Review: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 (PS2)

There's something decidedly sinister about Ghost Recon 2 on PlayStation 2, something contrary about the whole affair. From the first moments, the ropey opening FMV looks decidedly anachronistic, and it all seems intent on imparting a feeling of Fawlty Towers-like half-arsedness about itself. Still, a week or two's solid play later and you might start to put the many issues of this title down as annoying quirks in an otherwise solid experience... that is, if you can last that long.

It's a matter of presentation: the FMV was seemingly culled from Dick Cheney's private supply of military pornography, all evil North Korean generals and earnest US officials; you'll most likely skip them instantly. Surviving the opening titles, you next wind up unceremoniously dumped in a menu screen that looks like it came from a shoddy Amiga title - not reassuring. You'd think as a flagship sequel to a successful title that they'd put more effort in. It looks like it was thrown up a week before launch and five minutes before lunch. Thankfully they're easily navigable and fairly sensible, bar the complete absence of a Save option. Ah.

With your teeth firmly on edge, you would hope that slipping into a mission would alleviate some of your concerns. It doesn't. You're given the option to change your load-out, but it quickly becomes clear that your choices are the usable assault rifle or one many far less versatile and ultimately fatal alternatives. The developers seem intent on building up a frustrating illusion of freedom where none exists even before you begin your game. A small mercy to the rescue then: the redundant and annoying training mode, an hour's worth of teaching you how to move, shoot and walk, is entirely avoidable.

We really should applaud Ubisoft for their efforts; no game this side of 3D0 puts you so deeply in the mood for killing some random conscripts. After an eon of loading, you'll immediately relish the opportunity to try out your squad of three crack agents... or, rather, crack addicts; a threesome of especially belligerent Pete Dochertys couldn't be less useful. Limited to a few nigh-on-useless and heavily delimited commands, they can at least walk from A to B and shoot at what's in front of them, but hitting anything proves to be quite a challenge for the apparent saviours of the free world.

It gets worse. Their most consistent battle tactic is to run up face-to-face with a nearby NVA trooper and seemingly take him on in a dance-off. Not bad enough for you? Faced with a basic command like "Throw Grenades" your entire team will most likely toss them all into the large rock formation in front of their faces. They seem to be little more than an excuse for testing out the physics engine's woeful Action Man-inspired rag-doll physics. They're literally useless. It wouldn't all be so frustrating if the enemies you faced weren't uncannily accurate shots even through eighteen feet of undergrowth, making even your best sniper seem like a complete amateur.

And then there are the tanks. Finding no other way of testing your patience further without visiting your house and giving you a Nipple Cripple, the designers have included instant-death artillery units that can only be brought down by RPG fire - which only you carry. It would feel almost like a balanced fight, if you didn't find yourself having to aim with no zoom scope, through a reticule designed to block as much of your target from your sight as possible, while being bombarded every other second by shells.

With no mid-mission save or even checkpoint to prevent you slogging back to the start, a ten-minute mission can regularly take up to two hours of attempts to clear. This is a game that doesn't just have unfair balance issues; it feels downright malicious towards its players. The suicide rates at Ubisoft's QA department must have been tremendous if this is the finished product.

The only solution is to memorise the mission, every second. From the spawning enemies to the exact point when the next tank will appear, you need to simply learn it all. It makes an utter mockery of a decade's progress in the shooter genre. The only consolation is that, when you do work out exactly what you're meant to do and when, you can at least expect to have a satisfying time blasting through reams of photocopied guardsmen. The weapons have just enough feedback and just the right kind of accuracy to allow you to feel like you're empowered by them and not just point-n-clicking through waves of grunts.

Yes, yes, this is a tedious, annoying mess of a missed opportunity. But for all its failings there's still enough here to make you want to clear it... just. The graphics, while wooden and dull even by mil-sim standards, are at least consistent, and an impressive draw distance allows for those flights of long-distance sniper fancy when they take you. The audio, if utterly useless for clocking the location of incoming shots, at least provides enough feedback to let you know that you have been spotted, provided it isn't one of your team having some kind of seizure and firing at thin air.

For these reasons alone the online multiplayer mode - freed from the restraints of rubbish AI and predictable missions - should provide a bit of consolation. Marred by lag, under-populated servers and an uninspiring range of modes, it only provides a mild distraction, and it's doubtful you'll hang around long with the likes of Battlefield 2 to play. A missed opportunity then, like the rest of the title.

Ghost Recon 2's heart may be in the right place (as right as it can be in a game about the US secretly invading North Korea "for its own good"), but its head remains firmly filled with fluff. With Advanced Warfighter doing a damned sight better job of advertising the GR series' unique take on tactical combat, and with a superior Xbox edition that firmly distances itself from this most black of sheep, the only thing you can really claim is that it isn't quite as bad as it often tries to be.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Colin Whiteside