Ghost Recon, game of the year for PC, brings its unique brand of tactical action to consoles. However, a couple of key differences between the X-Box and PS2 versions make the ports inconsistent with one another, leaving one as being far superior. Which one? The answers, as they say, lie within.
Ghost Recon pretty much allows you to experience Rainbow Six style action, all the while keeping that pesky planning aspect to a minimum. You can still plot out your every move with two teams, waypoint by waypoint, but this sort of thing isn't very conductive to a console experience. This is a fact Red Storm must have been aware of, seeing as how they reduced the number of teams – you're down from three in the PC original. Truth be told, it works well, as you'll be using the waypoint system for on-the-fly orders, rather than for plotting your entire mission plan before executing it.
Here's where the fine differences come in, and where the X-Box port clearly establishes its superiority over the PS2 version, despite its lack of the bonus expansion missions. While it's understandable that form of some auto-aim would be required to offset the imprecision of a controller, and perhaps even a bit of a revised radar system was in order, the HUD on the PS2 incarnation of Ghost Recon all but gives away the exact location of your enemies. From there, it becomes a matter of jockeying for position, using the terrain to your advantage, and rolling the crosshair over their general vicinity. When it turns red, you know they're in your sights, even if they're hiding in grass, bushes, or behind a rock. While the game doesn't quite reach the lameness level of letting you shoot through rocks, it does let you know that your foe is there. Where's the challenge? It's like somebody switched "enemy camouflage" to off, and left the player no option to turn it back on.
Perhaps then, the environments are used for beauty purposes, and not those related to gameplay. Wrong. While the X-Box version features detailed valleys, crisp textures, and fluid player animation, the PS2 version's list of graphical flaws is a long one - its' grainy textures barely meet the requirement of the word, colors are drab and washed out, the grass and trees look like cardboard cutouts, and the characters are stiffer than those in a lagging CS game. Looking over the first level's insertion zone on the X-Box, I viewed a river flowing through a mountain valley, surrounded by trees and shrubs of various sizes. On PS2, I saw nothing more than a bunch of fog with a wall of trees in the distance, all of them the same height. This should give you an idea of how the two versions compare visually.
With the addition of solid online play, the X-Box version becomes the clear choice for multiplatform gamers. With the exception of some big time lag in the more populated games, Ghost Recon does a great job of bringing a Socom-style online experience to the X-Box. Throw in a slew of game types, and the addition of split-screen and system link play, and there's only one possible conclusion: Ghost Recon's multiplayer options are robust.
Ghost Recon on the X-Box shows the extreme potential of the product, while the PS2 version shows what happens when development goes horribly wrong. With SOCOM on the PS2, there's no reason to look to Ghost Recon for your kicks, given the shoddy production values and dumbed-down gameplay. X-Box Live gamers, however, will find a top quality tactical shooter in Ghost Recon.
-George
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