Battle on the 29th-Ghost Recon 2:Summit Strike (xbox)

To kick off the new year, I'm hosting a largish lan battle-Ghost Recon 2:Summit Strike. I'm trying to get 6-8 people in my exercise room/garage area and 6-8 in my living room. There will be 4 xboxes (including my 360 which networks nicely with the older machines_ON THIS GAME)

Mini-review of Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike

Now I know what I said about franchise whoring etc, but this game has value. For less than 20 bucks, you get most of the multiplayer maps of the first Ghost Recon 2, a bunch of new weapons, skins, and some forgettable but mildly entertaining SP missions--All of this is a lan party must have.

I remember trying to get a Halo 2 game going at a large lan (15-16 players), and for some reason, the machines wouldn't jive with each other, So I popped in Ghost Recon 2 for the lan in spite of a sea of complaints. As soon as the first no-respawn Last Man Standing round ended (about 30 seconds after it started), there was a hushed silence in the group, and then suddenly a frenzied uproar. A few hadn't played this type of game before, and it is as opposite the halo experience as one can have on an FPS. "You mean I can't just run in with my trigger pulled and my shield absorbing everything coming my way, with the only consequence of dying being I magically resurrect myself at the other end of the map?" That evening we didn't even touch halo 2.

I was a big fan of the first Ghost Recon for the xbox. XBL games with my brother, who lived on the opposite end of the continent are unforgettable. One map I remember in particular is Embassy, a beautifully designed urban warfare map with rooftop sniping points, tight alleyways, choke points, and building entries. The map was large, and provided many different combat scenarios. The experience only seemed to get better as we learned the map. My brother and I would exchange emails during work about how we could better dominate this map, hardly being able to wait to get home and try out the new strats.

So, my primary complaint about Ghost Recon 2 is that there is nothing like Embassy. There are no openable doors, very few (if any) rooftops, limited urban warfare in general. The doors though, the doors. Put 'em back in, Mr. Clancy. It's nice to be able to use the interior as well as the exterior of the buildings. The map design is consequently a lot simpler. The environments are more lush and detailed. Unfortunately, a lot of it seems impassable more so than in the first GR, and maybe even simplified for the sake of eye candy. What you actually have less of is making use of your more beauteous cammo to remain hidden in the more beauteous foliage to ambush or snipe, completely defeating the original purpose of the game. It's unfortunate that Ghost Recon sequels will be ultimately lost in a battalion of military shooters because of the marginalizing of all that made it unique. It's simply not the open-ended thinking man's shooter that it used to be.

Secondary complaint: Over the Shoulder (OTS). Big debates over this. Sure, you get better SA, but if your guy can't see around a tree in first person, that's because he's behind the freaking tree! A big negative on the immersion factor. The fix? Host games with 1st person only views. Again, this is an effort to sell more copies, and while adding options like this might seem like "flexibility" for the gamer, it is a fairly clear statement by the developer that this is no longer to be a hardcore sim experience.

Ok Tertiary:Gunners are imbalanced here. They are scaled up in power, big time from GR to GR2. That's as it should be. Once you get the thing set up, there should be mass carnage, period. The problem is that people can move and aim the machine guns nearly as quickly as they can the assault rifles. There should be some sort of penalty for wielding these heavy killing machines. Think run and gun. Without ammo being a consideration, why would you ever select the assault rifle? The lone wolf weapons (built-in semi-auto grenade launchers, camera etc) are even strangely ineffective. No complaints about that. Again in lan parties, you can limit these uber weapons to your liking, to the point of pistols only.

With the above complaints, in mind, are you seeing a pattern here?

And the single player is definitely more difficult, lacks the squad tactics from the first, and the deep unlocking system has been reduced to pictures of crap that you can purchase with points.

Now:
The graphics are better on GR2 without a doubt. I won't even boot the first one for fear of flattening my rosy memories of it.
The sounds are better on GR 2. If you have a subwoofer, crank it up and maybe bring out the sks sniper rifle.
In both sound and graphics, this title is not the xbox showcase piece, with all of the other fps titles out there, but this is still the only way to go if you want multiplayer modern military realism.

I hope we haven't lost the franchise to more of an Unreal Tourney experience for the sake of selling the game to the less than patient folks out there. In Advanced Warfighter, if I turn the knob, it better open. Only then will I buy a copy.