Show me an Xbox® owner that doesn't have any Tom Clancy games, and I'll show you someone who's really missing out. The Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six 3 titles keep raising the bar for both stealth-action games and squad-based shooters, through constant innovation in gameplay, online and off.
Until now, I had not been as fond of the Ghost Recongames, primarily because I'm impatient and somewhat delusional as a gamer. I like to move fast and feel invulnerable. In bothTom Clancy's Ghost Recon™ and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon™: Island Thunder™, I had a hard time coping with the cautious pace between firefights and with the fact that one bullet usually meant death.
If I were more careful in battle and more cautious on the way there, I'd have an easier time. But, sad to say, I was prone to completing half or three-quarters of the mission and then getting capped by the one enemy that I wasn't patient enough to find and kill before I moved forward to finish the job.
Strike hard and disappear into the night.
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon™ 2 changed all that. It's still aGhost Recon game that rewards cool-headed strategy and solid, thought-out action, but it comes with a few changes that make the whole experience a lot more accessible to a wild-eyed, frenzied addict like me.
For starters, the story takes place during a large-scale military conflict, so most of the missions take you straight into the heart of an all-out firefight. The urgency is cranked up throughout the game—whether you're demolishing a bridge to keep enemy reinforcements from outflanking your comrades or rushing to secure a strategically crucial airfield as enemy soldiers dig in and hostile choppers hunt you from the sky. Charging through these hot zones like Rambo will still get you killed, but just knowing how much danger you're in adds extra tension to every decision you make before, during, and after each skirmish.
Luckily, you can rely on your squad mates and other allies to do their part when the lead starts flying. The new third-person perspective shows off the authentic military-style hand commands that you'll use to give your soldiers orders. And, once those orders are given, you can count on them being carried out.
Commanding your squad to lay down a suppressing fire on a nearby machine gun nest gives you the time and protection you need to ready a grenade to kill everyone in the nest or break out your rocket launcher to take down an enemy chopper. Your elite squad of Ghosts has always been reliable, but this time around, the commands, the interface, and the response from your soldiers is smoother, faster, and better than ever.
Revamped and ready for action.
The new Lone Wolf mode is also a dream come true for us rugged individualists. The stakes are higher (no squad mates to rely on), but the weapon set is more than up to the challenge. The Future Force Warrior gear features a camera-assisted assault rifle (perfect for not getting sniped before you know what's around the corner), time-delay airburst grenades (to take out clusters of enemies with surgical precision), and the ability to call in air strikes from a pair of nearby fighter jets.
The one-man army approach is somewhat strange for a trained team like the Ghosts, but once you feel the power of the M29 and face off alone against the same enemies that challenged your whole squadron in the single-player campaign, you'll develop a whole new appreciation for teamwork. You'll also be combat-tested to your limit in terms of both fast combat and deliberate strategy because, if you can't handle both, you're not fit to be a Lone Wolf.
Ready to join the ranks, sir!
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 doesn't simply boost the number of enemies or increase the gameplay speed to satisfy gamers like me. Everything about the graphics, level design, weapons balance, and progressive objectives come together to make the action feel more urgent than ever, without losing the essential core gameplay. In other words, they've fixed whatever problems my fevered brain had without sacrificing anything important. Nowthat's a sequel done right.
