Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

The Tom Clancy series has been on a roll. With the sixth Splinter Cell title and a sequel to H.A.W.X. this year, the military fiction-based video game metaseries is finally starting on a much-desired return to its shooter roots. The title is being developed under the watchful gaze of Ubisoft Paris, who brought us Advanced Warfighter but has been largely occupied with Rayman: Raving Rabbids for the last few years. With headphones over my ears to isolate the game's sound from the noise of E3, I was able to check out Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, which is poised to be one of next year's best shooters.

Release Date: 2011

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Paris

Platform(s): PC

Genre: Action

Plot :

The game is set in the near future, sometime around 2015 or 2020 according to the Ubisoft reps. The level we saw had a group of four ghost recon soldiers break off from a mission to pursue and apprehend a wanted war criminal. Wearing stealth suits that digitally make them seemingly disappear, the soldiers slowly crept through the lines of enemies, taking them out one-by-one using stealth and teamwork. The graphics are really something you have to see to believe. According to Ubisoft, it is the same engine as the last Ghost Recon- just massively overhauled- but everything looked so amazing that it was hard to believe. The stealth suits are the big draw of the game, and when a character activates the camouflage and disappears into the background, it is astounding. There was also a moment where the main character walked up behind an enemy, silently shot him, then held his body in position to fool a passing patrol. It was details like that which make this game stand above so many others of the genre. As with previous Ghost Recon games, teamwork will play a major part. Although the demo we saw was short, the AI-controlled teammates appear to be intuitive and easy to coordinate with. We watched as three of them took out targets simultaneously, allowing the main character to move up and silently restrain the target easily. Although the tech might seem more science fiction than military tech, Ubisoft confirmed that all of the technology featured in the game was based on actual, on-going military research. As such, the game might feature weapons and things like the stealth suit that seem outlandish, but the developers treated it with the same realism that they might approach any military game.

System Requirements:

CPU: Intel or AMD, 2 GHz

RAM: 1024 MB RAM

VGA: 128 MB DX9.0c compatible card,

GeForce 6200 or higher

Radeon 9700 or higher

DX: DirectX 9.0c

OS: Windows XP/Vista

HDD: 5 GB

Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible

ODD: DVD-ROM drive : x2 read speed

Network: High-speed modem with 128 Kbits of data transfer upload rate for a client, 512Kbits of data transfer upload rate for a server on a full game.