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Leave it to a Tom Clancy brand to push a new system to its limit. The Tom Clancy series, particularly the Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six 3 series, have been known in this generation for pushing the current consoles to their limit. Similarly, Gameloft’s Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm for N-Gage pushes the system to its limits as this is the best looking N-Gage game I have ever played.
In Ghost Recon, it is up to you and your team to once again save the world. Specifically, in this version, you’ll go to protect Cuba from being taken over from a Columbian cartel. You see after Fidel Castro falls, the United States assists Cubans to enter a democratic government. Obviously, the Columbians don’t want this and decide to attack the country and take control. It’s up to you and the other Ghosts to make sure that they don’t succeed.
To accomplish this, you’ll need to go through numerous levels and complete the standard Ghost Recon mission objectives. This means that you’ll find bombs that need defusing as well as rescuing hostages. Additionally, as expected in a first person shooter, you’ll end up shooting a whole lot of people. To accomplish all of this, you’ll need to set your primary and secondary weapons. These include an assortment of machine guns, rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, grenade launchers and even rocket launchers. In typical Ghost Recon fashion, you’ll choose your weapon before you begin the mission.
Throughout the game, both your team and enemy AI is quite impressive. Both will respond to fire and hide if needed. Your team will cover themselves, as will the enemies.
Ghost Recon has an immense amount of button commands as nearly every button on the N-Gage is used. There are buttons for moving forward or backward and turning left or right. You’ll also be able to strafe to the left or right, and look up or down. There are buttons for shooting, reloading, zooming, changing weapon or changing the stance. Lastly, grenades have their own button. Fortunately, Gameloft allowed you to map the commands to any key you want which makes the game a lot easier. I found it easiest to map moving forward, moving backward, turning left and turning right on the directional pad and using the key pads for the action commands. Nonetheless, even with all the commands, you rarely have to press them at the same time which solves the difficulty inherent with the N-Gage QD.
While Jungle Storm does not support N-Gage Arena support, it does include eight player multiplayer via the wireless Bluetooth technology. The multiplayer modes include Co-Op, Deathmatch, Defend and Survival.
The game’s visuals, though, really make it stand out. Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm pushes the N-Gage to the limit, thus far anyway. It is right up there with the most impressive games on the handheld which to me are Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Tomb Raider. Everything is complete, textured 3D. The guns have excellent models, and all of the characters feature much detail. In addition, the levels are littered with objects including cars, houses, crates foliage and trees. The best part of the visuals is the variety and size of the levels. You’ll go from rescuing a city in one, to going to the jungle and then the mountains. Effects like rain and fog enhance the visuals in certain levels.
The audio is equally impressive. The menu features fitting war music. Otherwise, the audio is immersive as you’ll hear everything from the gunshots to motors from the vehicles to seagulls flying overhead.
Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm sets a new standard for what can be done on N-Gage. Nokia’s little handheld is quite powerful, and this game certainly shows it. If you own an N-Gage and are remotely interested in the genre, you should pick this one up. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Sep 13, 2004
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