After assembling your team it’s off you go. Ghost Recon has a nice variation of
missions from the simple “grab the bad guy and get the heck out of there” to the
more complex “sneak into the enemy camp and blow up the tanks without anyone
seeing you.” In total there are over 15 missions for you to complete. Up to this
point everything seems nice and cool. However once actually into a mission is
where you’ll see that Ghost Recon starts to falter. The two-team approach can be
both invigorating and irritating. You have the ability with a press of the
button to cycle to any member of either Alpha of Bravo team and take control
over them. Once you’re in control of your man, your teammates will follow your
lead and go where you do while providing back up. You can also direct the other
team to a certain waypoint to which they should head. This is usually pretty
cool and the AI of the team you are not part of is pretty good. In one of my
first games I got lost with Bravo team, and Alpha team ended up taking out half
of the enemies. I have to admit it’s nice to have help like that! However I have
also seen the team that I directed to a specific point get trapped behind a tree
and all three of them were just running in place. And it’s very troublesome to
see your men not able to get out of a room because one of them gets stuck in the
door! Elite? I hope not…
 |
| Looking for hostiles near the objective. |
Graphically Ghost Recon would be awesome if it was 1999. I just expect more
nowadays. Many elements are done OK, but overall it’s just not as clean and
smooth as I would have liked to seen. I have no complaints with the sound
however. There is no thumping soundtrack as you go marching into battle, but
rather more natural sounds that add to the realism and tension of the game. You
hear things like the wind blowing, bushes rustling, and your team chatting back
and forth. The voices are done well and it’s a reassuring sound when you hear
one of your teammates confirm an enemy kill. Just warms my heart!
Adding to the realism is the amount of damage you can take and your general lack
of healing. You will find no health packs or extra ammo laying ground in this
game. In fact, some of your missions can fail if just one member of your team
gets killed. For instance if the mission was to destroy a bunch of vehicles and
you only had one man with the needed rocket launchers and he goes down, the
mission is in effect over. So it pays to understand what the goals of the
missions are and to really take care of the team members that are the most vital
in any given scenario.
There are several ways the game tries to help you out. On the easiest setting
you can use your Radar/Threat Indicator at the bottom of the screen to locate
every enemy before you can visually see them. This really takes away the
suspense of the game. There really isn’t much of a challenge when you know where
everyone is located. And the targeting reticule can help you shoot enemies that
you can’t even see on screen. For instance, once your radar has pointed out that
there is an enemy right in front of you, you just move the targeting reticule
around until it turns red and shoot. The bad guy could be completely hidden in
some bushes, but the all knowing reticule will find him! Granted these are
options that don’t show up on the hardest level, but they still take away too
much of the challenge at even the lowest difficulty.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
77%.
I suppose you can
think of Ghost Recon as a “lite” version of a tactical FPS. It’s a good way to
get your feet wet to this game type but not the finest that the genre as to
offer.
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