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very good

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: December 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is a hard expansion pack, harder than the Desert Siege pack which came out this summer. As with the original Ghost Recon, I have found that the best strategy is to take command of your teams one at a time - sending them into battle using friendly AI almost always results in quick death.

For most missions, the best strategy is to send your sniper in with one assualt troop as cover and clear a path. Then send you assualt teams into to clear buildings or destroy armor. One especially good early mission takes place in a rainy jungle at dusk. Using stealth and silence weapons I was able to pick off quite a few enemy patrols. Enemy AI is pretty good - often they can pick off your sniper before you can get off a second shot. Each mission is unique and requires a different strategy.

All in all a great game. Highly recommended.

awesome but hard!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: December 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've played all the Ghost Recon games and this one was one of the coolest. The missions are pretty detailed and there are some cool "specialist" figures to play as. Not to spoil anything but the one problem I had was the last guy you have to face is a capture mission and not a total annihilation one, like I would have hoped.

This portion of the Ghost Recon games is one of the hardest that's for sure. The reason is because many of the levels are in a rainy environment or a foggy one. The computer tends to spot you rather quickly obviously, since they don't have to look for you like we do. I give this game a four only because giving a five would have to be an epic game and this one is just a really good one; definitely worth getting though.

Good game, but nothing new.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: January 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you liked Ghost Recon you are bound to love Island Thunder. This is a solid expansion pack. It does more than add missions; it adds some great new weapons to play with and some features that further enhance the experience. All that said, it does little if anything to assuage the irritating aspects of the game.

The tropical setting is nice, and there are some memorable missions. The lush green jungle is welcome brake from the vast arid desert and drab woodland of the previous missions. Though most of the environment is scratched together from assets of the previous games. And the helicopter insertions are cool if a bit cheap, since they are featured mostly in cut scenes rather than a playable part of the game. One of the features I enjoyed was being able to rename the characters. It doesn't have any bearing on the gameplay, but it's cool to play with "A. Schwarzenegger".

The game it self is the same. While that isn't a bad thing, there are some parts of it I find hard to appreciate. For one the AI is still quirky. Enemies can zero in on the player and fire with laser accuracy at extreme ranges. Even when well concealed from view the enemy AI is uncanny at times. Teammates still wonder in to the player's line of fire. They are also zealous at times when they don't need to be. I am still at a loss to explain why they move out in to plain view (and get shot) when they should stay back. And I have been shot in the back by my own trigger-happy squad.

That's the exception and not the rule however and there is still enough to make a good expansion.

A letter home from a Ghost in Cuba

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Dear family

As you all know, I've been in the Ghosts now for quite some time now. I've fought in the red uprising in Russia. I tangoed with Ethiopian warlords in Africa. But none of them were as frightening as my recent assignment to Cuba. As you probably know from the headlines back home, Castro died about a year ago and for the first time in a long time, democratic elections were held. But dear family, you dont know the pain and suffering that I and my squad had to endure to get those elections to happen.

It started out simple enough. I went in with my fellow ghosts to Cuba to help safeguard those elections. After fighting in two previous conflicts, we all figured this would be a piece of cake. But on our first mission our experience became a hell of gunfire and death. We went into a tabacco plantation to find two suspicous packages that were dropped by an airplane. Within two and a half minutes all of my squad mates were dead. Cut down by t-shirt and blue jean wearing' cuban thugs. Our state of the art weapons and training are all but useless against these guys who can see about three times farther then we can and can fire with pinpoint accuracy that would embaress olympic shooters (while firing automatic weapons!). The thugs from Ethiopia and Europe were babies compared to these SOB. I was lucky to get out alive by aborting the mission. But even then it took the lives of over twenty of my friends and several repeated attempts to complete the mission. I've never been more scared in my life then I was when fighting in the field. All my buddies back in college say that video games like resident evil and Doom are scary. They should try fighting in the military, then they would see what scary means.

