Since this makes them visible through walls, it can be unclear if you actually have a shot on them or not. Your normal HUD also erratically picks out enemies and paints them with a distracting coloured overlay – orange at first, then red when alerted. Different visor modes and gunsight attachments enable low-light vision, heartbeat sensors and a short-range X-ray. They flank and pressure you, but they often skip gaily into your gunfire too, or take up useless cover-positions where their comrades have been freshly felled.Īll the same, gunplay offers an ample selection of tools and tricks. But despite their good memories, these AI goons still aren't high-achievers in the videogame badguy league tables. Everyone now knows where you are, and they aren't the convenient amnesiacs of other stealth games: when the fight is on, they don't let up. Once battle starts, your optical camouflage peels away, as though suddenly embarrassed. Then there are the 'diamond formation' set-pieces, where the game temporarily transforms into a rail-shooter. Turret sections see you climb aboard a vehicle and rattle off a gazillion rounds into a mindless horde of foreigners. There are boss battles in which you fend off the attentions of enemy choppers or tanks, or simply hold out for rescue against oncoming waves. Though the variation of pace is mostly welcome and its climactic action spectacles offer well-intentioned catharsis, there's something a tad disappointing in the way the stealth game shatters, and reforms as an altogether more anodyne stop-and-pop shooter. While many missions fail you instantly for indiscretion, most eventually let you 'go loud', and barrel your way to a sky-high body count. Since a spotted body triggers alarm, it seems odd that something so critical is handled so carelessly. Unfortunately, being spotted can often be blamed on the game's many acts of self-sabotage that undermine the consistency of its stealth system: enemies visibly pop into existence when a script triggers reinforcements bodies (which you are unable to drag away) sometimes vanish into thin air and sometimes don't. Scurrying after your quarry, you suddenly spot sentries who must be toppled from their lookouts, and improvise rapidly, working out how to silence a guard post moments after the warlord wanders through. Though much more reliant on scripting than most missions, the tension between stealth and pursuit is deftly staged. Another high-point sees you shadow a local warlord as he saunters through a refugee camp. It's probably my favourite mission in the game, too, because the stakes are higher and stealth your only redoubt. In fact, a late level in which you infiltrate a prison without the assistance of your team feels almost like an off-cut from one Sam Fisher's adventures, albeit lacking his lethal acrobatics. This patient elimination of threats creates an entrancing methodical vibe – oddly more reminiscent of the earlier Splinter Cells than Ghost Recon. If anything, coordinating the flighty attention spans of game journalists proved a lot harder than ordering AI around, but when a plan comes together it makes for unsurpassed triumph. There's no guarantee your team will become more effective, however. On a couple of occasions they got it dead wrong, too: urgently insisting on an enemy presence when there was none, and, another time, happily declaring the all-clear while I remained under heavy fire.įortunately, the campaign is almost entirely enabled for four-player co-op, so you can replace your CG companions with fleshier friends, should the game's many connection issues permit. That said, it's never clear if they're calling threats you've already marked, nor is “on the left” a useful designation when you have no idea of your squadmate's orientation. Your teammates are quick to call and describe threats, and do so with some detail – describing enemies as beside shipping containers or on walkways. There's a delightful action element, too: when a four-man sync shot goes down, time slows, enabling you to plug a few more before the alarm goes up. Such missions become a puzzle, unpicked by establishing who can see who, and by killing the lonely and unobserved first. In some missions, I elected to stay plugged into the drone the whole way, ordering the other Ghosts to whittle down the foe three silent takedowns at a time. It's thrillingly empowering, all the more so using the aerial drone, which lets you select enemies from on high. Then either at your command, or in synch with your first shot, the team drops their targets. When a buddy's crosshair is locked on someone's skull, their sightline is marked for you too, indicating which enemies are taken. Not only does this track their positions on your HUD, but your fellow operatives reposition to ensure they have a bead. Although you control just one Ghost, you can mark up to four targets at a time.
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