Tom Clancy Point Of Contact Review
Queila Neubecker
American defense contractor Marin Aerospace is looking to acquire Dalfan Technologies, a Singapore-based company. However, former US senator Weston Rhodes, who is on the Marin Aerospace board of directors, is blackmailed by former Bulgarian intelligence officer and old enemy Tervel Zvezdev, who has a plan to crash the Asian stock market by driving Dalfan stock points down and then gain profit for themselves. After giving in to the plot, Rhodes is given a flash drive with a computer virus that will be installed into the Dalfan computer server in Singapore, unaware that the North Koreans had made the virus and, through General Administrative Services Directorate Deputy Ri Kwan Ju, enlisted Zvezdev's help.
To carry out this plan, Rhodes asks his former Senate colleague and Hendley Associates head Gerry Hendley to facilitate a week-long, third party audit into Dalfan Technologies on behalf of Marin Aerospace to make sure that there are no problems among both parties leading up to the impending merger. He personally selects forensic accountant Paul Brown and financial analyst Jack Ryan, Jr. to oversee the audit. Having known Brown as a colleague from the Central Intelligence Agency years ago, he then secretly entrusts the accountant with planting the flash drive in the Dalfan computer network, under the pretense of him being assigned by the CIA to find out whether China had inserted malware into the system.
Ryan pinpoints the Dalfan headquarters as the location where Brown is being held andwhere his abductors will force him to install the flash drive. He and Lian proceed there, kill the men holding Brown, and then free him. He had given up the password to the drive after being tortured, and as a result, the virus has been uploaded into the network and is set to create chaos when the stock markets open the next day. Because cell service is down in Singapore because of the tropical storm, deterring any contact to the U.S. embassy, Ryan, Brown, and Lian decide to drive all the way to the neighboring country of Malaysia in order to try to stop the virus. Upon arriving in Malaysia in the middle of the heavy rains, the trio are attacked by a group of North Koreans sent by Deputy Ri to eliminate them. Brown sacrifices himself by staying behind and dispatching them, leaving Ryan and Lian to escape. He is then killed in the ensuing gunfight.
Days later, Rhodes is arrested for conspiring to crash the stock market. Brown is given a proper burial in his hometown in the state of Iowa, where Ryan as well as his father, President Ryan, and members of the intelligence community attend. A flashback establishes that Brown was honored in the CIA for saving Rhodes from an ambush by Zvezdev in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1985, where he had seemingly killed the Bulgarian intelligence officer. Meanwhile, Zvezdev was implied to have been killed by the North Koreans for failing to do his job, and his remains were then stuffed in a kimchi jar.
Point of Contact debuted at number three on the Combined Print and E-Book Fiction and Hardcover Fiction[6] categories of the New York Times bestseller list for the week of July 2, 2017, making it Maden's first and highest charting release in the list. In addition, it debuted at number four on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list for the week of June 22, 2017.[7]
The book received generally positive reviews. Publishers Weekly praised it as a "taut, exciting thriller" and that "Clancy fans can rest assured that the state of the franchise is strong."[8] In a featured review, thriller novel reviewer The Real Book Spy said that "After three novels from Grant Blackwood, Mike Maden takes over the Jack Ryan Junior franchise and mixes nail-biting suspense with hard-hitting action to deliver a blockbuster hit that Clancy fans will love."[9]
For reasons not entirely clear, the original Ghost Recon totally passed this reviewer by, despite my having played all the other Tom Clancy games that Ubisoft and Red Storm have been churning out over the last six or so years. Maybe it was the dreadfully uninspiring, muddy, dated visuals that failed to grab the attention the way that Splinter Cell did so effortlessly. Having booted it up it just... didn't grab me. Having played the sequel thoroughly and enjoyed it immensely, yours truly is wondering how he managed to be so dismissive of a game that so obviously pushes so many of the right gaming buttons. These things happen.
The first thing Red Storm has been at pains to address was to overhaul visuals that, by its own admission, were well behind the standard you'd expect from any current gen game. Having struggled to get to grips with the memory restraints of console technology (having previously been ingrained with the lack of optimisation skills that many PC developers come burdened with), the steep learning curve has paid off. The most sensible changed has been to ditch its proprietary tech and usher in the ever-flexible Unreal engine and produce a game that does justice to what the team was gunning for the first time around. If you too have previously chosen to ignore the original and its budget-priced standalone mission pack Jungle Storm (an honest tactic that Ubisoft and Red Storm should be warmly applauded for) then it's simple to think of the Ghost Recon series as Rainbow Six's outdoor-based partner in squad-based elite military butt-kicking.
