Post by TheBlackStones on May 19, 2011 22:51:14 GMT -5
Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars Review (3DS)
Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is a Strategy RPG from Ubisoft. It's one of the launch titles of the 3DS and was one of the reasons I decided to get a 3DS at launch (well, I probably would have got one regardless. I like to get in on the ground floor of things). I had no expectations for this game but heard it was designed by Julian Gollop of X-com fame which are apparently great games. But I've never played them. So how did Ghost Recon fare for me? Read on to find out!
The Story/Plot
HOO-RAH. WE'RE AMERICANS IN A FOREIGN LAND AND WE WIN BECAUSE WE KICK ASS! That's pretty much all you need to know. But for those who need something substantial for some reason I'll go more in depth. You control Ghost Squadron who are composed of 6 members - Duke the leader, Banshee the stealth attacker, Haze the Sniper, Mint the techie, Richter the gunner, and Saffron the medic. You don't need to worry though because the characters have pretty much 0 depth and anything they try to do falls short. The plot is that a political guy wants Russia to go back to how it used to be in the old days and decides to start an elaborate plot to get him into power. Ghost Squad gets caught up in all it.
After that, the game entirely consists of you killing people and the bad guys running away every time until they finally don't. Other small things happen here and there but the plot points are so entirely telegraphed that nothing about it is shocking or engaging. If you've played any military based game before, you pretty much know what you're going into here. It's nothing original or exciting and you're better off just ignoring it all together.
The Music
Forgettable. Entirely forgettable. Nothing about the music jumps out at all and even when there's a huge sense of tension and urgency, the music will never convey it. It's the complete polar opposite to a game like Tactics Ogre where the music always seemed to fit the mood. There's no voice acting and even in the little cut-scenes they have there's barely even any sound effects. You can mute the game and listen to a CD and not be missing out.
The Graphics
From what I read, Shadow Wars was originally planned as a DS game and it shows. There's nothing here that couldn't be done on the DS and the cut scenes to the game are pretty lacking as well for a handheld of that power. Now, I won't say the graphics are bad, but for a 3DS game they could have been a bit better. More sharper looking. Perhaps if the game ever got a sequel we'd see something great.
"But what about the 3D!?" you cry out? Well, it's there and you can use it. But it'll ultimately add nothing to the game. It's a nice feature, and it certainly does some cool tricks. But it doesn't improve the game in any fashion and ultimately I turned it off as I saw no real added benefit for it and chose to rather save the strain on my battery instead.
The Gameplay
So far everything I've said about the game has been average. But no longer. Here is where Ghost Recon:SW shines! It's crazy addicting, it's strategic and lets you go about winning missions in extremely creative ways. To start it off. You have 6 people as I mentioned earlier, and each of them has very specific things they can do. Duke is a good front man who's specialty is missiles that can destroy drones easily. The sniper offers incredibly long range, the stealth attacker can attack without getting hit in return unless adjacent to another enemy and later on in the game can do knife kills. The medic heals you, the gunner does extremely high damage and has the best HP but has terrible move/shoot capabilities and the techie has decent guns and health, but can also put out a turret for what would be essentially an extra guy that can take and give out damage.
Using all these characters you'll perform a variety of missions. You move across a grid like any other SRPG and everyone has an amount they can move. But there's also gun ranges you have to take into effect. For example, you may be able to move 7 squares, but your gun may only be able to fire if you move 5 squares and anything outside that radius means you can only move. Shoot an enemy from farther away and the less damage you'll be able to do, but shoot from closer up and the more you can do. But this holds true for the enemy as well. Also. Your characters will get points for every shot and kill they do, once you hit 100 points, you can do a special move. For example, the sniper gets a big shot, the Gunner gets super shot, Your Medic can super heal, Your squad leader can do a double move, or if he's using missiles can do a wide attack for more range and power. Using these at the right time can give you a huge advantage in battle.
