Tag Archives: Tom Clancy

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Leave a comment

I want to get this out of the way to begin with – I think Tom Clancy, or rather those who now write using his name, are horrible, predictable hacks. Every story with the Tom Clancy name is exactly the same. Their premises, characters, themes and outcomes are always so similar it’s hard to discern one title from another. I’ve never been challenged by his works, never tricked by the “twists”, and never, ever thought it could be anything but pure fantasy.

The story in Conviction is so predictable as to be almost irrelevant. It opens with a voice over, telling us in flashback style that Sam has changed, and how his actions are a result of many things. Sam is now out of the game, we’re told, but he gets pulled back in by the machinations of his previous employer, Third Echelon. He’s more jaded, more brutal, and even more badass, but the good characterisation stops with Fisher. The other characters are so transparent that you know exactly who is good and who is bad. The twists and reveals are so trite that you simply don’t care about any of it.

And lastly, I’ve got to say the “flashback” presentation style simply does not work for videogames. After all, if you have someone talking past tense about how Sam did this and that, then it flashes back to you as Sam doing this and that, how can he fail? Sure, you as a player can fail the mission, but story wise you know he succeeds, making the plot holes greater and twists more irrelevant!

But honestly, it’s not like something with Tom Clancy’s name is ever going to be as appreciated as high art. And I think this actually works in Conviction’s favour. No, the story isn’t great, but the game is still enthralling. I want to play through again, not to see if the story will play out differently because I know it won’t, but because the game is simply so damn fun.

Like previous Splinter Cells, it’s all about stealth and shadows. Unlike previous Splinter Cells, the darkness is used to hunt, not hide. In previous Splinter Cells, if any trace of you could be found, if you were seen, or left a body under a light to be discovered by another guard, it would be mission over. And it was frustrating as hell. Chaos Theory and Double Agent went a long way to address this, but they were still games of hide and seek. Conviction turns Sam into a cat like stalker, using the shadows to stalk his enemies, unleash terrible fury upon them, and slinking into the shadows for another round.

When you slip into the shadows, the screen bleeds of colour, leaving you in a black and white world. This is a fantastic way to show when enemies can see you and when they can’t without using on screen meters that clutter your view. Another little nicety that keeps you in the world is there are no PDAs or mobile phones to look at to get mission information. Instead, they’re projected onto the walls as if from an old slide projector. As you walk through them, the beams of light wrap around you. Also, when Sam is having a flashback, instead of taking you out of the game and into a cutscene, the walls around Sam become movie screens, and grainy, black and white images play. These techniques keep you in the game world attached to Sam as a character, and create a feeling of immersion I’ve not experienced since Dead Space.

Sam has a variety of methods to dispatch foes from the darkness. He can simply shoot enemies with his pistol or machine gun, with headshots being the quickest way to take them down. Obviously, unsilenced weapons alert guards to your presence. If you get noticed, an on-screen alert tells you who has seen / heard you and where they are, and a silhouette appears at your last known location. This allows you to set up all kinds of scenarios. Use a flash bang or EMP blast to stun them and escape. Drop a mine as you leave to wipe out any guard who comes near. Drop a few remote mines around the place, and kill them all in one big multikill. Sneak off to other shadows to circle around from behind to do melee kills, or climb walls and posts to hover above the unsuspecting guard and rain death from above.

When you do a hand to hand takedown, you get the ability to Mark and Execute. Depending on your weapon, you can tag up to 4 enemies with the right bumper and then execute them with the Y button. Some of you may think this is a game killer, in that all you have to do is take down a baddie and then Mark and Execute any others. However, there are usually more guards than the number of marks, and if they see their mates fall they will become more alert. Also, marked guards have to be within range of your weapon and in line of sight to be taken down.

