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Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
by Jolex Del Pilar
Monday, November 4 2002
Island Thunder is a great addition to the Ghost Recon series of gaming, but a simple change of scenery might not be enough for most gaming action fans.
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Title:
Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
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Platform:
Pentium II 450, 128MB Ram, 3D card, original Ghost Recon game.,
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Publisher:
Ubisoft |
Developer:
Red Storm Entertainment |
#
of Players: 1 - 16 |
Genre:
Action
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Origin:
United States
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Expected
Release:
October 2002 |
Grapevine:
The gameplay has remained exactly the same as the first Ghost Recon game, and the subsequent expansion pack “Desert Siege”. |
The newest chapter in the Ghost Recon series of gaming takes you to yet another possible, but near future world, where the politics of the world have vastly changed.
This time, it’s Cuba in 2012, and Castro has finally croaked, which might come as a surprise to those who thought he might just live forever. Of course, the power vacuum caused by the demise of the long time communist leader has lead to factions vying for power on the island nation, including dangerous factions who are hostile to the U.S, that’s where you come in.
The “Ghost” are sent in to bring order to the nation and help establish the first democratic elections on the nation in more than a half century. Obviously there are individuals who would rather just take power by force. In many missions, the Ghost will be actively combating the hostile elements who wish to take the country into many more years of repressive government control.
If you’ve played the other Ghost Recon games, then you pretty much have the idea of how Island Thunder plays. There aren’t many new things in this incarnation, but it is only an expansion pack which most fans will pick up just for the new maps (the game requires the original game to play). There are a few aesthetic improvements, mainly in objects per map (some of the foliage will choke even a mighty system), and some newly scripted in-game cut scenes mainly involving the insertion of your team by either Zodiac Raft or Blackhawk Helicopter. The latter is a nice detail for all the spec ops enthusiast who have seen these insertions on the History Channel specials.
The gameplay has remained exactly the same as the first Ghost Recon game, and the subsequent expansion pack “Desert Siege”. The only thing that has changed is the scenery. The levels are now tropical rain forest instead of deserts or caves, this means that finding the A.I enemies will be especially hard, and this increases the difficulty drastically. Some might not realize how hard it is to pick out a soldier wearing green colored camouflage in the middle of a rain forest from 100 meters away, Island Thunder made this reviewer very aware of the difficulty of that task. The A.I itself seems a bit sharper, and sometimes has the amazing ability to see you guys through the trees just a bit better than you can see them, but being careful with every step usually solves that problem, although it increases the map completion time by a large amount, a good thing in our opinion.
The Ghost Recon game engine has gone through four incarnations since the game’s original release and has showed little, but welcome, improvements each time. However, there’s comes a time when change is a good thing. The Ghost Recon series has provided gamers with three solid chapters to a solid series of gaming, but it may be time to move on. Here’s hoping Red Storm’s upcoming Rainbow Six: Raven Shield is able to continue the tradition of excellence that is the Red Storm series of Action Gaming.
--- Jolex Del Pilar
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