85 is not average

I preordered this game, on the strength of the previews and released developer diaries. I am not ashamed to say, I was sucked into the hype somewhat. The game looked amazing, and as the bloke on those videos chatted on about the cross com and how clever your squad-mates would be, I felt confident that the game was gna-be-fucking-amazing.

Well it’s not. It’s fun for about 2 hours. Then you get stuck on the super hard level, because it actually means impossible. Anyone who’s managed to get to, or past the second mission (chaingun in the chopper) mission on the super hard skill knows what I’m talking about. Repeatidly punishing my self-esteem by trying 20 times to get past the descent into the square could only lead me to one course of action; Throw the pad at the radiator and storm off in a huff.

Several hours later in a tea enduced daze, I started the game again on the easy skill, and having breezed through the first two missions this time, I saved it so I could make another cup of tea and turn the 360 off for a while. MISTAKE. The saved game wouldn’t load, I got stuck on the small skull screen. SAKE. The only course of action was to start again, this time hoping that once I got to a point at which I was able to save it, it wouldn’t cock up. Thankfully the chuntey gods wern’t paying attention.

This is just one example of an interfacing error, of which I am not the only one to encounter. More trouble followed in the form of stuck fire mode switching, getting stuck on static guns, and my squad (whom I felt like I was a baby sitter of, rather than the commander of) going out and getting themselves fucking shot all the time, by not going for cover, not healing their team mates when I told them to, exposing themselves to enemies and leaving recon mode without me bloody telling them to.

The control system is typically clunky for a Ghost Recon game, and very slightly improved over ‘Ghost Recon: Island Thunder‘ (that is a good game). Elements of the ‘Full Spectrum Warrior‘ (another good game) troop positioning system seem to have been incorperated, but it just doesnt work. The guys dont take cover and shut up, they take cover, then fire at the enemy, exposing your position. They work far better as bait than as help.

The mutliplayer is alright and gripping for maybe an hour and a half, with cooperative being a fairly decent experience, though feeling very similar to Island Thunder, with better graphics, and sadly again, only 4 maps to play. Deathmatch, as with most console FPS games, is boring, but enough to satisfy the important ‘American Teen‘ market.

The media clearly didnt put any time into the game at all, and any reviews you see over 85% are a load of shit. It had the potential to go into the 90’s but the QA team were happy for it to be thrown out early. It’s not an EA published game, and I do like Ubisoft, they brought us ‘Far Cry‘ after all. See for yourself the ridiculous scores this game gets.

The article on GamesRadar is a shining example of how not to review this game. Gamespy give it 100%; How can you give a game 100%? If you are force fed cash, sorry, my mistake. The most objective review I found was on GamePro.

This entry was posted 2 years, 9 months ago at 10:19 pm by Doug and is filed under Bad, The Impossible Score. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.