All this adds up to a faster, more visceral Splinter Cell, and some people may not like this direction. I for one find it much more appealing – I hated the instant fail levels in the early games. But for those who do want to creep about and not be detected, that’s a perfectly viable option for most levels. You can sneak around and complete objectives without killing any guards, and you’ll be rewarded with in-game points you can spend on upgrading guns and gadgets, as well as the ever popular Xbox achievements.

There are a host of in-game achievements, from completing missions without being seen, to taking enemies down with explosives, and so forth, and it wasn’t until I saw these that I realised the freedom players are allowed to complete the game. You have the tools and abilities to approach the mission in a variety of ways, and are only rarely told to proceed in a certain way to beat the level. It’s a fantastic way to get the player to play through again without waving a big “YOU MUST PLAY AS A SNEAKY GUY NOW!” sign like so many other games attempt to do.

After the short but intense single player campaign, there is Deniable Ops. Playing single or doubling up with another player either locally or online, you can play Hunter, Infiltration, and Last Stand modes against the AI, or Face-Off against other spies. Hunter and Infiltration will have you sneak into various locations and alternatively kill or avoid AI guards. With Last Stand, you protect a generator from hoards of guards trying to destroy it. Face Off is spy vs spy with AI against everyone.

Whilst enjoyable, I never found a partner to play with online that I didn’t previously plan to play with. Admittedly Halo Reach Beta and Red Dead Redemption were both released around the time I was reviewing the game, so it’s understandable no one was online. However, the removal of the critically-acclaimed Spies Vs Mercs mode could have more to do with it. I had some of the best multiplayer experiences with Chaos Theory, and the lack of that type of multiplayer seems to have impacted the Conviction multiplayer experience.

It would be amiss to skip talking about sound. As other Splinter Cell games, the sound is excellent. Footsteps and bullets are great indicators of who is where. There is one part where Sam gets really angry and goes on rampage to the wonderful “Building Steam From A Grain of Salt” by DJ Shadow, and it fits perfectly with the action. Sam Fisher is portrayed excellently by Michael Ironside once again, and his deep, gravelly voice is edged with appropriate anger and brutality this time. Other voice acting for main characters is good, but the barks of the guards, whilst not really repetitive are far too vociferous. If you saw all these bodies lying about with head wounds and broken necks, would you yell out “I’m going to get whoever did this!” and let whoever did know you were coming?

Conclusion:
Splinter Cell Conviction deviates from the original series in quite a substantial way, but keeps its soul is intact. It’s still very much a Splinter Cell game, just faster paced and more streamlined. The immersion in the world is fantastic, and the gameplay enjoyable, despite the rather predictable story. The Multiplayer modes are fun, especially with two people in the same place playing together, although the omission of Spies Vs Mercs mode is, I suspect, a big reason for lack of online players.

Pros:
Excellent immersion using light and colour
All the gadgets and fun of previous Splinter Cells
Great new gameplay ideas such as Mark and Execute which are executed well
Michael Ironside brings even more passion to the lead character
Fun Multiplayer

Cons
The omission of Spies Vs Mercs mode
Not many people playing the online modes
Guards dialogue is a little over the top
Predictable and trite Tom Clancy story.

85/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown

Leave a comment

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series started off as a strategic command type game where you planned your mission, then executed GO codes to your teams and watched them do their thing. As the series evolved, it became a first person shooter to suit action orientated console gamers. Initially this move was met with some scepticism, but after the first Rainbow Six game (XBW: 94) hit the Xbox, we knew Ubisoft was onto a winner. It was action packed, but still tactical, strategic and well paced, and had awesome online modes that captured the single player intensity but pitted you against other humans.

The single player contains the usual story of evil, radical organisation taking action against various governments around the world, and also has a few little twists to try and engage you more fully. I’m not going to spoil it, but if you’ve read the book then the game’s story treads some familiar territory, although this time more close to home. For some reason though, the story isn’t as engaging as in the previous games. Part of this is the voice acting, but most of it is the overall feel of the game. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something that isn’t cohesive about the whole experience.

