Games Fusion takes you on a tour of Africa in UBI's forthcoming tactical shooter add-on for Ghost Recon, titled "Ghost Recon: Desert Siege" which is Red Storm Entertainment's latest addition from their franchise of tactical shooter games for the PC.
About UBI Software
UBI Soft Entertainment in an international producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products for both PC and Console systems. The company has generated a turnover of FF 1.2 billion for the 1999/2000 fiscal year, up 40.7% from the previous year, and enjoyed a net consolidated income of FF 71.8 million, up 75.2% over 98/99.
Ubi Soft Entertainment and Red Storm Entertainment continue to develop titles under the Tom Clancy trade mark, which you will find associated with the award winning series of Rainbow Six games. The company will continue to develop games under the Rainbow Six name with the recently announced Rainbow Six: Raven Shield title.
Introduction to the Game
With all Tom Clancy games the imagination of the story line always amazes me. It's inevitable that there is always going to be some war going on somewhere in the world and the story line seems to capture that quite well.
As the story tells it, you and your team of elite Special Forces are sent in once again, this time into the war-torn lands of North Africa where conflict has erupted between Ethiopia and Eritrea. You and your team are instructed to undertake eight new military operations in the effort to supply relief to UN forces, key aid and supply ports. It's up to you to restore order in the region. Why we can't all just get along I will never know!
Game Features
So what have UBI done to improve upon what is already a great game? Like most of the Tom Clancy add-on packs you can expect to see many new additions and improved features, whilst the trademark realism and tension of the original game is still maintained. Desert Siege will present you with new weapons, vehicles and enemies. Additional sounds and improved visual effects will also add to the immersive atmosphere of the game.
The eight new single player missions take place across the African desert where you are confronted with a new breed of enemy forces. In the two nighttime and six daytime missions, you undertake objectives such as neutralizing hostile threats across a beech, retaking control of a refinery, and taking out a heavily secure road block. Obviously we don't want to give too much away about the missions as that would spoil it for you when you play the game.
Desert Siege includes nine new weapons for multiplayer, including the Bizon submachine gun, the M98 sniper rifle, and the M-60 machine gun which you can use in addition to the original Ghost Recon arsenal to compete with against your friends and opponents. In the single player game you will have a new Specialist character to unlock who will help to provide some pretty heavy artillery support for your team. It is unclear why it was UBI's decision to only include a limited amount of the new weapons in the single player game. We were a little disappointed that we were mostly confined to the original Ghost Recon arsenal for single player and felt that many gamers would also find this a bit of let down.
This pack also includes many other multiplayer features with New Multiplayer Modes: Team-based Siege and Domination modes which allow teams to attack or defend territory. These new modes are a must have for any online gamer, and provide a new breed of excitement to the multiplayer side of the game. Many might think that these modes will induce camping and sniping games. Some may not find this a problem while the more impatient gamer may. UBI has ensured that these modes of play will not overly affect the way in which people play the game. They have done this by maintaining the architecture of the maps, allowing players to move in and out of camouflaged areas to get closer to the enemy, therefore avoiding such things as sniper fire and preventing the much hated camping tactics that we see in many of today's online games. Both these modes are compatible with the original Ghost Recon game which provides even more hours of play on the original maps.
The Desert Siege add-on also includes a very nifty editing program which is designed for developers to use and create their own single and multiplayer missions as well as modify the current missions. This is the same tool that was used by the Red Storm development team to create the missions you see in the game. A similar program was included in UBI's last add-on pack for Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear. This is a much more advanced program than that of the previous version. Theoretically you can create as many different mission scenarios or maps as you want, giving you an undefined amount of extra play. All with a little work, of course! UBI's decision to include this program seems like a pretty good idea, it certainly makes it easier for developers to make modifications and provide them to the community for free. But with all these modifications freely available will people really want to go out and buy any more add-on packs just because they are made by Red Storm? Well most probably, yes.
Taking a closer look into the Game
I would have liked to start off by telling you how great the intro was but unfortunately we got a build where it wasn't included. I'm sure its real nice though = ).
