Strategy so good it hurts. Well done Ubisoft.

User Rating: 8.5 | Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars 3DS
Whether your a fan of the other Ghost Recon games or Tom Clancy in general doesn't much matter here. What your basically looking at is Advanced Wars all growed up, and its excellent!!

Before purchasing this game I read around the forums quite a bit to see what other folks had to say about the depth and playability. It was getting great marks and one poster even went into depth about how the 3D effects make it seem like your controlling a battle inside a diorama. They were correct, it give's off quite an impressive "miniatures" feel especially considering the fact it takes line of sight, and elevation into account of range, accuracy and damage. The graphics are un-impressive at best, but the game play more then makes up for it. There are also some short intro videos in 3d for each level, and those are impressive. Also some of the special abilities will prompt a short/quick 3d video. The 3D effects in general are subtle but sweet and acceptable.

The first few levels you spend learning quite a bit about how to control your different units, what their specialties are *Sniper, *Assault *Medic *Gunner *Engineer and of course *Ghost and how the different terrain and elevations effect them and their movement and shooting. It seems like after almost every single level you unlock more skirmish, challenge missions, and multi-player so the game just keeps getting bigger until your about half way through it instead of getting smaller. The amount of extras and add ons packed in here outside the main campaign, you definitely get your moneys worth.

Each character is upgradeable as well as you play through different missions. At the beginning of each mission sometimes you will have to select only a few of your soldiers and only the ones who partake in the battle are eligible for upgrade. You can upgrade their guns armor and special weapons, and each iteration of them is sweeter then the next. You can also upgrade things like their movement, hit points and special abilities/equipment.

The sound design as far as the sound effects go is awesome, the footsteps, gun fire and explosions are dead on and the "surround sound" effect the 3ds puts off really enhances all that, especially through a good pair of headphones. The music however,..... is extremely repetitive, and I found myself shutting it off and switching to just sound effects after the 3rd mission. The problem is they use one song for all the missions in one chapter. A small gripe, but worth noting if you are into game soundtracks.

The objectives in the campaign are varied enough to keep things interesting on each new map, up until about the last chapter where objectives and scenarios start to get a bit stale. The story overall was easily pass-off-able, i.e. easy not to care about and very generic, but again, the Game Play more then makes up for the lack of interesting or compelling story.

The multi-player missions are also very fun especially if you can find someone else who has been practicing or playing the game a lot to keep it interesting. The lack of on-line multi-player was my reason for reselling it after beating it almost up to 100% completion. If it would have had online multi-player the replay value would have been infinite, and I do sincerely hope they add it as a feature to the next title for the 3ds.

The game play is turn based and allows for good pick up and play functionality when you've only got a few minutes here and there to make a few quick moves or turns. This was another reason the game really appealed to me because I could make a few moves in the morning, a few through the afternoon and maybe a few more at night, and finish a level or two every other day. The pacing is perfect and the game lends itself very well to being played on a hand held/portable.

Anyone who likes strategy games and or turn based warfare will no doubt have an excellent time with this title and as far as 3DS games go I would easily consider it among the best so far.