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Playstation 2 Game Reviews: Ghost Recon
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Posted by: warlike on Nov 25, 2005
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Ghost ReconTo be fair to the game designers, this review is being written three years after this game's release. And how does the original Ghost Recon stack up compared to today's games and three years hence? As you might expect, not very well. The first person view, the only view available, is rigid and mechanical. Movement resembles that of today's game's vehicles rather than a human and is limited. The night vision view is even worse, cutting your peripheral vision down to nothing and giving you the equivalent of a paper towel tube to look through. The maps seem large enough but are still constraining by today's standards. Getting down from a high ridge to the valley or river gorge below it can be frustrating as the maps designers - whether limited by imagination or some technical reason unbeknownst to this writer - have placed restrictions on movement that would be inexcusable today. For instance, if a valley is only two feet or less below you, you cannot just walk off what little of the ridge is left - you must walk around the edge of the ridge. And forget about the "jump" option. There is none. (There are also no ladders, and except for staircases, no climbing in the entire game and spending an entire game tied to the ground will just not cut it with todays gamer). And if you've chosen the wrong direction to lead your squad, the maps constraining factors force you to march all the way in the opposite direction. The assortment of available weaponry includes, machine guns, sniper rifles, handguns, rocket launchers (for taking out tanks), grenades, etc. I found the sniper rifles to be lacking in the zoom department, however, as they magnified your enemies from a distance not much better than the other guns. The rocket launchers' scope was so ineffective, I found I had to first target a tank with my regular weapon and then switch to the launcher to take the tank out. This risky process accounted for a few failed missions as I could not switch between gun and launcher fast enough before being killed.
The missions themselves - running from only three to four objectives a piece - are extremely easy due also to an enemy Ai that basically has your virtual opponents stand around and wait for you to shoot them from a distance. Some can be completed so fast they amount to nothing more than filler.
Ghost Recon does have its good points. The minimaps' directional arrow - which always indicates the way to your next objective - is a time saver when you've become lost. The guns are extremely accurate and fun to fire at enemies who play out decent death sequences. And in the realism department, your squad mates reflect injuries from enemy gun fire by limping or appearing to shuffle slowly along. This tends to inspire you to look after these particular members of your fire team more closely, especially if they happen to be carrying a weapon essential to the completion of the mission. Ghost Recon also gives you the rare ability to shuffle through your squad in game and choose the team member you'd like to play as for that moment. As you might imagine, this can make getting around the fairly large maps much quicker and adds the full arsenal of your team to your in-game weapon palette. In addition, if the team member you are playing as is killed, the game just respawns you as the next member of your fire team in line, without restarting the mission - giving you a total of three lives with which to complete your objectives. Sound and graffics get the job done but the cut scene movies are merely short tags bookending each mission without a trace of todays common voice acting enhancements. The training portion of the game is frustratingly sparse on instructions and I never did find out how to control the movement and actions of my team using the tactical map. But perhaps others would fair better.
Of course, given the games out there now, I can't recommend this as a buy at this point but Ghost Recon can still be an entertaining distraction and fun to browse through as a record of the history of FPS's and how far they've come, the Ghost Recon Series included.
(Click on images to view fullsize) 
 
 
For more info on Ghost Recon go to Official Site The views expressed on GameSlander.com are in no way associated with the creator of Ghost Recon, its publisher or any of its subsidiaries.
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