Ghost Recon: Any one remember?

[Thoughtful Sociopath]

Just out of curiosity, anyone remember Ghost Recon? I mainly refer to Advance Warfighter 2, but the series in general. I know technically it falls under "realistic military shooter", but in my opinion, did it several things right.

-Difficult and satisfying when actually a firefight was finished.
-Reasonably smart AI, who could take you out the second you expose enough of yourself and followed orders well.
-Realistic Health. If you got shot, you never got that health back unless you ordered you medic to help you out.
-More grounded story. Most of the weapons and equipment were actually concepts and prototypes or just beginning to be issued (such as the SCAR Rifles) and the bad guys are Mexicans. That may sound impossible, but with the Mexican Government being a mess with the drug war, the idea of a rouge faction trying to seize power in Mexico isn't necessarily out of the question. Kidnapping the US President probably is though.

I ran through the hardest difficulty setting where every thing except snipers takes you out in 1-2 shots, and the snipers always pulled off head shots. I also beat MW2 on Veteran. To me personally MW2 didn't come near the satisfaction of beating GRAW2 on the hardest difficulty. Curious to see if anyone remembers (or maybe even still plays) Ghost Recon.

 

[The Madman]

Never really played the 'Advanced Warfighter' games but I did play the original Ghost Recon obsessively, bloody loved that game. I remember the mission where you had to escort a tank caravan through a bombed out city being one of the most incredible experiences at the time and the UI on PC was just damned near perfect. No, seriously, the UI was amazing. Switching between squad members and giving orders was an absolute breeze thanks to the map that would pop up by pressing tab as I recall, and from that map you could plot various units movements down to the last detail all in real time. Meaning if you got pinned behind a boulder you could then order that soldier to remain there while simultaneously taking control of another unit and ordering a third to flank to the other side with the simplest of ease.

Was fantastic. In fact now that I think about it why haven't I picked that game up on GOG.com? I know they have it and I never did play the expansions.

Welp, there's my next scheduled purchase when I've a bit of spare change.

 

[SilentCom]

I never played the advanced warfighter series but I played some of the earlier ones. They were challenging and reasonably realistic enough to categorize them as realistic as opposed to many of the more action oriented shooters today.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

Wow, I didn't think that anybody on the Escapist actually cared for the Tom Clany brand other than me. But yes, I do remember the GRAW series and thought that it was amazing for its time. The realistic gun battles with the tactical prospect of coordinating a spec ops team just made for a awesome shooter experience. And I will agree with you that the very grounded story lines was a nice touch that, even if not neede, helped flesh out the pregression in the game. Now the new Ghost Recon Future Soldier looks pretty good but I'm waiting for ubisoft to stop delying it and just bring out the beta already. -_-

 

[Zhukov]

I remember playing the very first Ghost Recon.

It was okay.

Awfully heavy on the yank-wank though. Story, such as it was, involved Russia invading Georgia and the USA responding by invading Russia "on behalf of the Russian people". Yeah. Somehow the writers just completely forgot about the existence of nuclear weapons.

Oh, and then in the expansion they invade Cuba.

That's the Tom Clancy brand in a nutshell.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The game series isn't really old enough to forget. It did a few things that I liked, not the least of which was realizing that a machine gun is probably accurate to long ranges when shooting - something that most video games seem to ignore in favor of balance. While I have played them all, I have to say I don't really like any of them enough to have particularly fond memories. The pace of play is, in a word, tedious and the introduction of increasingly bombastic narrative is silly at the very best.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Yes, they made Ghost Recon games back when Ubisoft was actually good. Future Soldier has been in development for so long it will probably have Duke Nukem Syndrome when it finally comes out.

 

[Stormsurger]

First Ghost Recon was the first shooter I ever played. I remember it was incredibly difficult at the time :S or maybe 10 year old me wasn't as much of a pro :3

 

[Haxxle]

I only played Ghost Recon 'One' on the Xbox and the whole game, or the general feel, greatly reminded my of the Rainbow Six series where tactics of moving indivudal units and groups to flank enemy contacts dominate over the stats of bigger weapons.

 

[-Samurai-]

Love the first Ghost Recon. My friends and I still do firefights on PC.

Spoiler: Huge picture.

I bought it for PS2 about 6 months ago.

 

[VulakAerr]

GRAW and GRAW2 were 2 of the very best games in the early days of the 360. They looked fantastic (and I think still hold up well today) and the multiplayer (including the co-op missions) was satisfying and challenging.

