Year of the Monkey

Been playing a Vietnam themed Ghost Recon mod that was mentioned on our forums, Year of the Monkey; so far this is an awesome mod lol. Being stuck in the middle of a jungle, well is a terrain type that feels more natural then desert missions ^_^. Moment I got to the intro and heard the mods music taste, I was hooked. YOTM does music and sounds more "in period", some of which are songs that are more my style then oft' found today. GR already has awesome sound effects, and YOTM don't do a bad job there either hehe.


Launched the first map on elite, ordered the sniper to an overwatch position and the next thing I know, I'm laying flat with helmet to the grindstone as bullets are whizzing by our insertion! Ordered all teams to surpress and I put down a bit of frag cover in order to peel alpha & bravo out under sniper fire. Oh man, what a map. Tried circling around the flanks in groups (leaving our sniper as bait lol), only for Bravo to get pinned down; I'm moving, can't see crap, bullet zips over my ear and I dived straight to the ground; Bravo opened fire on their positions. Looking over my shoulder confirmed my ears summery, the poor slept behind me had lost his head; crawling back to safer ground and moving across the stream, so I could regroup on Bravo for a tactical withdrawal (they had just moved out of cover when we took fire). Lo' and behold, 3 bodies moving in the water about 35m to Bravos 4 o'clock.

"I don't give a f*** what that is, let's rock"

and Alpha went weapons free, next thing I know we're picking shrapnel out of our asses from behind lol. Swithced to bravo team, to find 2 men down and one stuck in a tree, being shot at by an enemy 3 metres away..... little M60 fire and problem solved. Maybe the AI isn't totally used to the terrain?


Eventually ended up with just the Sniper left, when I found a small area dug into the earth and covered over with camo -- leading into a tunnel system going all over the map. Now that's what I call attention to detail!!!!! managed to eventually find my way out, only to see the end of tunnel come up practically behind our insertion point! Stuck my head out, and lost it without even seeing a thing.



Loaded it on Multilayer again, sent re spawns to infinite, then kitted out for action. M60 General Purpose Machine Gun plus Frags. That was a crazy map. I went to search around the spawn point, next thing I know there are two X-Rays behind me: little bastards had a small encampment buried into the ground where I couldn't see, came out and shot me lol. In attempts to attack the village position, met with heavy fire and got blown up by grenades several times; ended up using frags and M60 fire just to pepper then enough I could circle around between flanking positions.


A few lives later, managed to creep into the village undetected, passing up a kill - then lit up their world. Main problem was the tunnels and having to frag both sides of a T-Junction; killing the enemy or forcing them to take cover, then trying to engage before getting shot in the back lol. At least though, GR doesn't seem to be capable of simulating booby traps... lol.


Played through several of the missions and it was just awesome; cook a few goons (I love setting ambushes), check your six, then move out, and next thing you know Charlie's fried your ass.


One thing I love about Ghost Recon, is it has that feel to it, that feel that behind any rock or tree could be lurking a nasty surprise. That's something that is sorely missing from war games set in urban environments, where you generally know where threats can come from, where they probably will be, and good cover is scarce.