Sound: 9
Gameplay: 10
Value: 10
Reviewer's Tilt: 10
Overall: 9.5
Reviewed by Chris
You lead a group of elite soldiers in locales all over Europe in 2008; as the borders of Russia are very unstable, and the fate of the world is literally in your hands. You are sent into battle as one of the Green Berets, and you are a highly feared group of soldiers. And you should be…after all, you’ve got access to excellent weapons including some prototype ones, and you have a lot of experience on the battlefields, so these missions should be cake.
Well, Ghost Recon isn’t “cake” by any means; the battles are long, hard and extremely deadly. You must take cover from a distance and snipe as many enemies as you can before taking cover and allowing all of the enemies to come to you. Thanks to an added lock on feature which targets the heads of all enemies, aiming is a little easier, even though it is slightly touchy without the feature. You can turn it on or off as well, so if you are feeling a little hardcore, or if you are as big of a Ghost Recon expert as I admit to be, you may want to turn this feature off.
It should be noted that Ghost Recon has those one-or-two shot kills, so you can only survive about two bullets (most of the time, sometime the enemies will hit you in the chest or head). Many players will want to put in cheat codes for invincibility. Don’t do it. If you cheat, you are ruining the battlefield experience. The lock-on feature should be more than enough for you to succeed, so don’t ruin the whole game for yourself. Eventually you will learn how the combat works in Ghost Recon, so that it isn’t overwhelming. If you don’t want a realistic shooter, don’t buy or even rent Ghost Recon, because you will be disappointed and probably frustrated. But for gamers who want a little more tactics to their shooting, this is one of the best $50 you can spend.
In terms of graphics, you will see some things that you like, and some things that you don’t. It looks a little better than the PC version in some spots, but worse in other spots. For example, the added grass textures to the first level look great, but why isn’t it that way in later levels with grass? The box-like, ugly cars still remain from the PC version, yet the ground textures in the asphalt has more detail to it than the PC version. The game’s framerate maintains a constant 30 frames per second most of the time, with some slowdown in some indoor environments. The new particle effects look a lot better than what we saw on the PC, so I’ll give Ubi Soft some credit there. The animations are fluid and the movement of the soldiers looks very authentic.
The game’s sounds are great. When you can hear (and see) a bullet whizzing by directly above your head, or when you can hear rain pattering on a wooden roof, you know that these developers worked as hard as possible to make the experience seem more lifelike. The voiceovers from the enemies are great, although it does seem like there isn’t that much music in the game. What’s there is great though.
Ghost Recon will sell a lot of copies because of the players with Xbox Live. Imagine strategizing with your teammates via headset and then attacking all of your enemies together. That is the kind of experience that Xbox Live was created for. But let’s not forget the single player aspect of the game, which excels with its deadly AI. For whichever part of the game that you’re buying this for, you won’t be disappointed. The Xbox was practically made for a game like this. –Chris Currey
Graphics: 7 Huge environments, consistent framerate. Some great new additions to the same old Ghost Recon engine. Some things look great, and others not so great. A little more variety in enemy character models would have been a good thing.
Sound: 9 Well, hearing this game on my TV rather than hearing it in my subwoofers was a little hard to get used to, but the game still sounds excellent. The weapon fire is perfect, and the sounds of combat are always there.
Gameplay: 10 Superb single player, outstanding multiplayer. Challenging game with a lot of unlockable characters and weapons. Basically, this is the perfect war simulator.
Value: 10 If you buy this game, you get a lot for your money. Multiplayer will last you a long time, and the single player campaign is worth playing over and over again.
Reviewer’s Tilt: 10 Am I a Clancy fanboy? Yes, and I’m not ashamed.
Overall: 9.5