Between work, the baby, and 1000 other things, I haven't had time for blogging.  Then there is the strange phenomenon that occurs when your thoughts get backlogged and you don't want to blog about anything until you've gotten everything in order because you don't want to leave out anything.  So, I figure what better way to get back into it than to post a completely trivial review of a video game.

The new Ghost Recon (or GRAW for short) came out recently for the XBox360, and my friends and I were fairly excited.  Even though we've got 360's, we've been playing Halo 2 on them.  GRAW seemed to be the game that would let us have our online fun on a real next-gen game.  Now that I've played it a while, I've developed some opinions about it.

The single-player campaign mode is pretty fun.  I don't really like games where I have to command other non-player characters.  I don't really mind if they wanna come help me, and I can suggest things for them to do.  This game appears to suit my tastes in that category pretty well.  The other guys will follow me around and shoot at stuff and generally do what I'd like them to do.  The only thing that is stupid is the medic command.  When one of your guys is hurt, they fall down and you have the option to command one of the other guys to help patch them up. Why do I have to do that?  Why can't they figure that out on their own?  In addition, why can't they help you when you're the one that's hurt?  Other than that, the weapons, the sense of urgency (it's a pretty good special forces simulator), the missions, and the visuals lead to a very nice game.

That said, I don't really like playing games by myself, so multiplayer is weighted very heavily on my scale of game goodness.  First off, the multiplayer is a very different game than the single player.  Several key elements of the game are missing (taking cover, vehical control, etc).  But the drone, and the cross-com cameras are still available, which enable some very cool in-game communication. It really feels like you are your friends are moving steathily through the jungle taking out the bad guys with your high-tech, but realistic arsenal.

The only problem is that there is no "party system".  This is a common problem with online multiplayer games on my opinion, and it's just stupid.  Halo 2 does this wonderfully, and it's a very old game by now.  Halo 2 made it stupid simple to get into a party with your friends and then jump into games with other random people.  In Ghost Recon (and just about every other game I've played), someone has to start up a game lobby.  Then, you can join it.  Then, once all your friends are in the lobby, you sit there and pray that some other people will join.  What usually happens is you start a short game to play while you're waiting, and you end up playing a stupid game for 30 minutes waiting for enough people to show up for the other team so you can play a real game.  The problem is that the people you really want to play against (parties of about 4 people looking for other parties of 4 people) are doing the same thing you are doing because the alternative is so frustrating.  The alternative, is to pick someone to be the game finder.  When they find a game, they join it, send out invites and beg the host not to start until all your friends can get in.  Chances are they won't wait, or the host gets tired of waiting and ends the lobby and everyone is out in the dark looking for each other again (remember there is no multi-person chat in the 360 dashboard).  Or you end up playing lobby tag with your friends because more than one person is actively looking for a game for the group to play in.

If people on your friends list are already in a game, joining is a hassle.  You can respond to an invite, or choose "join session" from the XBox360 guide blade, then you get a stupid dialog box that tells you you've decided to join a game, and it only has one option...OK.  Whoever let that brilliant piece of UI into the released game should be given several lashes.  Then, you are forced to go through another login type procedure and finally end up in the lobby of the game (if it still exists).  If it does exist, you have to sit there and wait in the lobby until the game is over before you can interact with anyone in the game.  Ghost Recon game types are typically very long (~30 minutes), so you just have to sit there.  At least let me play a mini-game, or be an in-game observer or something.

In any case, if the host leaves the game for any reason, everyone is booted from the game and you have to hook up all over again.  These are all problems that have great solutions already.  All you need to do is fire up Halo 2 to see how it should be done.

Luckily, Ghost Recon has a rich online co-op mode, which allows you and your friends to team up against the A.I. in campaign style missions or other elimination, or objective games.  As I said before, it's fairly easy to get your friends into a game. This redeems the game enough to make it a blast to play.

So, will I have fun playing it...Absolutely

Will I be annoyed every time I play it...Absolutely.