Fucking hated those 3/4G achievements though. What was with that? Took me ages to get back to multiples of 5.

 

[InsaneOne10]

The original Ghost Recon is a game I'd love to see get some visual polish (imagine bigger maps with none of that horrible fog), and keep all of its mechanics and UI exactly the same.

 

[Frybird]

I remember both Ghost Recon and GRAW1!

Ghost Recon was nice, but hard, but since it wasn't as hard as Operation Flashpoint, i tried to pull through the frustration for a bit.
It was fun although i always found the UI to be kinda strange with that massive crosshair and no visible weapon model. But that may be just me.

GRAW 1 was my first Xbox 360 Game. Actually i wanted to have an Xbox 360 but didn't find the lineup that appealing at first so i waited for GRAW 1 and bought it then.
And, well, it was a pretty nice start. It had some eye candy to offer with the fly-bys over Mexico City and that bit where you run towards the embassy (?) and just as you reach it it blows up in a massive explosion (just keep in mind that it did age surprisingly badly). It had some cool "Next Gen" Stuff with the UAV and that little window where i could see teammates (although that was pretty useless for me since i played on an old SDTV), and a rudimentary cover system (i know it wasn't the first game that had it, but i never played any before).
And it had some additional modes and replay value with its coop-campaign/maps, wich is always nice for a first game on a new console since in the past it took me a while to be able to afford another one). And later on, it was a nice introduction into console online gaming.

So yeah, probably not that special, but for me it has a special place in my heart as the first 360 Game, and it did it's job as such pretty well (Much better than my first PS2 Game, Ridge Racer 5, wich was fun, but also a flickery, headache inducing mess)

 

[Baby Tea]

True story: I loved Ghost Recon (The first one).
So when GRAW came out for the 360, I downloaded the demo in a heartbeat.

...hated it.

Time passed and GRAW 2 came out. So I figured, 'ahh, why not?' and downloaded the demo.

...LOVED IT.

Turns out, I just had no idea how to play. That had happened once before with 'Fallout'. When Fallout first came out (That's the first Fallout, not Fallout 3), I had no idea how to play and I hated it. Then a buddy showed me what was going on, and everything clicked. Loved it afterwards. So I went out and bought GRAW 1 (Very cheap used at that point), loved it and beat it! Then bought GRAW 2 new, loved it and beat it. Still have it, actually, and I enjoy popping it in from time to time.

All that to say: I'm looking forward to Future Soldier.

 

[Jedoro]

I still have my copy of Island Thunder, maybe even of Ghost Recon. I was never amazing at them, but I love those games. Modern shooters are a bit more action-y and less realistic than I'd like, so now I stick with ArmA 2.

 

[Vkmies]

The Advanced Warfighter games were kinda shitty and totally raped the series.

Now the original 3 games, Ghost Recon, Island Thunder and Desert Storm.

They were the PINNACLE of tactical shooting, tough but fair, strategic and not for the impatient. Incredible games. Just incredible. Not only that, but those games had THE best multiplayer of the time. One of my favorite games ever and the Co-Op is still outmatched.

 

[Malyc]

I rather enjoyed the Ghost Recon series, and have been thinking about picking up a used copy of one of them for the ps3. For some reason, havn't gotten around to it. I'm just gonna go ahead and blame Assassins Creed: Revelations for that.

 

[Avaholic03]

I wouldn't say the AI was that good. There were always "sweet spots" on maps where the AI would continually walk into your team and get mowed down. They would even walk past a pile of their allies without realizing they were walking into a trap. The key to most missions was to set up in those spots and just wait there until the entire map was cleared of enemies. More realistic than CoD-esque games? Of course. Better? Meh, not really IMO.

 

[Yellowbeard]

The original Ghost Recon is a game I'd love to see get some visual polish (imagine bigger maps with none of that horrible fog), and keep all of its mechanics and UI exactly the same.

There's a mod that gets rid of the fog. BIG improvement, it makes snipers actually useful because you can see more than a hundred meters.

I've yet to play a Tom Clancy game (though I admit I got bored of them a long time ago) with half-decent AI. In Ghost Recon they would all slowly move out into the open and get shot one by one. In Rainbow Six 3 they would throw grenades at you even if they were in a closet and you were on the other side of the wall, and if you told your guys to sit in a corner and cover a room they would stare at the wall at least half the time.

Oh and the idea of "realism" in a game where you have 6 guys against the enemy's 50-75 is kind of laughable, with or without one-shot-kills.