Okay, I admit it, I've been out of the gaming community for a while. I only recently purchased a PlayStation 2 and started gaming again. But having been a huge fan of the original Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (and expansion packs) by Red Storm Entertainment and UBI Soft, I was excited to see that they'd made a sequel, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2. If the original was so good -- I consider it one of the best first-person shooters ever made -- the sequel would have to be amazing, right? How about amazingly disappointing.

Interestingly, UBI Soft chose to present different versions of the game on PS2 and Xbox with slightly differing gameplay and storylines (for this review I focus on the PS2 version). Basically, the year is 2007, and a rogue faction within the North Korean Army has begun a preemptive war against South Korea in order to reunify the peninsula. Even though the U.S. has two brigades of the 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea, the fate of the world rests on one special ops squad: the Ghosts. (Yeah, right.) Striking at strategic targets behind the North Korean lines, the Ghosts' mission is to grind the North Korean war machine to a halt before it can do too much damage. The only redeemable thing about the plot is that it links up nicely with the storyline of the Splinter Cell series of games, also by UBI Soft and Red Storm.

Glancing at the back of the box, you see a bunch of screenshots, and I was initially impressed by how good the graphics are. Unfortunately, the quality of graphics does not translate into good gameplay. Playing as Captain Scott Mitchell, leader of the Ghosts, you conduct missions either with three team members or alone (as if that'd ever happen). Unfortunately, GR2 doesn't have the same squad-based atmosphere of the original. All your team can do is provide suppressive fire or scout ahead 50 meters or so, providing no team autonomy. You also can't switch between team members -- something many people enjoyed about the original -- which means that if you get killed, the mission ends. Oh, yeah, and since there are no checkpoints or in-game saving, that means you start over from the beginning of the level. (Better luck next time.) Also, it seems that the enemy understands this weakness (that CPT Mitchell must live) and will fire at you even if you're behind cover and your teammates are completely exposed. Couple that with the fact that your teammates hardly ever score any kills, and you might as well have a one-person shooter (at least in the “lone wolf” missions you get better gear). Another drawback of GR2 over the original is that you really have only four different “kits” you can choose from when conducting missions (I think there were over twenty different combinations in the original). But possibly the biggest issue with GR2 is the fact that the missions all follow a set path, clearing one enemy fighting position after another -- using small-arms fire and hand grenades -- in a manner more akin to World War II combat than the nation's most elite spec ops team fighting in the future.

Even if you loved the original Ghost Recon, don't expect much from the sequel. Take the original, beef up the graphics, remove all the squad-based fun, and you've got this game. So if you find Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 in the bargain bin, go ahead and give it a shot. Otherwise, save your time and money.

Rating: 2.5 stars (of 5)