Feature: Ten reasons why Ghost Recon is still the greatest tactical shooter ever! by Chuck "Magnum" Ankenbauer
http://simhq.com/_land3/land_156a.html

Great article. I would add to #10: Not only is the actual Multiplayer EXPERIENCE great, but the Multiplayer interface is SIMPLE, INTUITIVE and pretty much Bulletproof compared to some modern games where it takes screen after screen to actually get into a multiplayer game with numerous glitches along the way.

Also, because it was made when broadband adoption was still relatively rare, it worked fine on dial up and that means when you play it today you need to have a pretty lousy connect before it will mess you up.
I played GR with pings of over 400ms without trouble!



The Jedi Master

GR always was and remains awesome, the only fly in the ointment is the terrible friendly AI in SP. You can get round the AI issues by switching into your squads and leading them yourself though which handilly makes for a great gameplay experience.

GRAW's a decent game but not being able to switch into and control each team member in SP was a real let down, it feels like you're leading 3 kids from the special school round the levels with you...

You can now get GR Island Thunder missions for ARMA2. They are brilliant and just go to show how good the original GR formula is.

The first GR game I played was a demo for my original xbox - there was only one map. I must have spent days creeping through the forest areas, sneaking up on the enemy camp and trying to infiltrate the hideout in the caves at the top of the mountain without getting shot!

And because it's not hardware intensive I can load it on my work laptop and still play that map without any performance issues.

Funny, I was just talking about this with my housemate the other day. No game has equalled it, in my opinion. It was the perfect evolution of the R6/RS gameplay system, and the sphere of control was just right for the player without being too overwhelming. The maps are diverse and highly atmospheric, and the attention to detail in sound design remains excellent.

And don't forget the awesome mods for this Hall of Fame classic tactical shooter. I have over a hundred! GR is like the 1927 Yankees. Nothing else comes close. I hate these run 'n gun, Hollywood scripted so called "action" shooters like the CODs and BFs and MOHs, because they are so unrealistic by comparison to Ghost Recon Classic. We live in such a dumbed-down world.

Now the question is, why aren't we SimHQ people playing MP together?

We actually talked about putting up a SimHQ server for this article... but it would only be used for a month or so then die out... and you said the problem yourself... too many mods... un-modded players would get bored, then players would start recommending their favorite mods... etc etc... GR is so damn great, and so well modded... it's hard to run a longterm, good server.

imo

Back when I used to do a lot of MP Raven Shield, it was simple: the only mods we used were map packs. Everyone grabbed those 2 or 3 and mods weren't an issue. Just the stock game was fine as long as you had enough maps to rotate.

I agree that GR's plethora of mods got ridiculous. My attempt to return to playing it a couple of years ago quickly died out due to "OM"-Over modding. Basically we'd play 2 maps with a mod and then someone would want to play some OTHER mod next, and after like 2 maps they'd want to try ANOTHER one... Getting a group of people to all have the same mods in the same release version was very time consuming, and no doubt you'd get all the ones mentioned one night setup and the next meet people would start talking about yet OTHER mods.
It was ridiculous and I gave it up because, frankly, aside from wanting some extra maps I was happy with stock GR. A single WWII or Vietnam mod or perhaps one where you played as the other side would've been ok, but it was just ludicrous.



The Jedi Master

I am very pleased to read this Magnum. I appreciated the day I received my copy of GR:Original, it was Christmas, the game was just released a little before and I had been playing the DEMO religiously...Hell, I played that game so much I dreamed about the damn thing...It was by far one of the most appealing games to me from then...to now...I was fortunate enough to play in league - and fair pretty damn well at it...with a good group of guys who played the game...

Ever since GR and its mods, I had very high expectations for games. And as Magnum stated "Dev's" ...You should pick this game up and get a 'reality' check as to what a good game is.

Magnum, you're describing my exact problem with rFactor. I can't keep up with all those mods, and then updates to the mods, so I gave up trying to join the SimHQ races. However, I think GR on SimHQ would not have the same problem. People are continously making mods for rFactor. It never stops. When was the last time someone made a real good mod for GR Classic? Heroes Unleashed is the biggest and best and, I think, most recent. Older good ones are HX5 Red Sun, and FROSTBITE. All are easily available on GhostRecon.Net. It would be easy for you guys running SimHQ to pick the mods and say, "in addition to the two expansion packs, Island Thunder and Desert Siege, the following mods will be required if you want to play online." And that's it. One week you play HX5 Red Sun, the next week Heroes Unleashed, the next week FROSTBITE. Isn't that what you do with rFactor or GTR2 racing? Piece of cake with GR because you'll only be rotating maybe three major mods instead of picking from hundreds of possibilities like rFactor. I think you'll get more takers because of the ease of acquiring the GR franchise now via Steam. GR has a bunch of new players now. What do you think?

