8-Aug-2002 You proved you can take control, but can you take command? Stand up soldier, your PS2 needs you! You proved you can take control, but can you take command? Stand up soldier, your PS2 needs you!
War isn't meant to be fun. People die, usually in very horrible and grisly ways. It's not pretty. Yet perversely, in games, war is invariably a tempting diversion from the miserable existence of our everyday lives.
Those encamped on the moral high ground obviously don't like this state of affairs, but it's a paradox most of us who play games are perfectly happy to live with. Relatively speaking, all war is bad and all games are fun, even war games, no matter how realistic they proclaim to be. And they don't get any more real than Ghost Recon.
Let's assume that you've played Medal Of Honor: Frontline (and judging by the game's assault on the games chart, most of you have). Now you may be under the impression Frontline is frighteningly realistic, certainly compared to anything else on PlayStation 2 where death and dismemberment is par for the course. It certainly has had us cowering in our foxholes, muttering indistinctly and dribbling uncontrollably into our GI rations. But in terms of how war is conducted, Medal Of Honor: Frontline offers only a glossed-over Hollywood realism, one where battles are to be fought with heroic fervour, rather than controlled, or in some cases, avoided altogether.
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - to give it its full title - isn't quite as spectacular as Medal Of Honor, certainly not on first inspection, but once you slip into its slower pace and more thoughtful ways, it immediately feels much more tense, more gritty, more... well, real. Not so much Private Ryan as Chris Ryan, you could say.
GHOST OF RAINBOW SIX Ghost Recon is one of many Tom Clancy games to hit PS2 over the coming months, and judging by its reception on PC late last year, it promises to be a great introduction to a series of games that are by far the best in their field.
But then people said that about Rainbow Six, the predecessor of Ghost Recon and similarly a massive hit on PC that was eventually ported over to PSone, as was the sequel, Rogue Spear. Unfortunately neither of them passed muster. The conversions were just plain sloppy, the controls clumsy, the graphics shoddy and, consequently, the frustration and ugliness of it all killed the atmosphere. If you were unfortunate enough to have played either game, you'd be well within your rights to wonder what all the fuss over Ghost Recon is about.
Well it helps first of all that the PS2 is now playing host. More importantly, the original developers Red Storm have taken command after previously handing down the coding task to teams evidently less capable and certainly less interested in the subject matter.
Finally, the games' creators assure us a complete overhaul of the control system has been top of the list of objectives - one that promises to be much more streamlined than the PC version without dumbing down any of the action. And we can confirm all of this because not only have we spoken to Red Storm at length, we've been playing it ourselves. Take it from us, Ghost Recon is worth getting excited about - not just because it comes by way of an established developer and PC gamers loved it, but because it is so very different to anything else on PlayStation 2.
SNAKE IN THE GRASS Though it may look like your typical first-person shooter, there is a hell of a lot more to Ghost Recon than bursting through doors and drilling anything with four limbs and everything else that hasn't. A careful and considered approach is the key to winning the game. We're talking here of employing a level of stealth that Solid Snake himself would be hard-pushed to accomplish. It is a game where one shot can kill, a game where you have to pick out a camouflaged enemy from dense foliage ahead and make your shot count.
Don't be deceived when you think you've seen an enemy soldier creeping through the bushes - more often than not it's just a branch swaying gently in the breeze.
But that's not to say Ghost Recon is without moments of all-out guns-blazing action. It would be pretty dull if all you had to do was avoid everyone, after all, especially since the most enjoyable parts of the game are set in the pine-fresh open air.
chaos theory Certainly what will be one of the most disarming aspects of the game is how it can change pace, from severe, almost painful tension, to complete and utter balls-out mayhem. For instance, on many missions you will be carefully picking your way through a land of certain death, weapons at the ready, watching intently for any sign of enemy movement - all the time waiting for all hell to break loose, yet around you all will seem calm. Then, as soon as a shot is fired, bullets rain down into the ground and unless you have a firm grasp on the tactical situation, you will soon be outnumbered, outflanked and very probably out of luck too. The fact you can't pick up enemy weapons or find health kits will be the least of your worries.
