The Sum of All Fears

The Sum of All Fears bravely asks the question: "what if Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon fucking sucked?" Built on the technology of the aforementioned tactical first-person shooter—the genre's pinnacle prior to the release of SWAT 4—Sum is little more than an infuriating movie tie-in that fails at the few ideas it has to separate itself from the other Tom Clancy's tactical shooters.

If you've played Ghost Recon or the first three PC Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six games, you will sort of know what to expect from Sum: it's a tactical shooter that attempts to synthesize elements from both of the aforementioned series. You give orders in the field like in Ghost Recon, but you're still following a (in this game's case, completely predetermined) mission plan like in Rainbow Six. You control a team of three, and most missions will have other, AI-controlled three-man teams that follow different routes. They'll often stop and wait for you to complete objectives or reach waypoints before continuing their routes; this is similar to Rainbow Six's go-code system, but it's completely automated here. Pressing the Control key opens a pause menu to give orders to your own team. Orders include the sorts of things you'd expect in SWAT: stuff like "open door" or "clear room."

Sum's shortfalls become apparent before you even start playing. Instead of choosing equipment for each team member like in the other Clancy tactical shooters, you are given a list of team-wide loadouts to choose from. In addition, you're not even incentivized to pay attention to the mission briefings, as the game's mission plans tell you all you need to know (just follow the line on your mini-map) in-game.

And then, once you are in the game, it only gets worse. Squad AI is basically incompetent at anything other than shooting. They love getting stuck in doorways, and "open and clear" orders usually involve teammate A trying to do the whole ordeal himself while teammate B stares off into the wrong direction.

Ghost Recon, the game whose engine Sum uses, had its share of really frustrating moments. The worst of these were the segments in which you had to fight indoors, as they virtually always devolved into reaction-time tests in which you'd end up constantly quicksaving and quickloading against enemies who would camp in corners and shoot you before you could even see them. If you somehow thought those parts were fun, then you're in luck: The Sum of All Fears takes place almost entirely indoors. Almost every individual room in this game is more of a just-frame quick-time event than a test of tactical planning or decision making. To make matters worse, your weapons are even less accurate than they were in Ghost Recon, with even more exaggerated reticle bloom that takes significantly longer to subside, so even if you did react in time, it's still a game of chance as to whether or not you'll hit the enemy (who, keep in mind, gets to stand completely still while waiting for you, guaranteeing them pinpoint accuracy) before they kill you.

And then, even if you were insane enough to find any fun in this disaster, it's all over almost as soon as it starts. The campaign consists of eleven missions, almost all of which are under ten minutes long. It's mercifully brief, guaranteeing not to take 800MB of precious disk space for very long.

All the positive things I have to say about Sum are technological holdovers from Ghost Recon. Environments generally look decent, and they're pretty varied for such a short game. The sound design is really good, and it supports EAX just like Ghost Recon. But none of that matters in a game this agonizing to play.

Simply put, you should never play The Sum of All Fears. If you're reading this, you've probably already played one of the good Tom Clancy tactical shooters. Just go replay one of those instead.