Preview: First Look11th October 2004On Saturday, Oct 9th Ubisoft treated its Ghost Recon fans to a special hands on event to see, feel and hear what Red Storm Entertainment has done with Ghost Recon 2 and why, despite the many doubts and criticisms, Ghost Recon 2 will be a top contender for game of the year. The preview took place at San Francisco's Courtyard Marriot, which was also the hotel housing the competitors taking part in the World Cyber Games that ran from Oct 6th-10th at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco. Attending the event were BulletTooth (a.k.a. Cassey), Frag Doll Valkyrie and Adam Novichoas (hope that is spelled correctly as his hand writing is hard to read) who is the Brand Manager for Ghost Recon 2 - sorry for anyone who's names I specifically missed I didn't get a chance to meet all of you great people. The event ran from 11am-5pm but as I was also covering the WCG I had limited time to indulge my personal obsession with this game. UbiSoft chose not to make GR2 available at their main booth at WCG and the only reason I can see for this is that the games featured there by UbiSoft at WGC were PC games. Perhaps this was for the best as it gave the fans a chance to really get into the game and see what it had to offer with less competition. Personally, I was only able to take part in a couple rounds of Hamburger Hill, though I did get to see quite a bit of other play modes including some co-op, single player missions and the Lone Wolf mode. Despite my brief hands-on time, the day answered some questions that had been burning in my mind and some that I have seen hotly debated on many of the forums. Now, on to the game play itself. I chose the FP perspective, as did most others, though I saw a lot of people at least trying out the over-the-shoulder view. Not having played in both perspectives I cannot truly compare, but I felt that the FP mode seemed to provide for a less cluttered screen and given the high level of the graphics and effectiveness of the camouflage it is going to be critical to have as much viewable area as possible in order to win in this game. Graphically the game is spectacular and has the best graphics I have seen since Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow on the Xbox. Of course they say Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory will up the standard again and push the Xbox's graphics even further, but for now I would be hard pressed to think of any game on the market or soon to be released (I will let you imagine what game/games I might be referring to here) that will match GR2's level of environmental detail and beauty. Here are answers to some recent forum controversies regarding graphics I have been following: 1) The recent batch of screen shots recently released are indeed from the Xbox version -contrary to some scepticism- but it was admitted they were captured from a High Definition Set to preserve the detail in the still shots. When actually playing this detail will prove insignificant and the set ups provided for play at this event were normal NTSC flat screen television sets. Personally, I think that only the most avid AV fanatic and discerning enthusiast will be able to see any difference. 2) I've seen some over whether the grass will actually hide your opponent, or yourself when viewed from a distance. Well, it does and it does it very well. At some points the grass is so heavy that if you are hiding in it and your opponent is crawling towards you through it, you may both get within a foot or less before either of you realizes the other one is there. Of course the digital 5.1 surround audio will most likely change that aspect some, but in a room with 4 systems running simultaneously the full level of how the sound will affect the game play was difficult to judge. As for the controls and game play, I am an Xbox gamer and have very little experience with game play on a PC so I cannot make a comparison on control & accuracy between the two, but I haveye to play a console FPS that had the level of control, precision and reaction speed as GR2. I do play a fair bit of the original Ghost Recon, though in comparison I am still a relative newbie, it was quite an adjustment to have to barely touch the stick to move the reticule and the speed with which I could drop prone when I came under fire was almost instantaneous. The controls are not identical to the original, and I often found myself fumbling with them. This is not to say there is anything wrong with the new control scheme, just that I did not have the time to learn it and take full advantage of the features available, especially the new "combat roll". During my two matches I spent more time running about seeing how the game controlled rather than truly working on the Hamburger Hill Objective. The reticule has been redesigned and clutters the screen less with only a 3/4 gray circle and a red laser style dot in the center. Also, I do not believe you can remain zoomed in and move at the same time though my memory is failing me slightly here. Another major thing to note is you no longer receive a confirmation of a kill in either multi or single player. This will makes the game much tougher and realistic and you had best hope that your enemy is truly dead before moving on. The game is still in beta and if it plays this well now, I can't imagine how the final will be. |
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