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Introduction
Red Storm Entertainment has definitely found its calling. While other Clancy games have never really caught on, like Politika and ruthless.com, once Rainbow Six took off, Red Storm kept the action coming, hit after hit. After no less than seven iterations of the game formula, gamers are already waiting with bated breath for the next two titles in/around the series, Splinter Cell and Raven Shield.
With the development for both still months from release, and a new feature film on the horizon, Red Storm knew that they couldn't let the opportunity slip by. They hastily put together a Ghost Recon total conversion based on the upcoming movie adaptation of The Sum of All Fears, and decided to see how well they could cash in on the almost guaranteed popularity. As time has told by now, the game sold reasonably well, though the sales weren't anything to write home about. Is it worth your time to go after? Let's find out.
Background
Given the critical success of Rainbox Six and its progeny, and the fact that movie-based games often suck, one would ordinarily find a title such as Sum of All Fears to be in a quandary. Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), the game doesn't really follow the plot of the movie, which is, of course, its own interpretation of the book. Sum of All Fears follows the storyline of the Hostage Rescue Team unit formed by the FBI, which follows up on the investigation after the bombing of Baltimore by terrorists. Following the disastrous event which nearly led to war with the Russians, John Kelly, AKA Mr. Clark, takes over the operation of the HRT and turns it into a covert operations task force. HRT starts by following leads on the bombing, and soon begins uncovering a much larger conspiracy threatening the new-found peace in the Middle East.
The storyline in Sum of All Fears is presented almost exactly as it is in the previous titles. During mission briefings, you'll get a description of the events that happened after your last operation, and what needs to be conducted during this one. You'll have surveillance photos of the objectives you need to reach during the next mission, and newspaper clippings and reports about your exploits or other information of relevance. It puts you in the shoes of the agents working on the operation, and makes you a part of the mission.
Gameplay
There's not a whole lot to say here if you've already played any of the previous games in the Rainbow Six series, and it's likely that, since you're reading this review, you have. For the sake of detail, however, here's how the game works.
Sum of All Fears plays much like a first-person shooter, with much less emphasis on the guns-a-blazing style of gameplay found in most FPS titles. The key here is stealth and strategy. The less your enemy knows about you, the easier it is for you to neutralize them. A single well-placed shot from a terrorist can ruin your day really quick, especially if one of your mission requirements is that you lose no members of your team in combat.
Sum of All Fears features a wide variety of weapons for you to use, but unlike most traditional FPS titles, you're restricted to the weapons you choose prior to the mission plan. This means that, should you run out of ammunition, you can't just pick up a terrorist's weapon and keep going. For the most part, you shouldn't really have a dire need for ammunition in the game. The only weapons I ever had supply issues with were the flashbangs and grenades.
Flashbangs are supposed to be one of the staple tools of the Hostage Rescue Team; It's a non-lethal stun grenade which disables enemy units within the blast radius. This is particularly ideal in close-quarters situations when you have hostages being held in the same room as guards. Since you don't want the hostages killed, you have to use your gunfire judiciously, and flashbangs work well to offer you the opportunity of first strike. Obviously, grenades are the more lethal version of flashbangs, for when hostages aren't a factor, or you have no such reservations about any non-combatants in the area.
Another useful item in Rainbow Six was the heartbeat detector. Basically, you equip it and it sounds a range tone to indicate if there are any people in front of it, perhaps behind a door or wall. Unfortunately, its usefulness is vastly limited in Sum of All Fears, since you very rarely have close-quarters combat situations which necessitate enemy detection.
The Hostage Rescue Team units operate in groups of three, which means you'll always have two teammates to be responsible for. Unlike the earlier games, where your teammates followed their own orders and offered fire support, your immediate HRT teammates will accept orders from you, such as tossing a flashbang into a room, or securing a particular area, or just plain staying put. My only beef with them is that they have virtually no intelligence with regards to how to toss a grenade into a room. They open the door wide open, wait a few seconds, toss the grenade, don't bother to actually close the door again…It's about the worst possible way to handle stealth. They should just crack the door a bit, toss it in through the crack, and then pull and hold the door shut.
All in all, it seems like the game is lacking in tactics and is more about in-the-field strategy of where to deploy your teammates, and how best to approach a situation with an unknown number of Tangos. This really can't be held against Red Storm, though, since they were aiming for an action-based title that people could easily get into. On the other hand, despite how easily people can get into it, they'll get out of it pretty quickly - It only has eleven missions, and those missions have a tendency of being short.
