Black Label Suicides

     I picked this game up yesterday and played it for about 5 straight hours so I figured I would give you guys the heads up on the game.
     Now I have been playing Ghost Recon Games since the end of 2002 when the first Ghost Recon game came out on the Xbox, I mainly picked it up at the time just because it was one of the few games that was Live Enabled (It was pretty much Ghost Recon, Unreal Championship, and Mech Assault). I loved the way the game played though, very tactical, very stealthy, and very real. It was a great tactical first-person shooter with alot of weapons, great environments, good enemy AI, and awesome online play. Ghost Recon 2 however doesn't have alot of the things that made the original so great.
     Before you even start playing the game with first thing you will notice is the menus, gone is the day of the blue menu eye sore and in it's place is a maze of menus which do the same thing but take twice as long. For some odd reason there are 3 different Online Features menus (1. in the main menu 2. in the online menu 3. in the pause menu) with different options in each. The main menu Online Features menu has the option for "Teams" (clans) and "Downloadable Content", yet the Xbox Live Online Features menu doesn't have these options, all it has is the option to Appear Offline and check your Friends List. The final Online Features menu found in the pause menu only has the options to check your Friends List and Sign Out (no appear offline?). Also when you are on Xbox Live you have to flick through 7 (That's right SEVEN) different menus to find out everything you need to know about the game you are in, when in the original Ghost Recon's it told you everything you need to know in 1 simple menu, what was wrong with that menu?  
     The biggest difference in Ghost Recon 2 is the fact that you can now play in a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective which allows you to see where you are at in the environment instead of assuming you are under cover. The only real problem with this is the fact that when you are online you can look around corners by adjusting the camera and you won't be seen, in tern you can see when an enemy is coming down an alley, or around a corner without them seeing you (which was one of my biggest gripes with Socom II online). Luckily this feature can be turned off online, making people play only in first-person perspective which will probably only be applied in clan matches but that is the only place where it is needed.
     The graphics in Ghost Recon 2, for the most part, are actually very good and drudge up memories of America's Army, actually it's more like America's Army on a bad PC. While the environments are rich with detail and the textures and character models look great the game tends to bog down from 30 FPS (Frames Per Second) to 10 FPS in areas with trees and/or lot's of enemies, which tends to become a big pain in the butt when you are getting killed by 10 enemies in your spawn point and can't aim because the frame-rate sucks so bad. All in all the game looks great though, a little of time and effort making the framerate more consistant would have been greatly appreciated since when you play it now you feel as if you are playing a bad PlayStation 2 port on your Xbox.
     Gameplay has always been the biggest draw for the Ghost Recon series, it's been fast, tactical, bloody, and real, but for some reason this game feels more like a Men of Valor sequel then a Ghost Recon sequel. For starters the enemy artificial intelligence is terrible, even on hard mode enemies will consistantly be seen randomly walking into walls and acting stupid, they also can't aim to save thier life and can't see you when you are 2 feet in front of them. Oddly enough though in jungle stages you will die an obscene amount of times just because the enemies can see you straight through eight trees and three bushes and fire blindly until they hit you. Because of all this there is really no need to be strategic at all, and you can pretty much run and gun with a M249 through the whole game.
     Online the game plays fairly well, it feels more like an indoor Rainbow Six 3 then a sequel to Ghost Recon though. Biggest, biggest, biggest problem with online is that you do not choose your kit in the lobby, once you spawn in the game (that's right, there is no freeze time, you spawn first) you then have to pick your kit making you wide open to get shot if you don't pick your weapon kit fast as hell. Remember in the first Ghost Recon where it would run perfectly (no shot lag, no teleporting, no crazy stuff at all) until the host got one too many people in the room then people started teleporting and grenades would disappear and such? Well now, even with 2 people in the room there is bullet lag (everyone has it besides the host of course, sound familiar? *coughs*Rainbow Six 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstien *cough*) and the more people that join the worse it get's. You'll find yourself shooting outlines around people trying to compensate for it which becomes very frustrating.
     Also, the M29 (the OICW in the previous Ghost Recon) makes it's return and it's even more broken then ever. It now has a fiber optic camera in it which you can use to look around corners and over objects with it, without having any body parts exposed, which sorely get's abused online. Lucky for you it can be turned off, but if you get caught in a game where the host hasn't turned it off, good luck. Rocket Launcher, you spawn with one of these bad boys no matter what, sounds fun online doesn't it?

