As you may well know, the country of Georgia and Russia are totally going at it right now. The body count is rising and it's a political mess. I'm not writing this post to talk politics. No, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite games of All-Time - Ghost Recon.
The original PC version of Ghost Recon was released in November 2001. The entire campaign took place in Russia with some locations being in Tblisi and Ossetia - the sites of today's turmoil. That's what sparked my interest in jumping back into the game again. And I'm so glad I did - it's truly one of the greatest games made. I can play it for hours and hours; it never gets boring. In fact, it's massively suspenseful.
Ghost Recon was the very first (and one of the very few) games where enemies in camouflage are 100% effective. You can be lying in prone position on the ground as a sniper in your ghillie suit, scoping out the area, and not spot the enemy crawling slowly toward you in full camo - it's that amazing.
It has every multiplayer option you could hope for....and I always hope for Co-Op. It has excellent support for Co-Op as well as a bunch of other modes. My favorite way to play is to just jump into a Quick Mission on Castle MP06 (daytime), make Team A be only myself as a sniper with an SP25 + Grenades and Team B be a Demolitions expert with an MM1 and a Tank Killer rocketlauncher. I like trying to take the entire place out by myself. If I get killed then I'm auto-switched to the Demo member and I just go nuts bombing the whole place until I'm taken down (it's inevitable). I start with a Team B member because I like hearing the confirmation of every kill.
After saving Moscow from the Russian rebels, the game ends. But that's not all. Red Storm released two additional add-ons: Desert Siege (2002) and Island Thunder (2002). DS took place in Africa and IT took place in Cuba. Both are just spectacular experiences. The storylines are serious and the environments and missions are sublime. In all games, the enemy AI is what totally shines - they are TOUGH. You'll know what I mean if you try to play a map by yourself with no backup. Crazy suspense and totally FUN.
You can buy all of this in one big Ghost Recon Gold box for about $20. It's so worth it. The graphics look dated by today's standards but it's the gameplay that will live forever. It's DirectX so it works great on everything. I play it on Vista with no issues. Performance is top-of-the-line as the game is 7 years old. Go pick it up - you'll love it.