Gameplay wise, the feel is similar to the previous Rainbow Six’s, but a little more action based. You can pretty much run and gun through the levels and survive with your entire squad intact. There’s not so much of the careful manuvering and planning, and much more shooting. Part of this is due to the new heart detection device that shows you the heartbeat of enemies through walls. When you know there is a bunch of baddies in the next room, you know to flashbang or grenade almost every time.

There is a nice addition to the gameplay where you take the role of the sniper, and it’s like a shooting gallery. It’s quite a lot of fun, and your skill does reflect on the difficulty of the on coming mission – if you’re too slow in eliminating the enemy, and your team gets walloped, you’ll have an injured team to play the rest of the mission with, which can make it a lot more difficult. However, there is a problem with this mode, in that you’re informed of more enemies arriving, but it’s rather imprecise. For example, you’re told in one level that there are snipers on the balconies, but there are four balconies – if a special ops team was that inaccurate in real life, I would be very concerned about their training.

Another problem arises with the team and enemy AI. Sometimes it’s good, and others you’re left wondering what the hell has gone wrong. In one instance, one of my team just simply refused to climb the ladder. This meant for the rest of the mission I couldn’t actually order my team to do anything. Another time, pressing the A button to order the team to open a door meant they would prepare, but the “go code”, accessed by the black button, never appeared. Often they would clear out the immediate area, and then give the all clear, and you would walk into sniper fire. With enemy AI, you can pick off bad guys in a room without others in the room noticing. They will patrol, but don’t wander too far out of their zones, and will do really odd things like throw grenades when their teammates are in the way.

Moving onto the online modes, I was hesitant about the Persistent Elite Creation (PEC) mode. Luckily, you can choose to ignore this, and get right into the thick of the game. There’s the usual Team Survival, the elimination deathmatch; Team Sharpshooter which is deathmatch with a time limit; Total conquest, where you have to hold locations for a given time limit, and Retrieval, which is essentially capture the flag. Plus, you can join with up to four friends and work through the missions or play terrorist hunt.

The PEC mode is a new addition to multiplayer, allowing you to choose a class and upgrade your equipment. There are four classes – Commando, Engineer, Special Ops and Medic. These are pretty standard roles in shooters, and there’s nothing really outstanding in Lockdown to differentiate these roles to any other game. For example, the Commando can develop skills that allow him to dish out more damage, take more damage, and set up ballistic shields to protect his allies. The medic can heal either on the run, or set up mobile field restoration points, and the special op can sneak and use sniper rifles. The Engineer can lay mines and set up machine gun turrets, and open or lock passages and routes through the maps.

At first, I though I would be at a disadvantage, because I was a low level character and was up against level 40 players. However, after a few games, as you find your feet, and start to get a feel for your role, you do start to advance quicker. And, as you kill more opponents of higher ranking, you also advance further, so it does enforce more of a run and gun mentality. In addition, people don’t seem to utilise their extra functions properly. I never saw a ballistics shield or a weapons emplacement, although engineers did appear to block off routes, and medics did heal me on the odd occasion, but these abilities were not as utilised nearly as much as in other combat games that have ‘roles’.

The multiplayer maps are very well designed, but I found that a lot of them seemed more to facilitate spawn-rushing more so than other games. Even though they had intricate back routes into enemy bases, simply rushing to the enemy spawns seemed to be the most logical way to fight. Admittedly the tactics changed with the people you played with, but there never seemed to be the same levels of communication I experienced playing Rainbow Six 3 or other online game like Halo 2 or even Return to Castle Wolfenstien.

Rainbow Six has always looked good, but unfortunately Lockdown seems to have dragged the chain here as well. The new visor effect is cool, especially how it fogs up if you go into a cold storage room, and how the more beat up you are, the harder it becomes to see as it gets cracks, holes and grime on it. The environments all look nice, but they don’t have the impact and the wow factor of the previous games. And, perhaps more disappointingly, the explosions look quite average. The rolling fire effect doesn’t look good at all – throw a grenade and you expect something bigger and better. The different vision modes you can employ don’t have the same impact either, with both thermal vision and low light seeming to be washed out, making it harder to determine objects and enemies when looking in these modes. There was also so unexpected slowdown in framerate in single player, something I’ve not noticed in the series before.

