If being a top author of hit action novels and the inspiration for several hit movies wasn’t enough, Tom Clancy now has another video game based on his name and novels called “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier”.
Two words about this game, adaptive camouflage. We’ll get to that in a bit but first the specs and history of this latest Clancy warfare, operative, military thing. It’s so immense the game had to be developed by four developers, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Red Storm, Next Level Games for the Wii and Virtuos for the PSP.
It’s published by Ubisoft and is written by Richard Dansky, designed by Jean-Marc Geffroy and utilizes the YETI engine. The platforms supporting the game are PC, PS3, Xbox 360 with Kinect, Nintendo DS, PSP and Wii. It has all three playing options such as single and multi and co-op play which sure helps adds replay value.
So right off the bat that list of tech specs and artistic talent shows you’re getting the top of the line product. Like with any Tom Clancy product there is some espionage, combat action, stealth operations and lots of weapons and people to kill. Many a building and vehicle too will be destroyed in this game. It’s a third person shooter adapting to first person when things get tight. Scary enough the story takes place in Norway which has had some gruesome headlines of late but it also covers other ares of the world familiar to combat operatives.
Your team of “Ghosts” are Pepper, Kozak, 30k, and Bones. Each one a specialist and one of the coolest things about the game is that they all have something called adaptive or optical camouflage. This gimmick of the future where this game is set allows for the soldier to blend in or disappear for brief moments under the right conditions. Great for stealthy butt kicking. Your mission takes you through Europe, Asia, and the Middle East so you’ll certainly be traveling round a lot killing bad guys at every possible opportunity.
Now one of the extra coolest tools in the game is a weapons development option that has so many combinations it’s said there are 20 million possible combinations you can do to customize your weapons for your personal use. That’s one heck of a lot of customization options, damn!
There are many rumors to other high tech gizmos, that you’ll be busting out on the evil ultra nationalists who have taken over several countries and are doing evil ultra nationalist stuff that warrants your being called in to kill people and blow up stuff.
Your other tools are the ability to see through walls, detect enemies and types of weapons, control other technologies and show up to shoot dudes or sneak up and break necks. You have satellite support that pinpoints the locations of enemies and sends out drones. However, there are no magic spells or super suits that protect you from everything. You’re in just as much danger as anyone else in combat but you have that cool technology to shave down the odds so you’ll constantly have the advantage so that the winning skills depend on your ability to observe, plan, itemize, lead, administrative tactical solutions and lots of guts.
There’s a lot of hardware to organize here and the learning curve is something to take into account. You just don’t leap into the situation and expect things to go perfect. This calls for an AI that had to be engineered on levels that simulate real battle conditions as well as environmental challenges such as physics, weather, civilians. Its factors such as this that makes us think this could be a top contender for the best FPS game of the year.
It’s scheduled to be out in March 2012 and considering how many times it has been delayed, it’s no wonder, as it’s been loaded with more gimmicks and engineering than anyone had originally expected.
We cant wait for the new Tom Clancy Ghost Recon to be released in 2012, and will be reviewing it again at the time to see if it can make it into our Top 10 PC Games list.