More than any other game, on console or otherwise, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon is about co-ordination and teamwork. Despite being in command of a bunch of tough Special Forces hombres, none of them are super-human in the way that most game characters seem to be. Therefore, even if you outnumber the enemy, unless you're well positioned you will very probably lose a valuable member of your squad. You won't forfeit the mission if you lose most of your men, but if you do keep your entire squad alive, they'll gain valuable experience points you can use to enhance their basic skills for the next mission. You will also get to unlock specialist team-mates and new weapons that are sure to come in very useful.
If you just want to get straight into the action, the game will automatically pick a capable team for you, but if you want to get the most out of your men and have half the battle won before you start, it's worth checking though the skills and specialities of your men and mixing them up a little depending on the task at hand.
The key to keeping people alive isn't just about giving the right orders at the right time (we'll get to that later), but picking the right people in the first place. After you have been briefed for each mission, you then get to select which men from your platoon are going to go with you. Divided into fireteams, you can take up to six soldiers into each battle, from a mix of snipers, riflemen, demolitions experts and support troopers. Snipers have obvious uses, but they will be of limited use in a full-on firefight. Support specialists with their pigging M60 machine-guns work the other way. Then you have to worry about how you pair up your men - snipers work well alone, but you need to keep Demolition and Support specialists well covered with riflemen if they are going to survive.
BEST LAID PLANS While configuring your band of brothers in arms is a relatively straightforward affair requiring only a modicum of common sense, surviving in the field of battle is a different affair entirely. Your first-person skills will of course serve you well, but you'll do well to remember that calling the shots is quite a step up from making them - although thanks to a rather intuitive control set-up the process isn't as difficult as it would first appear.
Moving around is similar to most other first-person action games, but a quick stab on the left shoulder button brings up the all-important Command Interface. With just two presses of the d-pad, you can be in direct control of any of the other six Ghosts, or change each fireteam's rules of engagement, from 'Hold' position and 'Advance at all costs', to 'Assault', 'Suppress' or 'Recon'. Each setting pretty much covers every tactical situation you'll find yourself in, save for full retreat, in which case tactics go out of the window anyway.
Also in the Command Interface is the Command Map, from which you can set waypoints for each fireteam to follow, which they'll do according to how you'll have previously defined their rules of engagement. If, for example, you have a fireteam set to advance in Recon mode, they'll head off until they spot the enemy, at which point they'll report in and wait for further others. If they were in Assault mode rather than Recon, they'd have opened fire instead.
Initially set in Eastern Europe and Russia, all 15 of the main missions are from, or have been adapted from, the original PC game. Characterised by rainy pine forests, frosty sub-arctic wastes, crumbling post-Communist cities and grim industrial ports, it is with some relief that the game switches to the much sunnier climes of East Africa for the second course of the game, the Desert Siege campaign. This campaign was released as a separate add-on for the PC version back in March to even greater acclaim than the main game.
As you would expect, all the missions are pretty varied, ranging from reconnaissance and basic intelligence gathering, to sabotage, assassination, and all-out survival against seemingly impossible odds. One mission early in the game sees you sent in to capture an enemy guerrilla commander holed up in some caves, but along the way you will have to negotiate bunkers overlooking deadly open ground and an enemy camp hiding reinforcements.
Later on, in the dead of night, you'll be rescuing a pilot who has been shot down and captured. Following that, you and your men will be skulking through a war-ravaged town, snipers hiding in balconies and Russian armour trundling through the streets.
Needless to say, despite being set in 2009, Ghost Recon feels frighteningly current in its setting and very real in its execution. Tom Clancy's story-telling skills may be partly responsible, but the key will be how well Red Storm manage to convey the tension of being stuck in a war zone surrounded by people whose main ambition is to shoot you in the face. From what we've seen and played, they are on course to deliver the goods, not only in terms of realism but, more importantly, in terms of pure, unadulterated fun. We can't wait.
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