The Sum of All Fears Preview

Anyone with a modicum of PC gaming experience knows that games based on movies have, for the most part, been major disappointments--even when the films that inspired them are quite good. But while there's no way of knowing whether or not The Sum of All Fears (starring Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman) will be this summer's action blockbuster, rest assured that UbiSoft's latest tactical shooter will do much more than simply ride the coattails of its celluloid cousin.

Though both movie and game are based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name, Paramount Pictures made a few changes based on casting and marketing decisions. In the novel, Jack Ryan is already CIA director, and the bad guys are of Arab descent; in the film, Ryan is simply an analyst at "The Company" (to more accurately reflect the age of star Affleck), and the culprits are neo-Nazis.

You begin the game as the leader of an FBI hostage rescue team (HRT). Though The Sum of All Fears (SOAF for short) uses the Ghost Recon engine, the opening missions will immediately conjure images of Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear. On your first outing, you must infiltrate a TV station that's been seized by a militia group called the Mountain Men to broadcast its doctrine (naturally the staff is being held hostage), and then it's off to the group's compound to rescue two fellow FBI agents who were captured when they attempted to serve arrest warrants for members of the group.

But it turns out these are merely dress rehearsals for a much larger drama. After terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl in Baltimore (in the novel, the game took place in Denver), your HRT is attached to the CIA and sent to a warehouse in Israel to find evidence corroborating suspicions of the weapon's origins. From there, SOAF sends you on a globetrotting expedition as the list of suspects is constantly narrowed. In Lebanon, you must demolish a weapons factory and a prison used as terrorist headquarters, and then it's off to the Transvaal in South Africa to assault a training facility, disrupt an arms deal, and save diamond miners being held hostage. Eventually, the trail leads to the world of high finance, and your final sorties take place in elegant mansions, high-tech corporate headquarters, and a time-worn Australian castle.

As previously noted, SOAF was created with the Ghost Recon engine, but it differs in a variety of ways. Unlike in Ghost Recon, the bulk of each mission here is spent in exquisitely detailed and utterly convincing indoor environments (check out the computer monitors found in many of the missions). While Ghost Recon put you in charge of up to six soldiers divided into three squads, SOAF gives you direct control over only two immediate teammates--the behavior of other squads is scripted, and you have little or no say about their fate. Some players might find this slightly frustrating as they hear casualty reports streaming in from other teams, but on the other hand, the challenge of coordinating your group's actions with the other teams maneuvers can be hugely rewarding.

Similarities and Differences

One thing that SOAF does have in common with Ghost Recon is an emphasis on action over tactical planning. Weapon kits are predefined, and as you move through the game's 11 missions, new kits are unlocked. You begin with a variety of HRT kits and then are given access to spec ops equipment, assault packages, and close-quarter combat (CQB) weapons. Surprisingly, no weapons manufacturers are listed--you'll know it's a Steyr Aug SMG, for instance, but the generic description doesn't confirm it.

For gamers who want to focus on shooting rather than exploration, Red Storm has included a default plan from CIA headquarters similar to what's found in the Rainbow Six line--a line is displayed on the minimap, and it guides you to each objective. Those seeking a greater challenge will probably want to disable this feature, as well as the threat indicator that provides you with the general location of enemy forces. The heartbeat sensor returns in SOAF; on the easy setting, its display is automatic, but on higher difficulty levels, you'll have to activate it yourself.

Red Storm has recently put increased emphasis on graphics, and SOAF is proof-positive that the extra effort has paid off. It certainly doesn't hurt that most missions take place indoors--external scenery such as trees and shrubbery is always difficult to create--but even so, the little details that abound in each setting subtly add to the immersive nature of the gameplay. Clear out a sitting room in a mansion, for instance, and you might stop and examine a butterfly collection or admire the ornate decorations on a wall-mounted lamp. About the only complaint is that you still can't see the weapon you're carrying--only a targeting reticule--but that's standard in Red Storm shooters.

Though the missions are scripted--you'll always find enemies in the same vicinity--the game's AI ensures that foes almost always respond as they should. During one mission at an Australian bank, for instance, a tango enters the room and walks behind a counter. Fire at him and miss, and you'll see him duck for cover--and when you work your way to where you last spotted him, he's nowhere to be found because he wisely took up position just inside a narrow doorway near the vault. We say "almost always" because as we played the beta version of the game, we noticed that the bad guys were a bit slow in running away from grenades--actually, they often simply stood there as the projectile bounced off a wall and landed within spitting distance.

Controlling your teammates is as simple as hitting hotkeys to determine movement (hold/advance), rules of engagement (recon/assault), and formation (loose/close). You can also issue orders on the fly for teammates to open doors, clear rooms, and toss grenades by placing the targeting reticule over a doorway and hitting the Ctrl key to bring up a command menu. In the beta version, teammates occasionally got stuck trying to enter doorways--a problem seen in Rogue Spear--but all it took to get them back on the move was to walk past them and then reenter the room.

Final Thoughts

Eleven single-player missions might seem a bit skimpy for a campaign, but they're likely to yield quite a bit of game time when played on the highest difficulty setting. As in other Red Storm shooters, all campaign missions can be replayed in lone wolf or firefight mode, with the latter generating some truly hair-raising action as enemies sometimes pop up before you have time to take a deep breath.

Six multiplayer maps will be bundled with the game, and the venues are perfect for close-quarter fighting. Fans of Ghost Recon and the Rainbow Six games will appreciate the opportunity to take a virtual visit to the Red Storm offices in Morrisville, North Carolina (though we were a little let down because we couldn't stroll across the parking lot to a nearby deli, where we've dined on several visits to the company). Other multiplayer locations include a health club, a parking garage, an art gallery, a reservoir, and the "killhouse" featured in the game's training missions. Though the game won't be compatible with maps created for Ghost Recon or Desert Siege, UbiSoft says that a mission-editing tool will most likely be available either when the game launches or shortly thereafter.

Almost all the numerous multiplayer modes from Ghost Recon are featured in SOAF (Hamburger Hill was not in the beta), along with a new solo mode called "cat and mouse." All the players start as cats, with the first person scoring a kill becoming the mouse. The mouse is given only a pistol and is highlighted with fire; the winner is the player who makes the most kills as a mouse. While SOAF's in-game matching interface remains unchanged from the one used in Desert Siege and Ghost Recon--a polite way of saying it's still a bit unwieldy--the odds are good that other matching services like GameSpy Arcade will be supported. How well the multiplayer coding works remains to be seen, because this was the one single aspect of the game that wasn't stable in the beta release--and even if it had been stable, there were no servers up and running on which we could test the game's Internet performance.

The Sum of All Fears carries the same system requirements as Ghost Recon, which means it should run quite nicely on midrange systems--we experienced silky smooth animation on a 1.1GHz Pentium with 256MB RAM and a GeForce 2TI video card. Sound effects are highly convincing even without EAX support and add greatly to the realism by tipping you off to the location of enemies as they fire on the teams not under your control.

In the best of all possible worlds, games based on movies arrive at the same time as the flick hits theaters--and that's precisely what UbiSoft has planned for The Sum of All Fears. Look for both to arrive on May 31. Be sure to check back then for our review and final thoughts on this game.