DustRhino

The consensus was we didn’t get enough Ghost Recon on New Year’s Day, so we scheduled another gaming session (this time David, Paul, Shea, and Clint). It seems it’s not just us—even though Ghost Recon was released in 2001, people are still playing online, running tournaments, and even developing new mods. The latest, and possible one of the best out there, CENTCOM, was released only last month.

Set in the Central command area of responsibility, CENTCOM is a full Ghost Recon expansion pack with 12 new missions, each with an exclusive fan made map and command map. CENTCOM missions take place in the combat theaters of the current war on terrorism (OIF/OEF) with real-world-mission-objectives and realistic kit load outs. CENTCOM incorporates all aspects of real-world-mission-objectives into the mission campaign, including stealth, convoy hits, personnel elimination, search and destroy, and firefights.

CENTCOM also includes a new MP game type: seize, which is sort of defend in reverse. Once we ran through seize on the new maps, we tried it on some old favorites, like Embassy (see below).

David Gaming, General

Continuing our tradition, a number of armchair commandos got together early New Year’s Day to nurse hangovers, and play some computer games. For the last few years, we have been playing Ghost Recon, a first-person shooter based on a series of books by Tom Clancy. Set in the “near future,” the game features combat by members of US Special Forces against various enemies, in a variety of scenarios, with setting in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. Originally released in 2002, we still enjoy plying this classic–the combination of extensive third party expansions, as well as numerous team-based play keeps it at the top of our list.

This year’s party was our largest yet, with six players (David, Paul, Shea, Syd, Ian, and Ian’s coworker Will) pounding the keys for 4-6 hours of “intense” game play. For those familiar with GR, we played with the commercially released Desert Siege and Island Thunder expansion sets, as well as the fan released HX4 Fort Chaos (for maps and excellent team missions) and DTD IDF (for skins and extensive new weapon kits) mods.

David Gaming, General