The sound is also simply OK. The characters seem to lack the individuality the previous Rainbow Six games infused into them. There is a certain level of distance and detachment that wasn’t present in the previous games. Before you actually cared is Louise got taken down, now it’s more of a case of inconvenience. The bullet and explosions all sound good, and the score is a little more upbeat and rocking, but I did notice a few odd glitches in multiplayer where the gun firing only had the tail end of the sound on more than a couple of occasions.

Conclusion:
Lockdown is a competent shooter, which is disappointing because the previous Rainbow Six’s were fantastic shooters. Slipping further into the realm of action forsaking its origins, the single player suffers from inconsistent AI of both teammates and enemies, and even though the environments are a little more interactive, they seem to lack the realism that was the hook of the first game. The PEC multiplayer mode does add a new dimension to the usual online way of playing, and does hook you at first, but the online matches do seem to degenerate into spawn rushes and feel more like a simple run and gun battles common to all shooters than the tactical and epic battles that so absorbed players of the previous games.

Pros:
PEC Mode is a great addition to online play.
Environments more interactive than previous Rainbow Six games
New sniper action at start of round is lots of fun
Visor effects and decals are cool, even if they do obscure the action.

Cons:
Inconsistent AI for both AI and teammates
Online matches all too frequently devolve into spawn rushing
PEC Abilities seldom used
Doesn’t look as good as previous versions of the game.
Unexpected choppiness and slowdown in framerate

81/100

dB Magazine, Music, Review, Writing

Amon Tobin – Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory Soundtrack

Leave a comment

The Super Mario Brothers theme has been sung by acapella choirs and remixed by the likes of DJ Qbert, proving video game music has come a long way since the early days of 8 bit plinks and plonks. Game designers now realise music is a synchronistic and intrinsic element to their games.

Whilst Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is not the first video game to have a soundtrack released alongside the games’ release, it is the first one produced on the Ninja Tune label, and is quite possible the best one to marry talent and mood flawlessly. Known for his sweeping, atmospheric sound, Amon Tobin simply nails the mood of the game. It is dark, edgy, and stunning.

From the guitar stabs of The Lighthouse, to the drum and bass styled beats of El Cargo, Tobin takes every sound, every sample, and perfectly recreates the world of super spy Sam Fisher. Tobin has been allowed to create the music in his way, and the freedom and attention to detail is simply perfect. He builds stress, tension and action with different sounds and ambience, without ever compromising his definitive and distinctive style.

Tobin has layered each tune to work by itself, as well as work in the game. Each track is almost a mini soundtrack, the mood changing as the track unfolds. Certain sounds and chords are looped throughout each individual tune, and also reprised across the whole album, making the album work on three distinct but intertwined levels – as a soundtrack, as a gameplay device, and simply as music.

As a fan of Amon Tobin, Ninja Tune, Splinter Cell and movie soundtracks, I simply cannot fault this album. Tobin has excelled in bringing his edgy, dramatic and intense sound and making it work as a game soundtrack as well as an individual artist recording.

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3

Leave a comment

There are games that define a genre, and then there are those that slickly refine it, improving upon the genre without changing the basic mechanics that we know and love. Rainbow Six 3 falls into the latter of the categories for both single and online play. The story and gameplay are fairly typical for a Clancy title – you control a small group of elite soldiers who have to save the world from the sinister machinations of an unknown evil, but it works beautifully, so why fix something that isn’t broken. However, what makes Rainbow Six 3 stand out is the remarkable attention to detail, the degree of tactical gameplay involved, and the very immersive feel of the game, and it is this that will raise the bar for future first and third person console shooters.

