Its current-events context notwithstanding, the first Conflict just wasn't very good. Scarcely a year later, we're receiving a direct sequel titled Conflict: Desert Storm II.

The hasty release of a follow-up was no doubt spurred by the political and military events of the last year. However, the new Conflict is quite an improvement over the extremely shaky first game.

Though there's been a more recent conflict in Iraq, and military action in the region is, in fact, ongoing, Conflict: Desert Storm II again places you in the thick of the 1991 campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime. There's not a whole lot of story to speak of in the game.

You get a linear progression of 10 missions, each of which has its own setting and unique mission objectives and some of which are revealed in-game as you progress. You command a squad of four specialists in each mission, and, at the beginning of a new game, you can choose either American Delta Force or British SAS personnel.

Your selection here slightly affects stats, appearance, and voice acting. Each of your team members is equipped with a weapon that gives him a unique function.

There's the assault rifle-wielding team leader, the sniper, the demolitions expert, and the heavy machine gunner. The team members do have actual names and unique appearances, so you've got at least a little more attachment to them than if they were just faceless drones.

The core squad and combat mechanics in Desert Storm II are a little awkward at the outset, but with some practice you can get fairly proficient at playing the game. In the main single-player game, you can switch between your four teammates by hitting up and down on the D pad.

Each of the four (whichever one is active) squad members can issue individual or group orders to the others by using a number of button combinations. You can tell your teammates to hold position or form up behind you, hit the dirt, advance on the enemy and fire at will, and so on.

As long as you keep tabs on your teammates' health and actively switch between them regularly, you can progress through the game's missions without worrying too much about suffering casualties. Leaving three of your buddies in the care of the game's squad AI isn't the best idea, though they'll be proactive about fighting enemies.

They'll fire at their enemies, but will often get themselves killed in the process. Of course, you can issue orders to bring them back behind cover, but that can be difficult when you're in the middle of a firefight and are worrying about saving your own skin.

Overall, it would have been nice if the teammate AI was a little more adaptive when left to its own devices. The actual fighting in Conflict: Desert Storm II is somewhat hit-and-miss.

At times, it feels pretty solid, thanks in large part to a built-in auto-aim feature that makes it quite easy to target hostile forces. In fact, sometimes it's a little too easy--the game will sometimes line up an enemy in your sights before you even realize he's there.

Other times, though, it seems suspiciously difficult to score a hit on enemies, particularly with the sniper rifle. It's possible to hit the deck, steady your crosshairs directly over an enemy's head, and then see no effect after pulling the trigger.

It's frustrating, to be sure, but, for the most part, the combat is reasonably well balanced and entertaining. You can even engage in vehicular combat with a jeep or tank in some missions, which does break up the flow of things a little.

The vehicles feel a little awkward and can be slow to respond to your controller movements, though. Graphically, Conflict: Desert Storm II gets the job done, but does it in a no-frills sort of way.

The backgrounds are fairly devoid of detail, and the enemy character models look pretty simple. Your own squad models, however, are decent looking.

The game appears surprisingly similar on both platforms, with a slight nod going to the Xbox for less aliasing and a higher frame rate. The audio portion of the game is dominated by a lot of yelling, gunfire, and explosions, though all of these are rendered pretty well.

The music tends to fade into the background, though, since you're intent on finishing your missions. Finally, as in last year's game, the voice acting for the training mode's drill instructor is a poor attempt at sounding like Full Metal Jacket 's tough-as-nails drill instructor, and it comes across as pretty awful.

In the final analysis, Conflict: Desert Storm II isn't without problems, but it's not the worst squad-based game you'll ever play, and it's decidedly improved over last year's game. If the game does float your boat, there's unfortunately not a lot of replay value.

You can play through the game again--cooperatively--with two players on the PS2 and four on the Xbox, but there's no competitive multiplayer component to speak of. If you're really into squad-based military action games, Desert Storm II might be worth a look to tide you over until something else comes along (less)

Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty subpar, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated.

Additionally, much as was the case with Liberty City Stories' transition to the PS2, Vice City Stories loses a lot of its appeal when played on a console versus the PSP. Still, it's only $20, and if you don't own a PSP or just never got around to playing it upon its original release, this isn't a bad way to go if you absolutely, positively must get your GTA fix.

Vice City Stories returns to the pastel- and neon-colored excesses of the 1980s and Vice City. Modeled after '80s-era Miami, GTA: Vice City told a Scarface -inspired tale of Tommy Vercetti, a shunned mobster who found himself sifting through the aftermath of a cocaine deal gone wrong, and subsequently ended up building a major criminal empire throughout the city.

It was a bizarre, convoluted, and completely entertaining tale, filled with ridiculous and profane characters, as well as lots of biting satire on the most superficial of decades. Vice City Stories is, again, a prequel, taking place a couple of years prior to the original game.