Final Verdict 6.2

+Graphics, nice lush jungles and great character models
+Lot's of levels and options
+Cool weapons
-Menus, too many
-Lag, lag, lag
-AI is dumb as dirt
-Doesn't feel like Ghost Recon
?Why doesn't Ubi Soft beta test games?

wow maybe i wont be getting this after all...any1 else confirm this terrible game performance?

I got my copy today and have played part of the first mission for the single player.  So far so good.  AI does look weak, but Red Storm has never had that great of AI. I haven't played online yet so not comments about that.

After playing Halo 2 for the last week it does feal like it's not finnished. 

<rant>
When will game companies learn that we don't need all of our games to come out before X-mas...  If they would have spent some more time on it I'm sure this would have been a great game for the spring.  But no we won't have any good games coming out this spring
</rant>

i love the new recon although it is far differant from the original series. so please dont put angels words into too much consideration being as we all know a halo fanboy but at the same time im a recon fanboy, i guess what im saying is dont let anyone turn you away without atleast giving it a rent everyone who i have seen over there loves it

p.s. as for angel's bad parts on this game: (a) lag - all games lag if not on an adequite server
                                                               (b) ai - granted the ai is retarded at times what game is not, besides what clan plays against the ai
                                                               (c)dosent have the same recon feal - no it does not its faster paced and has smoother turning

and in my opinion its good because its not the overhyped way rushed piece of shit that halo is

Best AI in a game I've ever seen is in Half-life 2 on the Hard difficulty...Enemies work as a team, throw grenades to herd you into an area, then proceed to lay down covering fire. Shotgun guys take point while machinegun-wielding ones take the flank, they'll run and hide behind corners if it's one-on-one, wait for back-up then swarm you...

But then again, this is on the PC where there's a HELLUVA lot more memory to handle said AI scripts, so...

How does the AI compare to something else on the system, say, like Rainbow, or other such games? Better or worse than the first Recon?

some are as dumb as an 8 year old on rainbow and some are smart "hiding behind a bush or tree till you get next to them" but on a whole they are still stupid console ai

LOL you have no right to bash Halo when it's 10 times better then almost all games in it's genre (Only game I think is as good/better is HL2). Ghost Recon 2 is laggy as hell Mr. Host-all-the-time (heretic) and is super rushed. And you only dealt with 3 of my points why the game sucks, what about all of my other points (menus, horrible fps, shitty lobby, etc.)?

You know, perhaps the other points are things that he doesn't disagree with. Maybe it's just that those points aren't enough to make the game suck to him.

Reviews are biased more often than not, and almost always unjustly compared to another game in the "same genre".

"FPS" nowadays is a generic term for any game where you experience armed combat in first person. After this, there are several different styles of shooter. Halo and Halo 2 are your standard run-n-gun Wolfenstein 3D inspired shooter. Ghost Recon (I haven't played the second one yet) and all of the Rainbow games are TACTICAL FPS's. This means that you have to play it differently than another style. Comparing GR2 to Halo 2 is unfair, especially when you have bought into the hype and like one of the two as much as you do. The same applies to HL2. You can't realistically compare that to Halo 2, because, A) they're on different platforms, B) you can do MUCH more on a PC than you can on a console, and C) HL2 is almost a combination of the two styles I listed above. There are times where you need to run through, guns blazing, and there are others where thought and strategy are required...ESPECIALLY on Hard...

The only other point I have to make, is that since reviews are the opinions of the reviewer, there's no reason to get upset when somebody else disagrees with it. So you don't like GR2. Heretic does. I don't like Halo 2. You do. There's no reason to attack people when they don't agree with you. We all know that Heretic hosts more than just about anyone else in BLS. We also know that Heretic has one of the better servers in BLS. AND we all know how often we'll sit there and say that it's the lag that's making us die, when really, we don't like to admit we're not better than someone else.

Anyway, how about some things that people like about it, because we've seen a post (or two) by Dave as to why he DOESN'T like it, how about a review from Heretic for the other side of the argument?

