Now here’s something you don’t want to do. Take one of the most popular tactical first person shooter series ever made and turn it into, for all appearances, a Third Person Shooter! When the first screenshots revealing this new feature were revealed reactions were mixed at best. In this reviewers opinion however, the Ghost Recon series has been long overdue for a serious make over and Ghost Recon 2 (from now on GR2) aims to do that and more.

You may have noticed that I have successfully avoided reviewing a Ghost Recon game until now. A couple of issues such as the planning and not being able to view your gun just didn’t appeal to me. Also the previous games never held my interest as I would always lose focus and either get killed or lose my team too easily. I tried to get into Island Thunder with a bunch of online matches but getting taken out time and time again and never seeing it coming got pretty frustrating and Rainbow Six has been my preferred choice of Clancy shooters.

The story in GR2, in typically Tom Clancy fashion, contains many relevant references to today’s current political situations. A North Korean General refuses to accept his country requesting foreign aid due to their crippling economy. The fact that their economy is in tatters due to military spending is a moment of irony obviously lost on him as he launches a coup and General Jung becomes the leader of North Korea. Fearing what he may do with the country’s nuclear weapons (and probably not wanting to see more North Korean government owned ships filled with Heroin floating around the Australian coast) the Ghost Recon team is called in to, well, save the world!

GR2 is a much needed shot in the arm for the franchise. The graphics were pretty average even when Island Thunder came out but that was never a true sequel. Ubisoft and Red Storm have enhanced the graphics but done their utmost to keep the pure ‘Ghost Recon experience’ intact as much as possible since the true fans of the series tend to be your more hardcore breed of gamers. The gameplay is split between a single player mode and some excellent multiplayer modes with the highlight for me being a great Xbox Live co-operative mode. Single player consists of 15 Campaign missions, Firefight, Recon, Mission, Lone Wolf, and Defend. Lone Wolf is an awesome new mode that places you in the mission on your own but hands you the brand new XM29 ‘Future Warrior’ system, easily one of the highlights of the new game.

Eventually available in the Campaign mode, the XM29 consists of a rifle that can fire standard rounds of ammunition but also grenades that can fire normally, or ‘air burst’ over enemies. The best feature of the XM29 however has to be the gun camera as this allows you to aim around corners without exposing yourself to enemy fire. Couple this with the ability to fire the new air burst grenades and you have some serious fire power at your finger tips. The other major new addition to the series is the ‘third person' perspective.

From this new perspective the environments and your interaction in them take on a whole new level of immersion. Purist GR fans can switch to the traditional first person view at any time in the games options but you will be missing out on the great new animations that GR2 has. Pressing the Y button brings up a menu that lets you issues commands to the rest of your squad. These include hold position, flank left, flank right and give cover fire. As you issue the commands your character does the appropriate hand signals adding an extra layer of coolness to the fantastic new environment graphics. GR2 also supports voice recognition through your Xbox Live headset and even more commands such as attack vehicle, medic, escort, demo target, regroup and a whole lot more are available. You can even use voice for your own commands such as reload, single shot, burst, full auto and a lot more as well as being able to call up the map, simply by saying ‘Map’. It’s great to see Ubisoft take the voice recognition that we first saw in Rainbow Six even further as well as streamline the squad command system that was previously very clunky and confusing.

As mentioned GR2 features brand new environment graphics thanks to a totally overhauled and rebuilt graphics engine. Cool new effects such as bloom lighting, great looking water, fog, smoke, reflections and fantastic art make the levels all look incredible. Gone are the murky browns and barren levels and in their place are country sides with swaying grass, flowers, detailed buildings, rubble and plenty of vehicles. The levels in GR2 are highly detailed and in particular, the Village level with the buildings reflecting in puddles and fog is a real highlight and should prove popular online simply due to its maze like layout and great graphics. It was a big surprise to experience all the new graphics and effects but also notice how the original look of Ghost Recon hasn’t been compromised in any way, simply enhanced and updated in a natural progression from past GR games.

A few issues I will mention are that, and GR2 isn’t alone here, how can the A.I in games always spot you so much further away than you can spot them? When you go prone in grass the enemy still manages to know where you are even though your view of them may be blocked by grass or other parts of the scenery. The hit animations are a let down as well. Enemy soldiers go down in one hit if you score a headshot but they drop very slowly and if you shoot their body they don’t seem to register the hit as you would expect and then continue shooting. The action comes pretty full on in GR2 and the hit animations could have certainly done with more tweaking as quite often you will shoot someone and there is that moments hesitation while you wait to see if you have actually killed them or not. GR2 also features no blood so this makes it even trickier to see if your shots have landed or not and even though there was no blood in the previous games I think GR fans could handle a little more realism via ‘pain skins’ for the enemies or a bit of blood.

As with previous GR games GR2 can be very hard but now you are able to save your progress anywhere you like. This is an absolute godsend and due to the length of a lot of the missions an absolute necessity. The A.I has been tweaked for GR2 but you can’t help but wonder at how inaccurate your squad mates are most of the time and as the game only features ‘normal’ and ‘hard’ difficulty levels, the lack of an ‘easy’ mode may put people off as the toughness is typical of the Ghost Recon series.

With the all new graphics engine it’s great to see, or hear rather, that the audio in GR2 does an excellent job as well. The voice acting is great and the game also features loads of ambient sounds that really make the levels feel alive. Enemy soldiers cry out when injured and you will hear them barking orders as well. Another mention must be made of the ambient sounds as these, even more than the graphics in a lot of instances, really drag you into the game. From the minute you start the first of the games 15 levels the audio is absolutely first rate and filled with loads of battlefield and other sound effects that really make the levels come alive. Gamers with a kick arse surround sound setup can of course add GR2 to their list of show-off titles as well, as the game makes full use of 5.1 digital sound.

Xbox Live owners should have plenty of fun with GR2 as it features a full compliment of multiplayer modes and the co-operative mode allows you to play through almost the complete single player campaign with friends. Gamers without broadband will also be happy to know that co-op mode is also playable through split screen for up to 4 players and via system link which will make GR2 very popular at Lan parties. There have been some issues I’ve experienced and had mentioned to me about the online play, most noticeably a bug with the friends list. I also seem to be experiencing a little bit more lag with GR2 than I normally do yet I haven’t had any of the disc errors that some people are reporting. Ubisoft are working on a patch to hopefully correct all this so stay tuned for an update on these issues yet even with these surprising problems GR2 offers unique and enthralling action.

If there’s one issue that fans of the previous games should look out for is that while this is the direction the series needed to take to keep it fresh, the game is a lot more linear now which may put long term fans off. There are a number of areas where fans may argue that GR2 offers less of a ‘battlefield simulation’ experience than in past games but the better graphics and audio immerse you further than ever before. But, saying that, enhanced graphics and sound are the natural progression that all series take and it would have been nice to perhaps have two squad systems in the options, the traditional method from past games and the new one. Seeing as Red Storm provided the first person mode to keep existing GR fans happy, it would have been nice to see them provide the option for the more advanced squad controls that fans of the series are used to.