A while back some guys on IRC were raving about Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 for the Xbox. While I'm personally bored with combat shooters, simply out of habit I can't resist listening with some interest when they're being discussed. At the time GameSpot gave it an 8.5, and I recall skimming parts of the review.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw that the PlayStation 2 version of Ghost Recon 2 got a 5.3 from GameSpot. Is the PS2 really falling that far behind? Was the port really butchered, as this score would indicate? Well, the truth turned out to be interesting.

The same game? Apparently not. They're actually two different games. Yes, they share the same name but unlike, say, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell on Xbox and PS2, one is not a port of the other.

I have a hard time thinking that this is anything but sneaky on the part of the publisher, Ubisoft. Take a look at the covers for the games. (Click for a larger version.)

Imagine a PS2 owner, having read a review of the Xbox version or having heard about it from a friend, seeing the PS2 version for sale in a store. The name is the same. The boxes sure look the same, as a quick glance over to the Xbox section affirms. The guy on the front looks the same, although in the PS2 version, presumably he's screaming "Don't buy this crappy game!" The unsuspecting PS2 owner doesn't hear that banshee warning and buys what looks like a sure thing.

Except that they are different. Look above the title and in smaller type the PS2 version says "2007: First Contact" and the Xbox version says "2011: Final Assault". Oops.

Sure, caveat emptor and all that crap, but this is just sneaky, bordering on dishonest.