Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon was one of the best first person shooter games to hit the market. Those of us who enjoy playing the more realistic games giving the players options with challenge loved the first two games.
Ghost Recon Future Solder was the exception to the rule. Thinking it was like the first two and thinking the PC version would allow the player more options I ordered it and waited a full year and a half only to learn my gaming center wasn't going to deliver it! They said "Yes, it came out today but we can't get it."
Generally there's a reason why a game company turns against a certain version of a game and thinking so I got my money back. Then my wife found it online and got it for $20 cheaper than the game company was asking. Again this set the red flags in my mind and thinking that's two strikes against this game right off.
You see the people who were anxious to get this game were mostly PC platform users who loved the first two Ghost Recon Games. When it came out something was different. Something wasn't like the videos and previews showed it. Something wasn't the same as the first two games.
I got the game installed it and waited for quite awhile as it updated itself. It doesn't start like a normal PC game. It must be connected to the Internet just to enter the code key. The window opens on the start-up like an Internet browser revealing that it was intended to be played online with others. I like MP LAN games, I love ARMA for that reason but I don't normally play with others on the Internet.
Once the key was in there and working I tried to play the game and found out it always looked the same way and I couldn't aim anything with the keyboard, joystick or mouse! Yes the game was designed to use a gaming platform controller that cost me another $25!
I find the gaming controllers like these difficult to use, I don't like them! There's more than one reason why I stay with the PC platform when possible.
When I got the game working with the game controller I quickly realized it was totally game platform arcade style oriented. (A Donkey Kong version of Ghost Recon!) They herd the player thorough a series of gauntlets toward an objective without any real player options. They show you were to go, where to stand and let the enemy blast away at you.
The sound is great, the graphics are impressive but you are always outside of your body looking over yourself unless you are in gunsight mode! Completely arcade style game. The player has no options except to play the game exactly the way the designers made it. Circling around behind or to the side of the enemy isn't an option unless that segment of the game allows it. Previous versions of Ghost Recon would allow a player at least two ways to approach an enemy location, but not this one!
Long before I reached the location where your team must take out several enemy at the same time using silenced weapons I was tempted to throw the controller across the room. When I reached this point I realized I had pissed my $75 away for nothing. It wasn't the game they showed in the videos! It wasn't like the previous two games and the gaming companies knew it! That's why they refuse to carry this game to our store. They knew what we wanted and they knew the Ghost Recon people didn't deliver the goods! They knew if we were going to be unhappy with the product they would rather we get it from somewhere else and let us be unhappy with them.
When people get burned enough by any company they will stop doing business with them and that's what happens when you don't live up to your ads and expectations. That's also what happened to me. I never intend to buy another game from this company because they have gone the way of most of the others taking control from the player and giving it instead to the game designers for game platform type games.
Another thing you should understand is why game traders have stopped selling used PC games, and why they don't want to handle the new PC versions of games. The reason is the license has changed on PC games and is now a license for a single user for a life time. It is not transferable! If someone else takes the game and tries to register it or use the key in it it must be online! The "mother ship" knows the new person is not the original buyer of the game and will not activate that game for the new person. They will force every single person to buy their own version of the game. This is more money in their pockets for bad business practices. Though if it had been anything like the previous versions of Ghost Recon I would have considered myself fortunate. It's not, I'm done with it and I can't even give it away!
So if you liked the first two Ghost Recon games because they way they were you won't like the new Ghost Recon Future Soldier at all so don't waste your money.
Message to the Tom Clancy game developers: If you do this to your other PC action games you will loose more customers than you might imagine. You have all ready lost my business. Mindless zombies and children don't mind being herded around like animals, some of us enjoy the thought of figuring the game out in multiple ways. I enjoy that and building my own missions. If that's why a person buys the game then that's the reason to make it that way. The customers are the ones who pay your bills. Give them what they want or loose them as customers.