OK Gojira.

1. I wrote the whole review and mentioned things that are GOOD and BAD in it. Obviously you didn't read it all or else you would have noticed that.

2. There is definite shot lag in this game if YOU ARE NOT HOSTING. It's like Return to Castle Wolfenstein shot lag, you fire the gun and it takes 1/4 of a second (doen't seem like a long time but you will deffinitely notice it when you fire a gun at the floor and you have enough time to here the bullet fire and see the muzzle flash and then notice shortly after the bullet make a hole in the floor and a nice hardy ping noise, these should happen at the same time) for the bullet to come out and hit something. Sometimes you will fire at an enemy 20 yards away and the bullet will end up hitting the wall 2 feet behind them.

3. (Kind of off the subject) Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 are damn near the same game. Play Halo 2 on Heroic or Legendary and try and run-n-gun, you can't. It's the same as Half-Life 2 on hard, it takes alot of knowing your enemies and strategically taking them out.

I am not saying Ghost Recon 2 is bad by any means, I just wish they had held on to it for a little longer to fix all the things that are obvoiusly wrong with it.

i'll give a full review after i complete the single player campaign and list some of the things that are both interesting and frustrating in the game both offline and online.                                       

Angel, I did read it all, and you gave the game a 6...out of 10 I assume. This would imply that there were more things that made the game bad, than those that made it good...I mean, 6/10 is essentially, "Only get the game if you REALLY liked the sequel/concept/genre."

As for shot lag, there's always going to be a small amount of shot lag. Most of the time, if your connection isn't slow, it will hardly be noticeable. Shot lag is the same in EVERY shooter. You fire, then the bullet gets there after a longer-than-it's-supposed-to-take amount of time.

Finally, when I rented Halo 2 middle of last week, I DID run-n-gun on Heroic. Got pretty far before I decided it was pretty much the same thing as the original, and took it back. Granted, I found myself with low health a lot of the time, but that's also partially due to the fact, that I'm getting more and more time on K/M as opposed to the controller. The controller is starting to feel wierd...

I can agree with the statement regarding the holding of games for a little longer. They rush FAR too many games out, and in the process, nothing truly spectacular comes out. Half-life 2 is the first game in several years of gaming that I've found spectacular. If more companies would take their time, instead of rushing everything to the sales floor, A) there would be much tougher competition for game-of-the-year awards and the like, B) a larger percentage of the highly anticipated games will come out on dates that DON'T fall in the Christmas season (which would subsequently make them a lot more money, because we wouldn't have to choose one or two of the 10+ titles we want to get), and C) who knows, they may even come up with some bug that they wouldn't have caught, or add somethring REALLY cool to the game last minute.

well personally i was waiting for halo 2 to get, and so i did, and it was good.

then i saw a commercial for call of duty, so i got it, and it was good.

and then i saw ghost recon 2 came out, so i got it at the same time as call of duty, and it was holy fucking miracle worker christmas special with the family fucking awesome.

i totally wasted 50 bucks on call of duty and on halo 2.


just my opinion though.  but hey, who can respect someone else's opinion anyway?

Seriously, you're in the wrong place for that, buddy...lol

Anyway, I figure all of them are a waste when they're compared to Half-life 2...

Where do I order a Half Life 2 Muzzle?

Anyone?


;|

Oh c'mon, it's not like people weren't/aren't saying anything about Halo, it's just that since I have no way of vocally...vocalizing...these opinions, I do it here, as a sort of advertisement for the game itself...

At least I don't bash everything and compare it to HL2, I just say I like HL2 more than what I'm hearing about other games. If somebody gives me a review, I could be persuaded to get a game like GR2, so long as there are actually people who play like I would imagine this type of game being designed to be played...yes, you all get to hear me say it again...TACTICALLY!! I've yet to find one of these games that's played as such.

Rainbow, Counter-strike, GR and GR:IT, all are TACTICAL FPS's, but everybody runs and guns, and throws minimal teamwork and squad-based tactics into it...this leads to the $1,000,000 question...

Is GR2 played Tactically, or does it, like the others, succumb to the barbarism of running and gunning? That's my main interest. I'm not good at running and gunning, but I AM good (or so I'd like to believe) at being tactical and working as a TEAM...