Review: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm
Score:
79%
Version Reviewed: 1.00
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Ah, where would the world be without Tom Clancy? As Wikipedia quite rightly points out, while the literary merit of his books is disputed by many professional authors and reviewers (who regard Clancy's prose as pedestrian), most have been bestsellers. Fans of his work appreciate the well-thought-out plots and the apparent attention to technical detail (helped by extensive contacts in the US military).
In any case, these very heavy books have led to a few games franchises. We've already seen one of these on the N-Gage, namely Splinter Cell, which Jim reviewed earlier in the year. Luckily, Ghost Recon looks and plays a lot better than the platformer that was Splinter Cell: Team Stealth Action. Ghosts are the non-people that the American Government use when they don't want to be blamed for anything. That means in any job that the Ghosts do, they need to be stealthy, get the job done, and get out as quickly as possible. That, in a nutshell, describes this Gameloft title perfectly.
Unlike the first Splinter Cell, this is a first person viewing shooter, so the immediate question, and the question the entire game hangs on, is does it look good, and does it run smoothly? Now a lot of people have complained about this 3d engine, but I have to say it played smoothly for me, and I didn't notice any slowing down on the frame rate. Everything looks realistic, and like every single washed out Central American guerilla move I've seen on Cable TV late at night - so the engine gets a thumbs up from me.
It's not two thumbs up, there do seem to be some problems. The main one being that we've actually got a 2-D engine here, so you can't stack floors one above each other, like you have in, say, Ashen. Given the choice between the two, I'd say Ashen's 3-D engine is a bit more polished, and offers more possibilites in the long term for development. So Ghost Recon is going to lose a few marks here because of the nature of the engine, which directly affects the gameplay and layout of certain levels.
Single Player Service
Those things aside, it looks like we've got a cracking game in Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm. You're in charge of a team of four 'Ghosts', and as you move around the levels, they'll follow you around, taking cover themselves, shooting at any enemy soldiers that they see. You can issue commands for the rest of the team to go to certain locations (then they can help you as you run for cover 100 yards down the runway towards the Aircraft hanger you're trying to storm). If you feel that you need to have more direct control of someone else, then a quick key tap and you'll be controlling someone else in the team, and issuing orders to your old (now computer controlled) persona.
The main advantage here is that every Ghost is usually carrying a different array of weapons (which you can partially set up at the start of the level). You've got the terrorists favourite AK-47, the US Army M-16, the choice of two absolutely gorgeous sniper rifles, rocket launchers, grenades, binoculars... And the more missions you complete, the more choice of weaponry you have.
Once you've kitted out your soldier (you can only kit out one person, the other three team members have already chosen their shiny sticks of death. Which is a shame), it's into the story based missions.
Set in "the near future" in Columbia, an explosions in the city centre ets off a chain of events that turn out to be a Paramilitary Drug Cartel attempting a coup to take over the country (see, told you it was Clancy). This is where you come in. Your first mission sees you rescuing some Red Cross workers from the MFLC (the pesky Cartel has a name). From there, you'll be investigating reports of the MFLC loading Goods trains, kidnapping diplomats, and arranging meetings with their own commanders - a perfect opportunity to go in and... well, kill them all.
And while this story is a strong point to the game, linking together different areas (canyons, caves, city suburbs, mansion houses), it's also Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm's main problem.
It's too damn short!
The whole story is over in 8 rather short levels, which take around ten to fifteen minutes each to fully explore and solve. There's little or no hunting, you've got a perfect map showing how the level is laid out, and where your objectives are. So off you pop, shooting MFLC members who guard the same points every time you go through a level. This is ludicrously short for a game, and you can clear the whole story on the easy and medium levels in about 3 hours of gameplay.
This is not good value for money. It's something you see a lot of in modern gaming - making sure a game can be finished in two weeks in time for the next release is all well and good, but the N-Gage release schedule is a bit more... spaced out than that. For all that Ghost Recon looks really nice, handles smoothly, and has imaginative levels, it's over all too quickly.
Of course, finish the game and you've only done a third of the levels, because it asks you to then complete each level on the other two difficulty levels, and then suggests the "James Bond" challenge of getting through each level as a lone wolf, with only a 'one shot will kill' pistol as your weapon. Forcing me to replay the same level with only tiny changes does not give a game value for money.
Multiplayer Almosts Saves The Day
Gameloft have really gone to town on the multi-player angle, and provided a wealth of options for Bluetooth playing. The big thing is that you can have up to eight players in one game, all playing with or against each other. There's four ways to play a multiplayer game. You've got the traditional Deathmatch, everyone for themselves, to see who can score the most kills. You have Survival, a modified deathmatch where you don't regenerate when you die - essentially it's last man standing wins. In the Defend option, you score points for every thirty seconds you can stay in a specific area of the map - of course everyone else is trying to get into these areas as well.
All of these Multiplayer games can be played individually, but switching them to 'Team' mode means you can take on everyone else in the next cubicle. With up to 8 N-Gages involved, you can have 4 on 4 team action, defending, attacking and working together as a team. And if you feel like going through the 8 story levels, you can team up and do it as a group, with everyone taking on the role of one of the Ghosts.
The only problem in all of this is that getting 8 N-Gages in a room, each with a legitimate copy of Ghost Recon, is going to be as rare as the Pope visiting Caesars Palace at Las Vegas. Why there isn't some sort of "client only" .sis file I can beam over to other N-Gage owners is beyond me.
The C.O.'S Conclusion
There's an "All About N-Gage Recommended" game trying to get out of Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm, and it pains me to do this, but it's not getting the award. Ghost Recon lets itself down in a few ways. If a bit more time had been spent on the playability of the level design, rather than the "look, it's a truck! A train! A plane!" complexity of the graphics, then maybe the limitations of the engine might not have been so noticable. Or maybe they could have designed more levels.
I doubt that Gameloft are going to write a graphics engine for one N-Gage game and discard it - so if they use it again they really need to work on non-linear level design, and make the single player game last much longer - not everyone has enough friends to appreciate a really big Deathmatch. It just misses the target - a strong title for the N-Gage, but not the out and out smash hit that I think Gameloft were hoping for.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at