The best Tom Clancy gaming titles ever

While legendary writer Tom Clancy has passed away, the influence of his work on the world of video games is certainly here to stay. Being the nerds that we are, we believe that the best way to keep Clancy’s legacy alive would be to look at some of the best games he has worked on.

Back in 1996, Clancy co-founded a game development studio, known at the time as Red Storm Entertainment. Later, the studio was picked up by Ubisoft, and many games have been developed and published with his name on them. While his name has been featured on many titles, his involvement in them is unclear. However, here are some of our favourite games with his name on them.

The Hunt for Red October (1987)
One of the first bearing Clancy’s name and influence, The Hunt for Red October is loosely based on the novel of the same name. The game revolves around the US Navy looking for a Soviet submarine named Red October. The game itself was a simulation game where players controlled Red October and carefully navigated towards US waters avoiding the Soviet Navy. Quite an old game, it was originally released for the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST and IBM PC.

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The game had a startling lack of Sean Connery

Rainbow Six (1998)
The Rainbow Six franchise has been one of the most important franchises in gaming history. Along with the SWAT and Ghost Recon series, it brought the tactical FPS genre to the forefront. As opposed to the more popular style of FPSes at the time (run and gun), Rainbow Six instead concentrated on stealth and tactics. Instead of being bullet sponges, all the characters in the game, including Rainbow operatives, terrorists, hostages and even the player character could be wounded and killed in the span of a couple of seconds.

Before every mission, players went through a planning stage where they would pick operatives that would be involved in the mission along with the weapons and equipment they would carry into the field. Players would also set up waypoints and command lists which the AI would follow. One of the major reasons of success for the franchise has been the “easy to understand, hard to master” aspect. Successful missions would hardly take more than a few minutes, but failing and retrying a mission for hours was pretty usual.

This was “hi-def” back in the day

Ghost Recon (2001)
Much like SWAT and Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon is considered to be one of the forerunners and Ur Examples of tactical shooter games. Much like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon is a tactical game more than a typical FPS. However, instead of Rainbow Six’s closed corridors and buildings, Ghost Recon puts you in bigger wide-open levels. There are also a much higher number of operatives available for players to control—three fireteams named Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, sporting three soldiers each. Each character has a class, which decides his equipment and weapons.

Unlike the tactical planning stage of Rainbow Six, however, Ghost Recon was always in first-person mode. Players could issue a limited set of commands for maneuvering and engaging through a command map. It also featured a permadeath system where if a soldier was rendered “out of action” during a mission, they would be presumed dead and would be unavailable for the rest of the campaign.

We couldn’t find an older picture for Ghost Recon

Splinter Cell (2002)
While Splinter Cell by no means created the stealth genre (that credit would go to Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series), it did have a more ‘hardcore’ stealth aspect to it. Tom Clancy’s involvement in the series, while minimal from a development standpoint, is still worth noting since the game’s success spawned a series of novels of the same name written by David Michaels—one of Clancy’s pseudonyms.

In Splinter Cell, players take control of Sam Fisher as he sneaks around in levels. Stealth was paramount in the early games, where even the slightest mistakes could end up with Sam Fisher having to face, and more often than not, die to multiple enemies. Fisher did have weapons, but they acted as tactical equipment more than implements to kill enemies. Fisher could shoot out sources of light, providing darkness to sneak around in, or shoot at something loud to provide a distraction.

While the recent games in the franchise don’t have the hardcore stealth aspect to them, Blacklist did bring some of it back with a greater emphasis on moving around while remaining unseen.

Sam Fisher in all of his polygonal stealthy glory

That’s our list. Sure, there have been many games with Clancy’s name on them, but most of them have been sequels. A couple of new IP that were made in the last few years haven’t been very good (cough-HAWX-cough). However, Clancy’s contribution to the world of gaming has been undeniable.

Cover image credit: The Guardian