The game is set in the near future, one that sees the world at the brink of war in 2007, as the OPEC nations are at loggerheads with the USA over oil. An unknown terrorist group is causing headaches everywhere as they try to force the Venezuelan government to stop supplying the USA with oil, and they hit targets all over the world including Switzerland, Canada, Venezuela and even the USA. Rainbow Six, a top-secret arm of the United Nations is enlisted to deal with these terrorists in a succinct and surreptitious manner. In the single player game, you are placed in the role of squad leader Ding Chavez, and must guide your team through a variety of urban locations with an assortment of objectives to achieve. These objectives are the usual tactical shooter fare: search and destroy, hostage rescue and even bomb disarmament. Some missions will require the use of stealth to survive, while others allow more opportunity to get trigger-happy.

The game is quite simple to play, but very complex in its execution. The controls are pretty standard for a shooter – move with the left joystick, turn with the right, and fire with the right trigger. This allows the player to slip easily into the game with a minimal learning curve. The other buttons are well mapped out for the game – the left trigger swaps between primary and secondary weapons, the Y and B buttons bring up night and thermal vision respectively, pressing X reloads the current weapon, while holding it brings allows selection of third and forth weapons – grenades and charges. The d-pad is used to lean left or right, peeking around corners to see and take out enemies with the protection of cover. By pushing up and down it’s also used to open and close doors smoothly, so you can peek out behind the door, and close it without alerting baddies to your presence.

The A button is a context sensitive “action” button, which is used not only by you as Ding to do ‘something’, but is also used to order the team about. For example, if Ding walks up to a closed door, pressing A will quickly open the door. However, if Ding is across the room, looking at the hostage and pressing the A button will order the squad to secure the hostage. You can also hold the A button down to bring up an action menu, which can be used to give more complex orders. Look at a door and hold A, and you will be given a choice of actions for the team from breaching the door, to opening the door and grenading the room beyond, and so forth. Furthermore, pressing the Right trigger will put you into the “Zulu” mode, where your team will wait before doing an ordered action until the Zulu code is given by pressing the white button.

Moreover, actions can be given by simply speaking if you own either an Xbox Live headset or purchase the version of the game that comes bundled with a nice Thrustmaster one. Looking at a hostage and saying “secure hostage” will see your team scramble across the room as if you pressed the A button. The game recognises up to 45 different spoken commands with all speech from your team also heard back through the headset, and it makes for an extremely immersive experience. While you can’t sit back and have a chat with your A.I team mates yet, the feeling of giving orders to them by simply speaking to them is something truly amazing the first time you experience it and doesn’t wear off anytime soon.

This context sensitive action button is superb for ordering and positioning the squad tactically. The squad AI is really quite good; if a teammate is ordered to disarm a bomb the others will take up positions and defend him. Furthermore, the team can operate pretty well on its own. See a door through a window and you can order the team to open that door, while finding an alternative route or providing cover from a height. The “Zulu” code works a treat for this kind of play too, as you can have the team stand at the entry to one door, while you find an alternative entry, and bust in to take the “Tangos” from either side. At higher levels the enemy AI is quite tough as enemies will duck behind desks and shoot over the top, or run back to other rooms to regroup when under fire. Thankfully on the ‘recruit’ level it’s a bit easier for us mere mortals with no special-ops training.

The attention to detail in this game is superb, and the game truly shines because of it. From the range of weapons and equipment, to the level design, to the lighting and sound, everything is made to feel realistic. There are over 30 weapons to choose from, and each has a different look and feel. Rainbow Six 3 also features lighting equally impressive as seen in Splinter Cell and to excellent effect. Shadows more often give away positions than not, and it’s fun seeing an enemy’s shadow and taking them out before they know what hit them. In the snow levels, steam rises from squad mates’ mouths, sheets blow in the wind on city streets, and jerk around as you shoot through them. Venetian blinds ripple along open windows, often causing a hail of gunfire to pepper an empty room. The game has rag-doll physics, so shooting people can result in humorous results, such as people falling out windows or rolling off ledges.

