If we knew how Tom Clancy did it, we'd be rich and spinning out just as many book lines and computer games as he is. Think of it. The book signing tours … The seven-figure checks … Fame … Fortune … And, all the military history we could eat …
Lacking that, we can at least look back at the heritage behindTom Clancy's Ghost Recon™: Island Thunder™.Ghost Recon: Island Thunder is the follow-up to the original hit Xbox gameTom Clancy's Ghost Recon. On the surface, it simply is what it is; A great first-person shooter. But, dig a little deeper, and you can find a deep history, some wonderfully detailed characters, and more intrigue than you could shake an M-1 tank at.
What else did you expect? It's Tom Clancy.
Clancy's all about squad-based combat.
Leaving everything pre-1984 to authorized biographies and conspiracy theorists, let's start with a publication by the Naval Institute Press by the title of The Hunt for Red October. Author: (drum roll please) Tom Clancy. This modern-day techno-thriller redefined a genre and eventually was made into a movie, which was equally as powerful and as popular. In the meantime, though, Tom Clancy continued to write. In 1985, Tom Clancy met with British Royal Navy Captain Doug Littlejohns for technical advice regarding his next book, a quick little tale (told in more than 650 pages) involving a modern war between the U.S. and Russia. This was Red Storm Rising.
Other Clancy tales have found their way into bookstores and movie theaters since Hunt for Red October, but these were the stories that launched an empire and, in 1996, a multi-media entertainment company known as Red Storm Entertainment. Tom Clancy partnered up with Doug Littlejohns and, with some backers and technology partners, they brought the first Clancy title to the PC in 1997 with Tom Clancy's Politika. A success, to be certain, but not quite in the league of what would follow.
Tom Clancy published Rainbow Six in 1998. Simultaneously, Red Storm Entertainment released the computer game title of the same name. If it wasn't an overnight success, it was the next best thing. Ranbow Six, the game, basically created a new genre: "squad based shooters," emphasizing teamwork over standard "twitch games." This success was followed up one year later by theRainbow Six: Rogue Spear title, one more in a string of home-run slams from Red Storm Entertainment.
Next generation of squad-based shooters.
Ghost Recon, in November, 2001, was the next. This took squad-based shooters to the next level, throwing out the old idea of interchangeable soldiers and implementing some roleplaying aspects, by creating soldier types: the sniper, the heavy-weapons experts, the demolitions. Teamwork was never so important as it became on the latest battlefields, on the borders of Russia, where a nuclear threat hangs over everyone's heads.
This was also the world's introduction to Clancy's Ghosts, an elite group of U.S. Army Green Berets, who spearhead the NATO peacekeeping forces. Armed with the latest technology and not afraid to use it, the Ghosts quickly captured the interest of the game-playing world, finding their way into two more PC game expansion packs and, finally, onto the Xbox in 2002.
Ghosts in the 'hood.
The success of Ghost Recon on Xbox, particularly among the Xbox Live players, prompted Ubi Soft to make a new installment available to the legions of fans This, finally, was where Ghost Recon: Island Thunder came into being. So much more than a simple update, this newest adventure does what all titles have done since Red Storm Rising. It builds on what has come before, and then takes us a little bit further, complete with new maps, a new story line, and political machinations and hard-line men, who don't mind running on the darker side of human rights. But, maybe, just maybe, there might be some freedom-fighting men who are on the job, ready to help (even the Cubans) get a taste of American freedom. And, yeah, the idea may seem a little familiar, but that's okay. We never seem to get tired of it.