You play as Vic Vance, the brother of central Vice City character Lance Vance. Vic's a strange fellow.

When the game begins, he's just joined the army, and he gets off the transport truck at a military base in Vice City. Upon meeting his commanding officer--a borderline psychotic named Jerry Martinez--things start going wrong.

We find out that Vic has joined the military to make some money to support his family, specifically his sick brother. But within the first few minutes of the game, you'll find yourself inexplicably picking up drugs for Martinez, killing Mexican gang members, and chauffeuring prostitutes.

Of course, any veteran of this series won't be shocked one bit by missions like these. The trouble here is that the setup for getting Vic into this mess is beyond flimsy.

From the get-go, Vic talks about how uncomfortable he is with illegal activities, and yet he does every single illicit thing Martinez asks him to do. If you're someone who doesn't want to do anything illegal, and your boss starts asking you to pick up hookers and hide drugs for him, are you going to just gripe about it and then do it anyway? Not to mention that Vic seems completely willing to run into an apartment complex and start wasting Mexicans without even being ordered specifically to do so.

He just says, ""I'll go get it"" (referring to owed money stashed inside one of the apartments) and goes in guns blazing. GTA heroes are never heroes, exactly, but the trick in the past has been that there's been no attempt to play those characters up as sympathetic.

They weren't boy scouts--they were gangsters, killers, and dope dealers. Vice City Stories tries to present Vic as a guy who doesn't want to get into that stuff, yet he freely and frequently does throughout the entire game.

He mostly comes off as a hypocritical idiot. For what it's worth, though, once you get through about the first hour of the game, you'll probably be inclined to stop questioning why Vic is doing what he's doing and just go with it.

As time passes, the game settles into the typical progression of GTA missions and oddball characters. While Liberty City Stories was almost devoid of memorable characters, Vice City Stories digs up a few favorites from the original Vice City, and introduces a couple of new ones as well.

Vic's mildly crazy brother Lance, the alcoholic gun nut Phil Cassidy, the balls-obsessed Cuban gang leader Umberto Robina, and the foul-mouthed Ricardo Diaz (voiced by Phillip Michael Thomas, Gary Busey, Danny Trejo, and Luis Guzman, respectively) are all back. Lance plays a huge role in the story, but the others aren't quite as prominently featured as they were in the first game.

Still, you get a good chunk of time with each of them. Functionally, Vice City Stories plays very much as Liberty City Stories did on the PS2, return of the right analog stick camera control and all.

When running around and shooting people, you simply press the R1 button to lock onto an enemy. Occasionally the game will lock onto random civilians, as opposed to the guy with the submachine gun blowing a hole in your head, but usually it's pretty good about identifying exactly whom you should be killing.

Mostly, though, the combat is quite fun. Running around causing mayhem and blasting away at the masses is just as enjoyable as it's ever been, and there's a good variety of guns and other instruments of destruction to play with.

The one part that isn't so good, unfortunately, is the melee combat. Basic fisticuffs and blunt-object beatings are merely a bit clunky, but if you try to get yourself into a fight while holding a gun at close range to someone punching you in the face, you'll lose every time, unless you run a good distance away, turn back, and start firing.

For some reason, the game just can't deal with aiming mechanics while you're face-to-face with an enemy; you're basically hosed. Vice City is a sizable open-world environment and driving around it can be a bit overwhelming at first.

Odds are that unless you've had the original Vice City regularly inserted in your PS2 for the last couple of years, you won't remember too much of the city's layout. But even though it'll take a while to figure out all the roads and side streets, there's plenty of familiar scenery and landmarks that appear just about where you remember them.

The game's minimap is about as useful as it's ever been in depicting where you are, and there is a larger map to check on in the pause menu. Still, it feels a bit antiquated, especially considering evolutions we've seen in recent games of this type, where the best possible paths for a mission are highlighted on the map.

Heck, even an arrow pointer telling you where to turn would be nice. Driving in the game is pretty much as it's been for years now.

The vehicle physics are perhaps a bit more exaggerated than they were in Liberty City Stories, and that's both a blessing and a curse. It's extremely easy to spin out while taking turns in many of the game's cars, trucks, and motorcycles, but at the same time, some of the jumps and ridiculous crashes you can have make those wacked-out physics worthwhile.

You will run into weird physics glitches from time to time, and you'll sometimes get stuck in pieces of the scenery. These issues aren't exactly new to the series, but they're as annoying as ever.

In addition to cars and bikes, helicopters make their return in Vice City Stories, and they're among some of the most enjoyable vehicles in the game. The flying controls are easy to handle, and flying around the city is often much quicker than trying to drive it (less)