Ghost Recon for Windows PC

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great graphics and sound, very difficult missions

Cons: Sometimes too hard

The Bottom Line: 
Ghost Recon is the best 3D strategy shooter out right now. I highly recommend it for multiplayer.

Author's Review
Ghost Recon is the latest title to follow in the Rainbow Six games. It is a 3D shooter, but not in the style of Quake or Unreal. With Ghost Recon, you must use stealth and smarts, rather than charge in shooting. If you go into Rambo mode, you won’t last 10 seconds in a firefight. To say that this game is hard would be quite an understatement.

In the game, you can be a sniper, rifleman, or demolitions expert. The game kind of reminds me of the movie Black Hawk Down, so if you’ve seen that, you will have a better picture of how this is played. Each mission puts you in a different setting, from heavily wooded forests to mountains to the deserts of Ethiopia. Each setting provides new challenges, as you must utilize the terrain to your advantage. At every turn there are great vantage points from which to set up a sniper position, or plenty of buildings for your gunmen to lie in wait behind a window.

The best part about Ghost Recon is the multiplayer features. No matter how good the game’s AI, nothing beats playing against another human. In multiplayer, there are several different styles of games, so you can play against each other or cooperatively in death matches, king of the hill type games, and so on. Just last night I was at a LAN party and we played this game for several hours with four people. For those who don’t know, a LAN party is when a bunch of people bring their computers over to someone’s house, network them all together, and play games or share files.

The graphics in Ghost Recon are top notch, but you better have a pretty decent system if you want to max out the details. Even at some of the lowest settings, everything looks fine and runs smoothly. In most 3D games, the maps and terrain just give you a place to go, but in this game, they play a very important part in how you play, as you have plenty of wide-open space to figure out how to perform your missions.

The sound is also excellent, and I love how you can hear the enemy soldiers talking when you get really close. There are a lot of ambient environmental sounds that add to the game’s realism, including birds and wind blowing. The gunshot sounds are also well done and the stereo effect is put to good use.

All in all, Ghost Recon is a fun, but very hard, game. It is designed for more mature gamers who prefer strategy over a clickfest. If you are into more fast paced 3D shooters, you will not like this game.