Picture a world where bland terrorist groups speak simplistic Spanish and seek "dirty bombs" for no particular reason, a world where all guns that aren't shotguns are perfectly accurate all the time and where some guns can even recoil down instead of up. The members of the French Foreign Legion are Americans with huge jaws that flap rapidly as they inform you, the great Sergeant Doulet, that you must clear a path for the rest of them while they just chill somewhere else. Nowhere else will you find terrorists who are so incapable of shooting in the general direction of an enemy five feet away, with bullets weaker than the kneading of a kitten. And where, you might ask, is this fantastical world of wonder and imagination? In a place called Conspiracy Island.

Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island casts you as a member of the French Foreign Legion fighting a group of terrorists on Ile Royale, which basically involves a cave level, a Nineteenth Century prison level and an office building level. The game is a completely linear first person shooter with perhaps a bit too much backtracking. It begins to get a bit insulting when your team tells you to clear out a path for them and then as soon as they catch up with you they force you to make long side trips to pull switches somewhere. Far too often the door in front of them is locked and the switch to open it is in an entirely different room, artificially stretching the campaign's length just past two hours. The gameplay consists entirely of entering the next area, shooting everyone, then moving on. This isn't condemning in itself for an FPS, but unfortunately everything else is wrong with the game as well.

There are many, many problems in the mercifully brief single player campaign. First, and perhaps most importantly, the AI is pitiful. On normal difficulty you can stand in front of an enemy, reload all four of your weapons, take the time to aim for their left eye and get off a shot without them killing you. The enemies also have a strange tendency to run behind cover when they have an open shot on you, such as when you're reloading, which makes most of the game pathetically easy. However, there are some odd points where enemies can shoot you through the walls with the new "bullets can go through stuff" feature that the game advertises. For that matter, the box also advertises that you can modify your weaponry for any situation; in the actual game, you have the ability to press M to switch your FAMAS assault rifle to a sniper configuration. One weapon, two choices. It's basically the same as switching between single-fire and auto-fire in Call of Duty, but it takes a lot longer.

The storyline barely exists. Terrorists are seeking a nuclear bomb, they get their hands on it for a moment, then at the last possible second you are to interrupt them and secure the bomb. The game tries and fails to set up Hernando Mendoza, the terrorist leader, as some terrible guy that you should really want to kill. He barely appears in the game at all, but you still get to hear you and your allies curse as he just slips away a number of times throughout the game. The ending is a tacked-on cliffhanger that is about as intriguing as stopping the alphabet song at 'U'.

The graphics range anywhere from 2008 okay to 1998 okay, depending on what you're looking at. Some of the outside areas are lit fairly well and look nice, but unfortunately most of the game takes place in dark interiors that all look the same from room to room. The terrorists have about three different models, so you see the same bad guys over and over again. Everyone looks awkward in the cut scenes too, mostly because of the jaw flapping as they talk, but close-ups don't do the character models much justice. The graphics can at least allow a slower computer to run the game, which is too often uncertain with new games on older PCs now, giving you a great incentive to upgrade your system immediately.

The game supports online multiplayer but you won't find many of players online, ever. In the past week I've found a maximum of four people playing online at any point in time, so it's hard to even say how good it is. There are only the three standard multiplayer shooter modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. I had a minor problem right when I finally started up a game because I didn't have a gun. I had to go around punching people until I thought about committing suicide through the menu, which fixed the problem. Nonetheless, it can be safely assumed that the multiplayer is mediocre for an FPS but with all of the limitations of the single player mode.

Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island is a game that simply won't appeal to anyone who knows what a real first person shooter experience is like. It isn't over the top or realistic, it isn't exciting or interesting, the story is awful and none of the technical details are even close to being up to scratch either. All it really has going for it is that it installs, you can play it, and, as far as I know, it won't plant a virus on your computer. There is no replay value either, so even as a budget title, it's well below standard. I am truthfully very surprised that the game couldn't find even one niche to appeal to; even if you're a big fan of the French Foreign Legion, you probably won't like the American accents of all the main characters. It is amazing that this is a sequel to an apparently successful original game; we can but hope that the cliffhanger ending never finds resolution in what would be an entirely unwarranted and pointless follow up.

Reviewed by Nathaniel Edwards for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).