the injured person. Sadly, the animation on the Iraqi soldiers is of poorer quality, being extremely stiff and moving jerkily.

The weapons in the game are all based on real life armoury, and the modelling is of good quality. Alongside your own weapons, you can also use weapons discarded by Iraqi soldiers, which are in abundance. The number of times you come across enemy rocket launchers just in time for an assault by enemy armour is truly shocking, and probably explains the reason that the war ended as quickly as it did. The accuracy varies on the different weapons, supposedly due to the actual real life versions of the weapons, and it can get annoying that an easy head shot misses due to using a poorer model weapon at distance, though when your men gain enough experience this detail is somewhat countered. Later in the game, you also get the chance to drive Humvee's and armoured personnel carriers. The movement of these is similar to Halo's warthog, but still feels like an afterthought. These vehicles have superior fire-power, which is useful for the missions they are featured in, and you can choose which member of your squad is using which aspect of the vehicle; one man will be driving, whilst another is using the machine gun and another is using the heavy gun. You can quickly switch between the various positions and use them all in first person view.

There are a few exemplary graphically effects, with smoke clouds dispersing from smoke grenades and coloured smoke plumes denoting extraction sites being highly notable. A few of the effects aren't as good though. The sandstorms, which reduce the framerate to a crawl in places, being amongst them.

The camera is superb, never once during the game was it required to move the camera due to it becoming 'lost' behind an object, or needing to adjust it due to bad placement. In fact, the transition from an outside to inside environment was so seamlessly executed, with no loss of perspective, that the developers should be highly praised.

When you first start the game you have the choice of picking British SAS or US Delta Force, each squad coming complete with regional dialects. Hearing "Armour Approaching" shouted in real regional UK accents sounds so good. Sadly, the vocabulary of your squad isn't of the widest range and hearing the same speech samples repeatedly soon becomes monotonous. Other effects in the game are good though, ranging from the staccato clatter of machine gun fire to the clanging of bells around goat's necks.

The soundtrack is, to put it bluntly, very poor, with the same bar of music repeating over and over. Thankfully, a custom soundtrack option is available, so if you want you could be listening to the sound of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, whilst withstanding an attack by an Iraqi armoured division, or you could even relive the period with popular music taken from the time the war took place.

The single player experience is highly enjoyable, even more so when you become accustomed to using each squad member to overcome tactical situations. The missions are diverse enough that each new objective comes as a pleasant surprise during the briefing before each mission, and since the levels are open-ended, with the possibility of completing objectives in a variety of ways, repeat play is welcome.

The AI of enemy troops is very hit and miss. The vast majority of enemy troops are solely in the game as cannon fodder, in one particular mission the sniper in the squad achieved over 50 kills due to the enemy AI using the same path over and over with no variation. The only times squad members died was due to either being swarmed by enemies, which was easily beatable by always keeping one man in reserve to heal the other squad members, or by being ambushed by armour, which can see from miles away. These ambushes, which make up most of the set pieces throughout the game, are initially exciting but if you need to restart the mission quite a few times they can become repetitive due to them being so highly scripted.

Where the AI of the enemy is poor, the AI of your squad is the exact opposite. Once manoeuvred into position, you could leave the AI to control the squad whilst you overview it all. With the experience carried by later levels, there will be many times you hear the shout of "Coming through" and a squad member under the control of the AI dashing past you to open fire on the enemy.

Each level gives you two saves, which you can use anywhere during that level. With levels ranging from 20 minutes to nearly 2 hours in length, these two saves are much needed.

The multiplayer game is co-operative and splitscreen only. With a choice of 2-4 players, 2 players taking two squad members each or 4 players taking control of one member. Whilst 4 player is plagued by framerate problems, which detract from the enjoyment of the experience, 2 players is an absolute joy. Each person controlling two squad members, planning tactics 'on the fly', is highly enjoyable, equalling the co-operative modes on many other console games including the mighty Halo. The only drawback with the multiplayer game, apart from the shoddy framerate on the 4 player game, is that there is no link-up or Xbox Live mode available. However, with two sequels in development, hopefully these modes will be included.

Conflict Desert Storm is a solid single player game, with an exceptionally good 2 player co-operative mode. The unwieldy inventory system and the poor enemy AI do not detract from the overall experience, but the lack of link-up or Xbox Live support stop the game from being in the upper echelon of the Xbox library. With this game being amongst the first on Xbox to attempt to deliver a deeper, more tactical combat game than the more run of the mill first person shooters, it is a notable achievement but it isn't a must have.