'Ghost Recon' series is off the charts on testosterone scale

GAME: TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON: FUTURE SOLDIER (PS3)

AGE: 18

PRICE: R350

While researching the Ghost Recon series on the internet, I found a site with what appears to be transcripts from meetings at Red Storm. The first seems to be from about 2000:

"Okay, we've got a brief. The boss wants us to put together a tactical shooter about US special forces. They'll be the best of the best, capable of operating behind enemy lines and absolutely deniable. The player will control a team who have the right to kill anyone they come across - no one's a civilian if he's not wearing the Stars and Stripes on his sleeve.

"If the military doesn't actually have units like this, they should. A free-for-all shooter in army camo with big guns and a bit of stealth and strategy?"

"Yup, and he wants it called Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. The 'ghost' (GST) is for 'Group for Specialised Tactics' - but it also makes the team like spooks. Cool, hey?"

"Yeah, but I thought having a dude's name above the title went out with Sid Meier."

"I didn't hear that. Be good if something big happened to make people proud to be American soldiers again, wouldn't it?"

The second is from about 2010:

"OKAY, Mr Clancy wants another Ghost Recon. He's tired of handing over outlines for other novelists to write for him and needs some credibility from a good game."

"I hear Rockstar are bringing out a new Max Payne. Are we going to be competing with them?"

"Of course. But ours will be better. Much better. We'll show those pantywaists how to make a kick-ass shooter."

"We'll have a coherent plot, then? And better AI? And some humour?"

"Never needed that before, have we? No, it'll be the usual third-person shooter, going into first-person for aiming.

"We'll give the player sensational graphics, game mechanics to die for, really cool boy toys and enough patriotic jingoism to refloat Old Ironsides.

"Mr Clancy says some of his pals in the Pentagon would like to see a pamphlet inserted in every box: 'If you love this game - and you're really good at it - Uncle Sam wants YOU.' Apparently gamers are really nifty at steering those drones that fly above areas where we don't want to waste good American blood.

"We've got to set this in about 2025, so that any current hostiles won't be offended. We can then also go and kill people in all sorts of places where the governments currently support the US. Like Central and South America and Africa - and we can even go and kick some Russian butt. We'll call it Future Soldier."

"Okay, it shouldn't take long as we've got most elements of this franchise down pat."

"Get to it then."

"Um. If we've got a few months available, I've got an idea that might appeal to Mr Clancy and his friends. It's also a war game, and I'm using the working title: Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Genocide."

"Nah, our target market is teenage boys. They won't want something not written by a man. Unless, of course, you can get that Twilight woman to lend her name to the Future Soldier zombie add-on?"

RATING: 8.2 (off the charts on the testosterone scale)

This review is testament to Beffon's rich imagination