How the campaign works, is you move on a set story path. You do one mission at a time and there's no world map you can move about or any side missions you can do. You will unlock skirmishes and multi-player stuff as you progress. But these don't count towards what you do in the story. Occasionally the story will break things up and only give you a small amount of people you can pick for a mission, so sometimes you can only select 3 or 4 of your 6 members for example. This would help a little on the replay-ability side. Every mission you pick as well has an easy/medium/hard option you can pick. The higher your difficulty, the more points you get to unlock more skirmishes and multi-player maps.
The RPG aspect works like this. Every time you complete a mission, you'll get a certain amount of stars that you can assign to anyone who was involved in the mission and you can only do it 2 at a time. So for example, when I clear a mission and get 5 stars, I can only give a max of 2 to Banshee, which will do anything from upgrade her gun, to give her more health, to even unlocking new weapons like the Knife for example. But I can only upgrade 2 after every mission which means that I can't dump everything into one character. It's kind of a fail safe so you won't ignore one character for too long. But you can still power level if you want. I got Banshee fully levelled up (30 is the max) before anyone else because she did amazing damage with her knife.
The maps are for the most part pretty unique. But by the end of the game they did start to feel a bit bland and a little repetitive. I was especially getting tired of them going "OH HEY, YOU NEED ENEMIES THAT ARE A CHALLENGE. FIGHT MORE DRONES! (Drones are like mini-tanks)" and then keep repeating that every mission on the final stretch. It got kind of tiring that they would always resort to using drones every-time they wanted to challenge you somewhat.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, almost seems like it would be a bad 3DS game. Lacklustre graphics, forgettable soundtrack, and a story that's completely uninteresting. However, it makes up for it by having some of the most engaging game-play and something that will have you going "just a couple more rounds" every time you play it. It's got good load times to it too. While there was a little issue of the game becoming a tiny bit stale by the end, it finished off quickly enough that it's not a big deal. Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars will easily give you 15-20 hours of game-play. If you're asking me "is this a game that I should buy a 3DS for?" my answer is ultimately "No, it's not that great of a game that you should shell out that much money just for it" However, if your question is "If I plan on already getting a 3DS, should I pick this game up with it?" My answer becomes a resounding "Yes" as Ghost Recon is simply a blast to play.
Ghost Recon gets 3 1/2 out of 5
Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is a Strategy RPG from Ubisoft. It's one of the launch titles of the 3DS and was one of the reasons I decided to get a 3DS at launch (well, I probably would have got one regardless. I like to get in on the ground floor of things). I had no expectations for this game but heard it was designed by Julian Gollop of X-com fame which are apparently great games. But I've never played them. So how did Ghost Recon fare for me? Read on to find out!
The Story/Plot
HOO-RAH. WE'RE AMERICANS IN A FOREIGN LAND AND WE WIN BECAUSE WE KICK ASS! That's pretty much all you need to know. But for those who need something substantial for some reason I'll go more in depth. You control Ghost Squadron who are composed of 6 members - Duke the leader, Banshee the stealth attacker, Haze the Sniper, Mint the techie, Richter the gunner, and Saffron the medic. You don't need to worry though because the characters have pretty much 0 depth and anything they try to do falls short. The plot is that a political guy wants Russia to go back to how it used to be in the old days and decides to start an elaborate plot to get him into power. Ghost Squad gets caught up in all it.
After that, the game entirely consists of you killing people and the bad guys running away every time until they finally don't. Other small things happen here and there but the plot points are so entirely telegraphed that nothing about it is shocking or engaging. If you've played any military based game before, you pretty much know what you're going into here. It's nothing original or exciting and you're better off just ignoring it all together.
The Music
Forgettable. Entirely forgettable. Nothing about the music jumps out at all and even when there's a huge sense of tension and urgency, the music will never convey it. It's the complete polar opposite to a game like Tactics Ogre where the music always seemed to fit the mood. There's no voice acting and even in the little cut-scenes they have there's barely even any sound effects. You can mute the game and listen to a CD and not be missing out.
The Graphics
From what I read, Shadow Wars was originally planned as a DS game and it shows. There's nothing here that couldn't be done on the DS and the cut scenes to the game are pretty lacking as well for a handheld of that power. Now, I won't say the graphics are bad, but for a 3DS game they could have been a bit better. More sharper looking. Perhaps if the game ever got a sequel we'd see something great.
