Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Gameloft
Publisher: Nokia

For those that rememeber the early days of console first-person shooters on the Playstation, the N-Gage's Ghost Recon will look familiar. Accurate albeit somewhat jagged player models, colorful yet somewhat low resolution textures, and some fairly generic looking level design make this game unable to compete with modern games in the genre. For an N-Gage game, however, it's actually fairly beautiul, and, while its engine lacks the prowess of Ashen, the game runs at a constant 25 or so fps, which is more than can be said of most other 3d games on the platform.

If this game has a forte, it's in the sound category. Some fabulous war/espionage tunes grace the menus, and are filled with high quality samples throughout that even sound good playing out the N-Gage's tinny speaker. During actual gameplay, you can hear the sound of wind, crickets and birds chirping, and dynamic music alters the mood of the game depending on what is going on. In all, Ghost Recon might be the nicest, clearest, and most consistent sounding game on the platform.

Ghost Recon gives you command of four soldiers, and using the "3" key, you can point to an area on the ground and move your units to that spot. You can switch between units at will, and equipping your units with a variety of different weapons depending on the situation provides a layer of strategy. The keys are 100% configurable, and you are able to switch between walking/crouching, zooming, and throwing grenades, in addition to, of course, firing one of your two primary weapons. Like Gameloft's J2ME games, this title has levels that flow well, are varied, and are fun to play many times over.

Probably the worst attribute of this game is the fact that it's so short, taking only an hour or so to beat completely. However, the missions are clearly made to be replayed over and over, and there are several "challenge" modes which provide added replayability. Ashen was a good first-person shooter, but Ghost Recon trumps it in the most important category- fun factor. It can also be played over Bluetooth cooperatively, and given the squad-based nature of the game, I can imagine this mode would be great fun. In all, Ghost Recon isn't much in terms of innovation, but is a solid, entertaining title.