Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Island Thunder
Bravo Team: Left, Alpha Team: Right, MOVE MOVE MOVE!!!!!
Tags: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Travis on Oct 31st, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Island Thunder is the new addition for the popular Ghost Recon series from UbiSoft. With 8 new levels and 12 new weapons it is sure to satisfy fans of Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell. Island Thunder is a tactical shooter with a focus on stealth and teamwork. Set in a post Castro Cuba in the year 2009, your mission is to secure free and democratic elections. You must seize drugs and weapons used by Communists who want to re-install the old regime.
You lead three elite squads of Green Berets through the jungles, fields and swamps of Cuba. The scenery is real eye candy with lush vegetation and open spaces everywhere. The graphics are truly impressive when displaying rainy weather, rushing waterfalls, and ferns blowing in the breeze. The weather adds a sense of realism in Islander Thunder with rain and fog creating poor visibility and opportunities to sneak up on enemy guard posts. Erie backgrounds noise will put you right into the gorilla warfare mode.
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Beware, those looking for a hard core action game in the mold of Unreal Tournament, RTCW or Medal Of Honor will by sorely disappointed. Often, snipers will kill you with a head shot before you have any idea where they are shooting from. Only through careful observation while playing through each area multiple times is it possible to find out where all the bad guys are hiding. Island Thunder is a tactical shooter which requires patience, a slow pace, and the ability to lead three teams of soldiers into combat.
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One of the most difficult things I found was nailing down the group commands. Sometimes the group would do exactly what it was told other times they would think about it and either stand still or go off in another direction. You have the ability to control the two groups separately and then issue hold or attack to individuals beyond that. A few more commands would have been nice here maybe that are a little more moderate. After I got over some of the little quirks it was really fun to overtake the Cubans like the had no arms.
Beyond the issuing of commands everything else was smooth. The game engine is the same as the original Ghost Recon, but there is definite improvement in the map design. The maps are very large with multiple goals. The enemies are usually hiding out in areas waiting to ambush or snipe. Often they are in groups of three which makes for a little more action than the previous games in the Ghost Recon series.
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The multiplayer game features 12 new weapons including the FN M240G and the MM-1 automatic grenade launcher. There are also 5 new multiplayer maps and 2 new multiplayer game types: Behemoth and Defend. Both are variations on hide and seek, except that whoever is ‘it’ shows up on the radar screen for all to see. In Behemoth mode the player who is ‘it’ gets a large weapons advantage over the rest of the players who are trying to get him. These new modes are a novelty items that get boring very quickly compared to the usual team based multiplayer modes like Seige and Domination. There is also 3 new levels that can be downloaded via Xbox LIVE..
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For those of you looking for the not quite so action oriented FPS and like a little challenge, this might be your game. With so many strategy shooters coming out this series wrote the book on how it should be done. While this isn’t a complete redesign or even modifiction of the series, the new layouts, maps and weapons are a welcome change and will keep Ghost Recon fans satiated untill the next installment.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Maps + Weapons + More Ghost Recon action |
7.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Group controls - AI (Occasionaly) |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| So are we going to Korea Next? If you have the first, you might want to get this. | |
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Tags: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
Posted by Travis on Oct 31st, 2003 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