"But what about the 3D!?" you cry out? Well, it's there and you can use it. But it'll ultimately add nothing to the game. It's a nice feature, and it certainly does some cool tricks. But it doesn't improve the game in any fashion and ultimately I turned it off as I saw no real added benefit for it and chose to rather save the strain on my battery instead.
The Gameplay
So far everything I've said about the game has been average. But no longer. Here is where Ghost Recon:SW shines! It's crazy addicting, it's strategic and lets you go about winning missions in extremely creative ways. To start it off. You have 6 people as I mentioned earlier, and each of them has very specific things they can do. Duke is a good front man who's specialty is missiles that can destroy drones easily. The sniper offers incredibly long range, the stealth attacker can attack without getting hit in return unless adjacent to another enemy and later on in the game can do knife kills. The medic heals you, the gunner does extremely high damage and has the best HP but has terrible move/shoot capabilities and the techie has decent guns and health, but can also put out a turret for what would be essentially an extra guy that can take and give out damage.
Using all these characters you'll perform a variety of missions. You move across a grid like any other SRPG and everyone has an amount they can move. But there's also gun ranges you have to take into effect. For example, you may be able to move 7 squares, but your gun may only be able to fire if you move 5 squares and anything outside that radius means you can only move. Shoot an enemy from farther away and the less damage you'll be able to do, but shoot from closer up and the more you can do. But this holds true for the enemy as well. Also. Your characters will get points for every shot and kill they do, once you hit 100 points, you can do a special move. For example, the sniper gets a big shot, the Gunner gets super shot, Your Medic can super heal, Your squad leader can do a double move, or if he's using missiles can do a wide attack for more range and power. Using these at the right time can give you a huge advantage in battle.
How the campaign works, is you move on a set story path. You do one mission at a time and there's no world map you can move about or any side missions you can do. You will unlock skirmishes and multi-player stuff as you progress. But these don't count towards what you do in the story. Occasionally the story will break things up and only give you a small amount of people you can pick for a mission, so sometimes you can only select 3 or 4 of your 6 members for example. This would help a little on the replay-ability side. Every mission you pick as well has an easy/medium/hard option you can pick. The higher your difficulty, the more points you get to unlock more skirmishes and multi-player maps.
The RPG aspect works like this. Every time you complete a mission, you'll get a certain amount of stars that you can assign to anyone who was involved in the mission and you can only do it 2 at a time. So for example, when I clear a mission and get 5 stars, I can only give a max of 2 to Banshee, which will do anything from upgrade her gun, to give her more health, to even unlocking new weapons like the Knife for example. But I can only upgrade 2 after every mission which means that I can't dump everything into one character. It's kind of a fail safe so you won't ignore one character for too long. But you can still power level if you want. I got Banshee fully levelled up (30 is the max) before anyone else because she did amazing damage with her knife.
The maps are for the most part pretty unique. But by the end of the game they did start to feel a bit bland and a little repetitive. I was especially getting tired of them going "OH HEY, YOU NEED ENEMIES THAT ARE A CHALLENGE. FIGHT MORE DRONES! (Drones are like mini-tanks)" and then keep repeating that every mission on the final stretch. It got kind of tiring that they would always resort to using drones every-time they wanted to challenge you somewhat.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, almost seems like it would be a bad 3DS game. Lacklustre graphics, forgettable soundtrack, and a story that's completely uninteresting. However, it makes up for it by having some of the most engaging game-play and something that will have you going "just a couple more rounds" every time you play it. It's got good load times to it too. While there was a little issue of the game becoming a tiny bit stale by the end, it finished off quickly enough that it's not a big deal. Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars will easily give you 15-20 hours of game-play. If you're asking me "is this a game that I should buy a 3DS for?" my answer is ultimately "No, it's not that great of a game that you should shell out that much money just for it" However, if your question is "If I plan on already getting a 3DS, should I pick this game up with it?" My answer becomes a resounding "Yes" as Ghost Recon is simply a blast to play.
Ghost Recon gets 3 1/2 out of 5