Speaking of windows, most can be shot out, and the muted environment sounds get louder once the window has been removed by a bullet or grenade. Grenades or breaching charges can also be used to take out doors, and the grenade effects look great – the phosphorous ones set the place on fire, and enemies run about screaming while burning. Flashbangs leave a white impression of what you were looking at superimposed over the screen, which eventually fades but is highly disorientating, and teargas is equally unsettling as it trips out your view. One of the greatest things I’ve seen is when on Live, when a player talks that players mouth moves, and while not quite lip-synced, looks close enough to cause awe when it’s first seen.

However, it’s this depth of realism that makes other parts of the game seem quite irrational. Certain glass areas can’t be shoot through, for no apparent reason. There are barrels of flammable liquid in places where realistically they probably wouldn’t be. In single player, when Ding dies, that is the end of the mission – another squad member can’t take over.

For Multplayer, there’s system link and the all-important Xbox Live functionality. On the Live Service, this game simply cannot be beaten in terms of tactical shooters. It is quite possibly the most intense game available on Live to date. The game is set up to facilitate team play – you can’t be a “Rambo” in this game and run about with guns blazing; instead you need to listen to and help your teammates if you want to win. There will be times when all that stands between winning and losing is the location of a sniper, and using teamwork to flush him out is the only way to achieve victory. Whether it is co-operative mission based matches or team survival, the game really requires you to talk with your teammates and work out strategies. Adversarial missions are equally as intense, as you move from cover to cover, trying to spot the enemy and take them out. In this game one shot to the head means death, so stealth and timing are much more important than bravado or brawn. Being complacent in your sniper spot won’t work – people can figure out where the shots are coming from, and there’s always a back way to most locations.

The multiplayer modes available include:

  • Mission – Cooperative: Play the 14 missions of the single player game with up to 4 other players.
  • Terrorist Hunt – Cooperative: Find and kill all the AI terrorists in a map of your choosing.
  • Survival – Adversarial: Essentially a last man standing type of game
  • Sharpshooter – Adversarial: The player with the most kills at the end of the round wins. This is the only type of play to have re-spawn, if you die in any of the other game modes you have to wait until the end of the game.
  • Team Survival– Adversarial: Last man standing wins for his team. This mode is very good for teamwork.

All in all, Rainbow Six 3 is a fantastic tactical shooter. It’s got some great innovations for the Xbox such as voice commands, and the single player gameplay is comparable to playing on Live. The AI is pretty damn good and the difficulty of the game quite challenging but very rewarding. Rainbow Six 3 is currently the best first person shooter on the Xbox, and if you’re a fan of the genre with or without Xbox Live, is a must get title.

Pros:

+ voice commands are awesome!
+ very immersive play
+ fantastic use of graphics and sound with excellent lighting worth another mention
+ comparable single and multiplayer experience

Cons:
– some minor inconsistencies in the realism field
– unable to play co-operative via split screen

Score: 90/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon : Island Thunder

Leave a comment

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon : Island Thunder is the follow up to the incredible Ghost Recon, the game where you lead a crack team of commando’s through numerous missions to stop the world going to war. This time in the alternative future, the commando team has to go to Cuba, two years after the shenanigans in the Baltic States. The USA, being such the nice guys that they are, has seen fit to help stabilise the country after the death of Fidel Castro. Various factions are fighting over control, and due to some having vastly superior skills and equipment, the US has opted to go in and even things up a bit. Contrived? Definitely! Fun? You bet!

Like the last incarnation of the game, you lead two small squad of up to 3 men each team in a campaign through various missions of varying difficulty. Unlike last game, there are only 8 missions. There is also the option to play just a single mission that takes the maps in the campaign and allows them to be played individually. These can be played either as a Mission as per the campaign; a Firefight, where the object is to run around the map eliminating the enemy; Recon, where you must make it to an extraction point on the other side of the map; or a Defence game, where you must defend an area from enemy attack.