The rest of my tour in Cuba wasent any easier. We had to slug through swamps, run through wind swept mountian ranges, and go onto a pretty beach. I will say this for our commanders, they keep coming up with interesting missions for us to go on, but I swore that we got so many "Capture the base" missions that I'm sick to death of operating in them. But each mission we went on was incredibly hard, due to those damn thugs who have supernatural senses and impossibly good aim. My fellow squad mates can just barley hold thier own in a firefight, but they constantly need me to jump in and control them directly. A bit irritating to say the least.

I thought the worst was over when we got our final mission (you folks probably shouldent read this, lest you know what happens before the press gets hold of it back home). We had found out that a punk named Priego was in charge of the military operations all along. We all wanted to go in and plug a grenade up his...well, you know. But those idiots in the top brass decided that we needed to capture him alive. Who the hell thought of that?! You should have seen the look on everybody's face when we learned that we had to do. This guy put everyone through hell, caused the death's of so many of my friends and made us all suffer, and the top brass wanted us to capture him?! What idiot thought of that?! They told us that if Priego was killed, he "would become a martyr, and that's the last thing the new government needs." Give me a break you idiots. We wanted to kill him! But alas, we went in and captured that punk, and our time in Cuba came to a dissapointing end.

But Cuba did have its bright spots. Everything was really pretty, much nicer then the deserts of Africa or the forests of Europe. And when I play the missions over again in my minds eye, I can tell where all the bad guys will be, and thus I can kill them a lot easier. So now my tour of duty with the ghosts is over, and i'm coming home. Good riddence, this mission was too damn hard anyway.

Your son
Ghost # 325

Not bad.. AI is tough, new weapons are pretty cool

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: October 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is a pretty decent addition to a great game. The only thing I recall about the AI is the last mission- Bad guy ran for the helicopter (if he gets there, you lose. If you kill him, you lose.) Since there was no way to "subdue" him, Ie. shoot the gun out of his hand or something, I lost the mission and had to find a different way to win. (If you really wanna know, I went in with 1 character with an MP5SD and he never had a chance to run.) So- I wasn't all that impressed with the AI... if you consider that an AI-related action.

That said, the new weapons are cool. Faster-shooting (less accurate) sniper rifle, automatic grenade launcher, suppressed M4 (good because the MP5SD was sooo weak against armored dudes). I still don't like Ghost Recon's way of assigning weapons packs to characters, and the limitations, compared to Rogue Spear.

It still amazes me how the enemy can see and nail you from 300 yards off, even if you are in a ... Ghille suit and crawling.

There is a lot of fog in this mission pack... (bad news for you snipers, but its still quite playable as a sniper.)

I did like that the new maps include a real variety of landscapes- city, village, military-style fortress, outdoors, etc.

The new weapons don't help the fact that close quarters combat sucks compared to Rogue Spear.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing the new missions, but I dont know if it was worth the money. (Okay, it probably was.)

Ghost recon Island Thunder

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I like this game very much,but it has only eight levels and that just isn't enough.I wish it had a least 16 levels.That my friends is the only thing wrong with the game.I love war games anyway,I don't think there is enough war games out for me!Buy it,Play it,you will love it.

Excellent addition

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is a great addition to Ghost Recon! The single player maps are alot of fun. The new "insertion" scenes are alot of fun, where you get to see your team ride in on a boat or chopper. If you like to sneak around and enjoy the level like me, 8 levels will be plenty... Most of them took me near an hour to complete.

The single player action is pretty intense. The AI of both your team and enemy seems to be better than the originals and the level design and realism puts you right in the front lines.

The multiplayer addins were add some new variety to the game. Defend is great and the new weapons keep the game interesting...

Great New Mission Pack

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a great mission pack. The new missions are challenging. Be sure to visit locogamer.com to find awesome mods.

Soingle Player isn't everything!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Most people tell that the game has some problems because it is too short. But that is no problem, the good thing about this expansion is its multiplayer part. That is the best part of expansions, not only playing the misssions, also playing multiplayer in the maps, and that is what makes it 5 stars.

Island Thunder

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 13
Date: September 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The second expansion pack for the game that won several Game of the Year Awards, what else is there to say...If you're new to Ghost Recon and Island Thunder, once you hop in you'll love it...then swing by [the website] and join in with the crowd and you'll soon realize the full potential of the game.

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