Like with all Tom Clancy games you get a nice little interface which includes briefing and team selection. It is not overly important to listen to the briefings but they can help! The implementation of such a briefing system has really added to the environment of the game, the system continues to develop the story line further which creates a real sense of involvement for the player. Because Ghost Recon's planning phase takes place in game there isn't much else to the main interface, everything else you will find happens in the game which creates less time out of it and more time in� Great!
The AI in Desert Siege has somewhat been improved to that of the original game. One of the main problems which gamers encountered was to do with the random response fire from the enemy forces. To try and explain this a little more easily, once you shoot in the direction of the enemy they are supposed to hear the gun fire and shoot back in the direction of which the sound originated from. Unfortunately the accuracy of the return fire was a little too accurate for comfort, even when covered behind bushes or other level objects. Thankfully Red Storm have resolved the problem in Desert Siege and return fire is now no longer as accurate as it was before, players can now use camouflage to their advantage creating a more realistic sense of open land warfare.
We also noticed a couple other improvements to the A.I., the enemy no longer manages to get direct hits on you and your team when using grenades from a distance, they also use grenades more often to try and flush you out of awkward areas. In some of the missions enemy's sometimes come up behind you in an effort to ambush you and your team but we don't think that this is really a result of the improved A.I. more of a case of better map design. In addition to that you will find enemy's use similar tactics to you and your team, crawling under objects and through marsh land to get closer to you without being seen. The movement and integration of moving vehicles in missions has also improved some what.
Desert Siege introduces a couple new vehicles into the game which you will see in some of the eight new missions. You will sometimes see enemy forces ride around on jeep like cars attempting drive by shootings, I didn't actually get the pleasure of being run over as I was too busy trying to shoot out the tires! You can also disable the cars by shooting the driver and of course a rocket launcher can often come in handy too! The new vehicles really do add to the environment of the game and introduces a new breed of excitement� We liked them a lot!
A couple of other new features and improvements we would like to point out are the new sounds and effects. Desert Siege includes a whole new set of radio sounds so you are not stuck with the old ones; again it helps to add a new chapter to the game, but for some reason all the voices sound the same to me. Maybe it's just me being British and thinking all Americans sound the same, I don't know ; ). Having said that it would be nice to get a few other nationalities into the game like in the Rainbow Six titles, even then British and Swedish elite special forces still sounded American, weird that! The visual effects have also got a seeing to and you will now find things such as better vehicle explosions and water effects. To tell you the truth we couldn't really find any other major improvements on the visual side of things� then again what more can you add to an already great looking game?
Finally we would like to talk about the performance side of things, many players experienced major performance and incompatibility issues with the original Ghost Recon game. A recent patch was released which appeared to resolve some of these issues although performance problems was still a bit of an issue for some. Desert Siege seems to cope with these problems quite well and most will find an overall increase in game performance over the original game. We noticed that distant models and objects are now not as detailed, which considerably increases the games performance without reducing the image quality too much. Having said that the games open air engine still needs a pretty decent PC, we tested the game on a P4 1.8 Gig with 256MB RAM and the game ran pretty smoothly, if you want to run on full quality with 32Bit color enabled your going to need a pretty fast Video Card and a Geforce 3 or 4 will probably be what you will be needing!
Possible room for Improvement
So from what we have seen what improvements do we feel could have been implemented into the game? We would of liked to of seen some of more of the new weapons included in the single player game, we also felt that the lack of new specialists also let the add-on down a bit. Most of the level objects in the game are static and you can't manipulate, move or damage many of the objects. To try and bring a little more understanding to our readers on this subject, we would have liked the ability to damage such objects as lights to use against our advantage during night missions. Having other objects which are capable of being damaged and/or blown up would also have added to the atmosphere and realism of the game. Having said that I can't remember a time where I have seen any of these features included into a Tom Clancy branded game, for what ever reasons Red Storm had for not including such features in their tactical games I am uncertain about but we hope they will include them in future titles.
Overall Impressions
Desert Siege is a great add-on for an otherwise great game which improves upon and adds to the original. Some may see this pack as simply being a mission pack and not appreciate the full features of what it contains; this may be true for those people who are not able to enjoy the multiplayer additions of the game. The Desert Siege add-on pack will add a fresh new environment and new class of enemies to this award winning tactical game. It's a must have add-on for any fan of the genre which completes the original Ghost Recon title.
FINAL SCORE: 85%
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