Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars
by Katrina Pawlowski
Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is a title I’ve never personally taken an interest in. War scenarios just don’t seem to do it for me. When Nick told me the game was turn based tactics, however - my outlook changed. I took a look at a few screens, plus a trailer and instantly fell in love.
The game has you in charge of several Ghost soldiers, each with a unique weapon and ability. Characters that heal, snipe, assault, or whatever they have been assigned to do. I felt the characters were a bit shallow and stereotyped (big muscle guy is the heavy gunner, female is the healer, etc), but that didn’t seem to be the intention of the game.
As with many tactics style games, the goals are laid out fairly early in each mission. Discover this, defeat this unit, survive for this amount of time. As you do that, you’re graded at the end based on difficulty setting (easy, medium, hard) how many turns were taken, etc. The big goals for this game is to complete the objectives, and do them fast and efficiently. The combat and movement is much like Advance Wars if you’ve ever played any of those (if you haven’t, you should).
I have had a lot of fun playing each mission on various difficulties to “level up” my commander (that would be myself, the one in charge of moving units and such) based on the end of each level points. The 3D in Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is also very subtle but beautiful, so turning the 3D all the way up or down gives a similar experience - but the 3D isn’t so disorienting that it is a problem.
Shadow Wars was actually created in part by Jullian Gallop, who had a hand in the classic PC strategy series X-Com. If you were a fan of that series, Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars shouldn't be missed.
Recommendation: Buy