The Double-A Team: Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars does real justice to the series

I suspect everyone has a game like Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. A game that didn't launch to much fanfare, and perhaps wasn't even bought with particularly high expectations. Even so, a game that has stubbornly stuck around, being played and replayed, until the whole thing is pebble-smooth with the force of sheer repetition and fondness.

As it happens, my own personal Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. I think I reviewed it back in the day and thought it was a bit better than fine - a chunky turn-based tactics game for the 3DS. But over the years I kept playing it and kept playing it. Love bloomed. Genuine love. I'm not afraid to say it: I love Shadow Wars.

There are two things that make it special, I think. The first is that it's produced by Julian Gollop, of X-Com fame, so you're in good hands from the off. The game's squat little units and dusty terrain looks pretty good in 3D, sort of retro-futuristic, like glimpses of a neat evolutionary dead-end. The campaign's very generous and inventive too. Lots of missions, lots of gimmicks thrown in, but with the spine of your squad and their abilities - returning fire is a particularly nice spin on Overwatch, and the game has a great heavy and a great sniper - to keep everything honest. There is a craft to Shadow Wars that I find wonderfully soothing. If you want knotty little turn-based tactic puzzles to solve and you're determined to do it on the 3DS rather than something that plays Into the Breach, this is your guy.

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from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/3d5UVAo