Great article Magnum and thank you for the shoutout to GhostRecon.net

I could easily expand that list to 20 but you hit the nail on the head with that top 10.

The above posters are right about the mods too, you wouldn't believe the amount of mod downloads I'm serving over there everyday. And the quality and size of the mods that are still coming out is honestly remarkable. And they work with the Steam version too. I think the sale on Steam has prompted a few new fans late to the series,as I have been getting e-mails from new players thanking us for keeping all the old articles, such as walkthroughs, online.

It's like the gaming worls best kept secret, Ghost Recon is STILL the best. I say it is a secret because developers and publishers don't seem to pick up on the hungry market for a suitable successor, that has ALL of your Top Ten, plus some new eye candy.

LONG LIVE GHOST RECON!

Completely agree, GR is a great game. I used to play it online a lot with guys from Frugs, we called ourself Team =FW=. We still talk of playing it again every now and then, it was such a blast! One of the very best squad-level co-op games out there!

thx Rocky, Andre, and everyone else. Still have it installed and play it... the best.

BTW, the boys at GhostRecon.net has picked up the article and have their members giving their items to add to the list, a good post... and if you still never have gotten it or played it... read on.

http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=56793&pid=572580&st=0&

Hmm didn't everything started out first with "Spec Ops", regarding tactical games?
My personal highlight was Rainbow Six... the search for the perfect team-synchronized plan, using lots of weapons, uniforms... one missed shot (for example on metal = loud.... leads to hostage beeing executed) special utilities/tools etc.....

Ghost Recon had more freedom, you could create plans while on action. You couldn't change too much on equipment, uniforms etc.. BUT... it's one of these games, where every step could be fatal if you didn't care... all that in a big environment... the enemy could be everywhere waiting for you. Big maps, freedom and danger and "plan while on action"... that was what made Ghost Recon great (Rainbow Six too, both are unique!! And today?

Ya toss some flashbangs n'grenades toward 10s enemies while running shooting... speedy cover-shooting and killing all of them with 1000 ammo clips..... like in crazy Rainbow Vegas. 3 rambos without masks, with sporty helments... ultra cyber equipped uniforms against... a full city of terrorists (a black guy, a chinese guy, a white guy to prevent racial discussion and whining... but hey, they even didn't forgot about a woman! But they forgot a love story! Or like in the movie "Stealth" (a white guy, a black guy and ofcourse, not "only" a woman, it has to be a model-like woman which "ofcourse" perfectly fits into a pilot-role...................)

These times are really extremly dissapointing.... I could write some pages here about everything... movies (Terminator... with SkyNet suddenly beeing some ultra cyber speechable computer..... terminator bikes coming out of a transformers shoes called "harvester"... with transformer sounds.... terminator snakes in rivers...) give me a break. There is too much capitalism-like raping going on. Some people life here and now... and too much of them think, their sense is to change what "A" made an "A" for years/decades... into a "B"... to give it a personal note the world won't forget, but look at all of this!

Sorry for beeing a bit of topic! Great memories makes someone smile and cry at the same time.

Great article, thanks a lot , ive played and modded GR for years, btw widescreenfixer has added widescreen and multi monitor support for the game (v 1.4), with perfect HOR+ screen change (GR originally is VERT-), if youre interested in running this great game i.e. on eyefinity/surround (its truely a blast !, HUD wont stretch nor scope and binoc masks) please check these threads at ghostrecon.net.

http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=54658
http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=54640

Actually, reading this and some of those items on Ghost Recon.net has made me appreciate the sheer attention to detail that went into GR. As a bonus, I linked my housemate to this yesterday, and he just bought the Steam pack

Great review, Chuck.

The original GR series is my all-time favorite tactical shooter. I remember playing this with the assistance of a game dev at E3 2001 and thinking "this is going to be an awesome game!". Had some memorable online sessions with my friends back in the day, and as mentioned even with dialup (back then) the quality of MP was very good. Thanks for giving the game its due on GR's 10th anniversary.

it's sad the moron developers today have yet to surpass many aspects of ghost recon.

i'm going to blame the console retards for dumbing down the overall standards in video gaming. seriously, when did simulators and tactics become niche? i remember when they were the most popular games.

sigh.

more call of duty for the #%&*$# retards. i want to choke the developers to death.

Great article. Thanks.

Hmm, I still have an original copy of all 3 in my grab bag, I've reinstalled it several times. Might just have one more go round.