Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm Review

I've been playing first-person shooters since Corporation on the Sega Mega Drive, and in the decade or so since then almost every game in the genre that has crossed my path has been thoroughly enjoyable. However, I always felt that FPS games were best suited to home consoles, and the small screens and limited controls of a portable like the N-Gage just weren't enough to do justice to such a title. Having found Splinter Cell: Chao's Theory unsatisfying with controls too fiddly for my liking, I didn't have high hopes when Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm landed on my desk. Fortunately, the developers at Gameloft were able prove my intuition wrong and have created a title truly worthy of the Tom Clancy's franchise.

The year is 2010 and the backdrop is the politically unstable and criminal-infested Latin American nation of Columbia. You lead a team of four ghosts into this harsh environment to combat the activities of a drug cartel named the MFLC. Like other games in the series you will gain access to an array of powerful weapons to take down the enemy, and in this title you also have the option of taking control of any of your team - allowing you to continue playing the mission even if your main character gets topped.

Single-player mode covers eight missions, which primarily consist of killing the bad guys. The first mission also serves as a tutorial to help you get to grips with the controls, which I found very intuitive and felt at home with within the first couple of minutes. On completing each mission, you are duly rewarded with the addition of another weapon to your arsenal, such as sniper rifles and submachine guns. A mild criticism of the game would be that the single-player mode is a tad on the short side - eight missions may sound like a lot but most can easily be completed in less than ten minutes. Fortunately the game includes three levels of difficulty, so more experienced players can increase the lifespan of the title by opting to take on the MFLC on the hardest setting. Once you've completed the game you may also play through the 24 stages of challenge mode, in which you revisit the eight missions of the main campaign but are bound by various restrictions including one-shot kills and time limits.

Both the sound and graphics of the game can't be faulted. The three-dimensional surroundings are akin to perhaps a late Nintendo 64 or PlayStation title, and character models are also reasonably impressive. In addition to realistic gunfire and explosion sound effects, Jungle Storm also includes realistic vocal comments from your teammates triggered by in-game events.

To sum up, Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm vastly exceeded my original expectations and is a game I may well return to play again and again. The controls feel natural, the gameplay immersing and the graphics and sound excellent.

Overall: 4 / 5.

This review was added on 18th April 2005 by Rupe Parnell.