Gameplay – Changes

Domestic policy

As we mentioned before, there are fifteen missions in the game. Each must be first played as part of the campaign before it can be unlocked in the single-mission menu for other game modes. There is a background story behind the whole game, but it is nowhere near as personal as the one in Operation Flashpoint. However, it does serve as the driving force for your missions and provides more than adequate reasons for the situations the Ghosts are placed in.

Once a mission is beaten, it can be played separately over again as a Mission, Firefight, or Recon scenario. Missions are just like the campaign missions, with various objectives. Firefights are like a great big deathmatch, while Recon has the player make his way from the insertion point to the extraction point. These same options appear in the co-op multiplayer game (yes, you read that right – you can play the missions in co-op mode!)

Girls like men with big guns

Tanks!

Fortunately they're not looking

Playing the campaign allows the player to earn specialists – these are irreplaceable characters with stats much higher than normal. They also get different weapons from the regular characters, though they are still limited to four kits. You can earn specialists by completing bonus objectives and doing well on the missions in the campaign.

As we mentioned, there are stats in the game. Weapons, stealth, endurance and leadership are the four attributes every character has. A high weapons score means that the character has better aim – his reticle will shrink down faster (in the Rainbow games, your aiming reticle grows in size with any movement, jerking, or constant fire). Stealth means he is less likely to be spotted, while endurance allows him to take more punishment and carry more without being encumbered (a must for support soldiers.) Finally, leadership increases all the abilities of the other characters on the squad by one point, for every three points of leadership the character in question has. Only the highest leadership score is used to determine the bonus.

Pick them off

Quite the casualty list

Ibrahim had 17 kills. Sniper r00lz j00

So happy together…

Ghost Recon can be played on LAN or the internet, both via internal game browser. In addition to the co-op mode (our preferred method of playing), you can try Solo or Team. Solo is a free-for-all, while Team puts players on teams like team deathmatch. Both modes share three games to choose from.

Hamburger Hill is basically King of the Hill. Whoever holds the target area the longest, wins. Last Man Standing is like a permanent-death deathmatch, and whoever is alive at the end takes home the prize. Finally, we have Sharpshooter, which is basically standard deathmatch where the player with the most kills wins the game. For team mode, naturally, the objectives are team-oriented.