In Ghost Recon's case you're part of a four-man team of 'Ghosts', a squad of crack military personnel tasked with defusing flashpoint situations; not the kind of frantic terrorist situations of R6, but more to win wars before they even start. Set in near future North Korea - in this case 2011 - the overall campaign is to stop a power hungry general from igniting a regional war. And this is where you come in, playing the entire campaign as Scott Mitchell, a veteran of campaigns in Russia and Cuba with "a reputation for bringing his soldiers home alive". That is, until we started controlling his actions, at least...
The first thing anyone familiar with Rainbow Six will note is how much in common the two games have in just about every area imaginable. Essentially, if you've played and enjoyed a R6 game the interface and 'feel' is almost identical, so you should get on just fine here (although has implemented a third person 'over the shoulder' viewpoint by default, as well as a gunless first person viewpoint that we soon ditched). Again, you have direct control over the squad leader and have overall tactical responsibility over the actions of three other Ghosts dictating basics such as where to move to, whether to follow or hold position, suppress enemy fire as well as flank left or right. It's as straightforward and intuitive a control set up as has been devised for a squad-based game on a console, and in the exact same fashion as R6 packs a whole range of fundamentals onto a humble joypad without compromising on the number of commands at all. But should the interface seem a bit complicated there's always voice recognition support, meaning you can bark orders into the Voice Communicator and upset your housemates and neighbours into the bargain.
Again, as with R6, the success of each mission depends on keeping the squad leader alive, so although you can solider on when members of your team cop a bullet, should Mitchell go down it's time to load in the last save game. Talking of which, the limited save mechanic that served R6 III and its expansion Black Arrow has been abandoned in favour of a much saner 'save anywhere' system - a decision that makes it much easier to scout out levels first without having to constantly backtrack five minutes or more first. It does, however, make the game much easier as a result, with the progress from every mini firefight inevitably being saved to avoid getting caught out.
But unlike R6, the combat takes place exclusively outdoors, giving the gameplay more of that sense of fearful exposure; think the Conflict series mixed with Hidden & Dangerous but with a better engine and minus the ability to switch between squad members (a curious design decision, it has to be said, given that it would retain all the essence of the game but give much more flexibility were it possible to switch to the squaddies). There are few areas in Ghost Recon where you can feel totally safe; cover points are all well and good when the enemy is in front of you, but if they should flank you (and the bastards will if you give them a chance) then you'll probably just about hear the warning cries of your buddies before the force feedback ripples through the joypad and you're sent slumping to the ground.
If you're skill-challenged like this reviewer, dying is something you'll get used to a lot in Ghost Recon 2. In a game where a headshot will kill you instantly, and a trio of bullets will almost certainly do the same, you can't afford to be profligate. Finding good cover points and taking up a crouched or prone stance is the order of the day, as is zooming in carefully and picking off enemy heads one after the other before they even get a chance to loose off a round in anger in your direction. The chances are it'll hit. The chances are you'll die and vow not to make the same mistake again. It's that kind of game. Die, reload, kill, save, die, and repeat to fade. Fortunately the sheer unrelenting tension and action never makes this a tedious process.
Part of the issue is vegetation. Aesthetically it's pretty damned good these days - trees look like, y'know, trees, as opposed to cardboard cutouts. And grass? Yep, it's convincing, it hides things well, it doesn't pop into view the vile way it has done in most games that try to populate their terrain with it. But by god doesn't it make your task harder? Crouched or prone enemies in the acres of tall grass present virtually invisible targets until you alert them and they start shooting seven shades out of you. If any game needed thermal vision, this is it; it's hard to fathom or accept that R6 and Splinter Cell equips gamers with this, yet one game that's screaming out for it doesn't have it. Odd. It's not a major hassle though, but you'll definitely find yourself using the save game option rather more than you might wish to, under the circumstances. There's little more irritating in a game than being killed by something you simply cannot see - and the fact that the AI can see you when you can't see them is something that has the potential to wind a lot of gamers up. It didn't bother us too much (mainly as a result of saving the game a lot and just getting used to the constant need to reload), but be warned that the issue exists. We certainly would have felt more 'elite' with this basic piece of kit, at least, although to be fair to Red Storm the game would probably end up being horribly unbalanced and way too easy if it was possible to simply wander around and take everyone out from a distance. It's a tricky one to call, but in terms of making the game challenging, it arguably made the right one - although maybe there's an argument that introducing an easy skill level with this kit might have been an idea.
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