Ghost Recon is a member of the popular Tom Clancy series. The Tom Clancy games are caracterized by the close attension to detail and realism. Unlike most first person shooters (or FPS), one or two shots is all that is necessary to kill you or an ememy. Also, the games to their best to simulate realistic weapons and tactics. The PC version of Ghost Recon was released over a year
ago, and received many awards, including game of the year from the
magazine PC Gamer. This review will focus on the console vesion that was released last winter.
In Ghost Recon, you take the role of an elite squad of American soldiers called the Ghosts. The storyline centers around a Russian plot to rebuild the old Soviet Union. During the fifteen levels, you travel throughout Russia, Georgia, and other nearby countries. Unlike most games, you command a squadren of six soldiers instead of only one super soldier. While you can only
have complete control of one soldier at a time, you can give the remianing five soldiers orders at any time. Before the level begins, you have a chance to choose your squad from a list of about thirty unique soldiers, half of which need to be unlocked by compleating missions. There are four different classes of soldiers to choose from: rifleman, support, sniper and demolitions.
Rifleman are good all around soldiers as they use medium range assult rifles. Support soldiers are good at close range combat and use high power machine guns which have very low accuracy. Snipers use sniper rifles which have increble range and accuracy but have a low rate of fire which makes them bad at close range combat. Lastly, there is demolitions. Demolitions use medium range assult rifes but also have many mission critical items such as anit-tank rockets and explosives used to conduct sabotage.
This game has many good and bad aspects. The game does an excellent job of recreating what actual battle would be like. As I mentioned earlier, the characters have a realistic amount of health and move realisticly; you can't jump ten feet in the air or run as fast as a car. Also, another aspect of the game that makes it more realistic is the weapon accuracy. When you swing the gun around, are moving, or are in the process of shooting, your accuracy drops as it would in real life. While the game is incredibly realistic, the artificial intelligence (AI) leaves something to be desired. My troops were often incompetant in battle as they will rarely shoot at an enemy that is a long distance away and are also incapable of scanning for nearby enemys while moving. Enemy soldiers are also not very smart. Whenever a group of soldiers is under fire, the group cleverly runs for cover. However, once hidden, they send out soldiers one at a time to be shot at until none of the group remains. Also, the graphics simply are not up to the standards of other console games. Games like "Splinter Cell", "Nightfire" and other games put it to shame.
As a single player game, Ghost Recon is very mediocre and I would not recommend it. However, the game is compatable with the X-box Live mutiplayer feature. I have not used it myself, but I imagine the game would be worth buying for the online options.
