massively multiplayer

If you're a fan of the Ghost Recon series of games, the Island Thunder set brings your platoon-based gaming to a hostile Cuba of the future.

There's the great graphics, where each of your friends and enemies look like real people, with proper movements and actions. Your environment is misty, rainy, soggy, with detailed trees and grass. You really feel like you're crawling up the road, watching for that enemy tower.

The sound is also quite good. None of the rock-thumping rambo music here - you listen carefully for where your enemies could be hiding, and watch for signs that an ambush is being laid.

Multiplayer is where this game shines best, though. An assortment of maps, campaign types and of course a wide variety of players means that the game will stay interesting long after you exhaust the built in missions. Downloadable new maps mean that the game can be fun pretty much forever!

A warning to arcade-style button mashers - this isn't a game like Doom where you just hop in and blast away. If you try that, you'll be slain quickly and pretty disappointed. You have to learn how to work with your troops, how to approach silently, how to work out a strategy to take advantage of your strengths. This is a game that involves a lot of patience and coordination. In this game it's not the person with the fastest fingers who wins - it's the person who pays the most attention to what is going on, and plans accordingly.

Ghost Recon Island Thunder is not the squad-based, tactical shooter you would expect it to be. It's not a bad game as long as you're not buying it for the squad tactics. It's not a run and gun game. It's realistic in many ways, such as the absence of medkits that will heal you instantly. A well placed head or torso shot can kill you. What disappointed me is the lack of control you have over your squad in the campaign mode, and the complete absence of it in multi-player versus mode. In the single player campaign mode, you are in charge of 6 soldiers. One would think that just like in any standard squad-shooter, GRIT would allow you to directly control one of the six while being able to give specific commands to the rest of the squad. But in reality the six soldiers are divided into 2 teams of 3, called Alpha and Bravo. You can directly control any of the six, but you CANNOT control the two other soldiers in your team. Say, you're in Alpha. You cannot order anyone in alpha to stay, follow, or go somewhere specific. They will always follow you wherever you go. If you stand, they stand. If you go prone, so will they. You do have the ability to command Bravo. You can tell them to go anywhere in the map in however way you want them to. You can even assign the level of their aggression. But sadly, you CANNOT give individual commands. You can only order the 3. So in reality, this is a two-man squad shooter, giving you direct control of one man (Alpha) while giving you command over the other (Bravo). While the limited squad control isn't too terrible in the single-player campaign mode, it's a total disgrace in the multi-player mode. In generic squad-based, 4-man-squad games such as Brute Force or Conflict Desert Storm you can have any member of your team either follow, stand their ground, or go somewhere specific. You can assign a sniper to stand back while you have one guard the gate you're about to go through just in case someone tries to run after you. You can then have the other member follow you as you move forward. In that set up, you have a sniper covering your back, a hidden teammate to blind side on rushing enemies, and a buddy right on your tail for extra firepower and added protection. In GRIT, the only option you have is no option. Your 2 teammates will mimic everything that you do. You cannot spread them out, so if someone finds you and uses a grenade, you're all dead. As a solo affair with no teammates GRIT is as realistic as you can get. But to advertise it as a squad-based game is simply a lie. On the minor points, the interface of GRIT is an absolute nightmare. It's as confusing as they come. I will not even begin to try to explain it, as thinking about it alone is confusing enough. And speaking of more confusion, the radar system in GRIT for tracking down enemies is a distraction at best. At its worst, the radar in GRIT will just get you lost and frustrated. It's supposed to tell you the general direction of where your enemy could be. But it points you to the HEMISPHERE your enemy could be hiding in. In some situations, you could almost do a complete 180 and the radar's pointer still won't change. Also, call me an idiot, but in the campaign mode there was a part that made me spent 20 minutes running around looking for the enemy, only to find out that the radar has been detecting a stationary enemy jeep with two dead machine gunners on them! That was bad.
Overall, the in-game presentation of GRIT is impressive enough for anyone to at least keep on giving it a try, often times questioning themselves if there's something wrong with them because they can't quite get into the game. But the absence of control over your squads and other minor logic flaws interfere with what could've been the game of the eyar.

This game is the Best. It's like paintball, except u don't have to pay for each paintball game. =)