Graphics/Sound
The graphics for Sum of All Fears are very similar to what you'd see with Half-Life, but with more detailed environments. The best place I can possibly convey this impression is on the bank raid mission, where you actually have to storm a bank and comb through its offices looking for resistance while accomplishing your objectives. Offices feature a realistic complement of desks and chairs and computers, and lighting is good for the rooms based on their function (a meeting room, for instance, has more deco lighting than a regular office). The prison mission has industrial-sized laundry equipment and guard towers. It all feels well put together.
Even with all that in mind, though, the geometry and model complexity still seems a bit low in other areas. It's not too bad, though. Running the game at 1024x768 in 32-bit color with all options cranked, the game never hiccuped or anything. It ran smooth as silk, likely thanks to optimizations made possible by the simple room brushes.
The music is pretty similar to prior Rainbow Six titles. Dramatic, but not overpowering either…almost like what you'd find in an action movie during a dramatic fight sequence (Fancy that…). The voice acting, while mostly restricted to mission briefings and details by Clark, is pretty good too. Sound effects are the star of the show here, though. Especially when using EAX, voices and bullet ricochets sound wonderfully behind wooden doors or brick walls. This is one of the best games to demonstrate the features of Creative's environmental audio API, since the game takes place in a variety of different environments and areas (underground cave, cluttered small buildings, outdoors, hallways, a mansion). Other than that, there's ultimately not a whole lot to say here either.
Multiplayer
Ubi Soft includes with Sum of All Fears their own multiplayer matching tool, the key to playing matches online using ubi.com's hosting service. It's not a bad service, but I found it to be quite a bit slow, and the majority of what I saw when I first logged in to the lobby on two separate occasions was a group of nobodys flooding messages. Not fun.
Since there weren't any dedicated servers listed in the hosting service, I joined in a couple of games hosted by some other players on Ubi. For the most part, it was fun, but in Sum of All Fears, unlike most FPS titles, the twitch factor literally *is* life and death. Whereas lag *can* kill you in Quake, or at least cause you a great inconvenience, it *will* kill you in Sum of All Fears, since you can die in two bullets or less, easily. The biggest victim of the latency problem was door opening, however. I'd pop one open, and then wait as long as ten seconds before it'd finally open.
Also, unless you're playing a team battle, there's little reason to differentiate your weapons in a match. All that's really important is to have a gun that you can aim quickly, and preferably one with an automatic mode. Shotguns are useless in free-for-all (you'll never get that close to anyone), as are sniper rifles in most cases. The game just devolves into a bunch of guys running around with rifles - Little to no strategy required, just luck.
Join in a *real* team game, however, and you should definitely find something that floats your boat. That is, of course, provided that you have good players with you that really feel like playing the game. Sum of All Fears is, after all, much better suited as a team-squad game. Since you can individually select your weaponry before starting the game match, you can talk strategy over with your teammates and agree on roles for each player to fill.
Of course, you'll have a hard time finding people to fill those teammate slots. At different points during my testing, Ghost Recon players outnumbered Sum of All Fears players by an average of seven to one. It could be a lot worse, of course…and don't let the ratio fool you. There were still always at least 100 people on Ubi.com in the SoAF lobby, so there are still people wanting to play you.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Good difficulty levels
- Good storyline
- Good missions
Cons
- Teammate AI could be better
- Teammate commands not as easily used in multiplayer
- No level planning tools
- Individual weapon configuration not possible
- Kinda short
Conclusion
What we have here is the case of a mediocre game that manages to break the ranks. I'm not saying that Rainbow Six and its bretheren are mediocre, of course, but by and large, Sum of All Fears has the underpinnings of a rather uninspired game. This is probably due to the fact that it was developed in the shadow of a major motion picture release, riding on the coattails of its predecessors, and eclipsed by its forthcoming highly anticipated sequels, Splinter Cell and Raven Shield (and a new expansion for Ghost Recon to boot).
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That's not to say that Sum of All Fears is the sum of its mediocre parts, of course. It features decent multiplayer which will keep the game interesting after you finish it in less than a day, and makes for a nice appetizer to hold out those who hunger for the next big thing in the series. Don't feel bad for passing it up, though.
SLRating: 7.5/10
Rating Breakdown
Story: 8.0
Lots of details and intelligence available, just like with Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear. Meshes well with the book.
Graphics & Sound: 8.0
Excellent sound effects, and smooth graphics, even at the highest resolution and quality. Some simplistic models though.
Gameplay: 7.5
Decent mix of stealth and firepower. Mostly good level design.
Fun Factor: 8.5
Lots of baddies to gun down, lots of guns to do it with.
Multiplayer: 7.5
Good suite of multiplayer options, but more people are interested in Ghost Recon, and it shows.
Lasting Appeal: 8.0
The game serves mostly as a stopgap between Ghost Recon and Raven Shield, but it's not a bad one.
Final Score: 7.5