When selecting a team, selecting “auto assign” gives a pretty good team well suited for the mission. However, if you’re a completely obsessive control freak, there’s the option to outfit the team with different members, weapons and abilities. Each team member has different levels of stealth, weapon skills, endurance and leadership, and these along with their primary skills – rifleman, support, demolitions and sniper – allows you to outfit your team to perfection. Each team member also has a number of different weapon kits available, and it is up to you to determine who gets what; should the team all have ballistic weapons, or will grenades be better to achieve the objective?

The gameplay is pretty similar to the original, but the steaming jungles of Cuba seem a touch more sinister. Every movement could be an enemy. Like the last game, this game’s pace is slow and steady, but it’s still heart pounding. A few hits by an enemy and a team member is dead. Luckily, the AI is incredibly good, and the team members can take out soldiers before you’re even aware of them! And, like last time, there are 3 objectives to achieve each mission, and a bonus objective that will unlock a new soldier if it is completed.

The command map that is used to direct the squads hasn’t been improved upon though, and while it suffices, it really should have been enhanced. It still feels very clunky and limited. In a game where accuracy is paramount, the fact that you cannot choose an exact location on the map for the soldiers to go, nor can you choose individual firing arcs for each member of the team is really disappointing. Admittedly it must have been hard converting the maps from the PC to Xbox interface, but the Xbox has been around a while now, and other games seem to have adapted better to the differences in controllers. Another let down is the over scripted missions. Again, when replaying the missions, you will find enemies in the same locations, meaning you will literally know what’s around the corner.

The joy of Ghost Recon is multiplayer, and Island Thunder continues the legacy. With Xbox Live now available in Australia, this will be one of the biggest online games for the console. There is also system link and four player for those who don’t have broadband. In terms of settings, there are quite a lot to choose from, and the range of types of games is enormous. Co-op has the same game types as single player – Mission, Firefight, Recon and Defend.

For team games, there is:

  • Last Man Standing
  • Search and Rescue – which is kind of like Capture the Flag, except the flags are hostages
  • Hamburger Hill – also known as King of the Hill, your team has to control an area for the better part for the game to win.
  • Domination – where 5 zones have to be controlled by the team
  • and Siege – where one team defends a base from the attacking team.

And for solo (all on to all) games there is

  • Last Man Standing
  • SharpShooter – the person with the most kills wins
  • Hamburger Hill – the person who controls the hill for the longest wins
  • And Cat and Mouse – which is essentially Tag.

Ghost Recon’s multiplayer is a lot more cerebral compared to other shooter type games. Rather than running around and shooting anything in sight, the action is akin to the single player mode – move around slowly, use cover and camouflage rather than speed or brawn. Radio communication is really important, and the XBL headset functions better than any other communication device. When playing with a good team who know what they’re doing, the game is incomparable to other shooters in terms of action.

Final thoughts:

While Ghost Recon: Island Thunder is essentially an expansion pack, it is a game in it’s own right, and a damn good one at that. It doesn’t add anything extra to the gaming experience of Ghost Recon, apart from the new campaign and location, so if you have the original it would be a tough ask to tell you to get this. However, it is at a lower price, and I dare say more people will be playing this online than the original, so in that way, it’s worth it. If you haven’t got the original, and are looking for a challenging shooter that relies more on using your brain than brawn, and provides an excellent multiplayer experience, then pick this up and skip the original.

Pros:

Gameplay as good as the original – tactical and intelligent
Excellent Multiplayer
Cheap!

Cons:

Only 8 missions (but there are downloads available)
Like previous game, replay value is limited due to over scripting
Command Map hasn’t been improved
Is anyone else sick of the USA in the role of “Saviours of the Known Universe”?

80/100