Chess for chumps - Examiner (Washington, D.C.), The

How must a best-selling author of political thrillers feel tohave his name attached to a game whose dialogue is atrocious?

Does Tom Clancy even know this is happening? There have beengames featuring his name before, so maybe he views Tom Clancys GhostRecon: Shadow Wars as just another payday courtesy of the boomingvideo game industry. But at a time in his career when his books haveTom Clancys on their cover more often than Tom Clancy that is,theyre essentially creator-approved fan fiction he should have timeto intervene in the release of a game whose script might have keptit from earning the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality back in thedays of the Nintendo Entertainment System, when even laughabletranslations from Japanese got the green light.

When youre not suffering through ethnic stereotypes and Sovietsdressed in gray cloaks they must have stolen off their founder whenviewing his preserved body on a tour of the Lenin Mausoleum, youspend your time with Shadow Wars in turn-based combat with bad guyson grids.

Its kind of like the medieval-set Fire Emblem, except for one bigdifference: In Fire Emblem, it makes sense that a sword strikingsomeones armor wouldnt necessarily kill them, but usually draintheir health to a range where one or two more attacks would finishthem off; in Shadow Wars, when someone is blasted at close rangewith a machine gun or even a missile launcher! and just loses afraction of his health, its absurd.

The excellent Advance Wars series brought this wonderful,chesslike genre into modern times by making each unit that is, eachpiece taking up one space on the battlefield grid a group ofsoldiers, planes, etc. This way, a 30 percent loss of a units healthcould be represented by three of 10 soldiers dying, achieving thesame practical effect as a flurry of bullets knocking out 30 percentof one soldiers health, but without looking ridiculous.

The game isnt all bad a few unit types, like one thats invisibleunless an enemy moves to an adjacent square, bring to mind theclassic board game Stratego but if you insist on using your 3DS toplay a tactics game set in modern times, take advantage of thesystems ability to play regular DS games, and go get Advance Wars:Dual Strike. Ryan Vogt