If you have an Amazon Prime subscription, you have either already watched or are planning to watch Jack Ryan: Ghost War, a new movie that serves as a sequel to the fantastic series. John Krasinski has become the face of the Ryanverse on the small screen, but Tom Clancy is most synonymous with games nowadays, with them even arguably surpassing the novels in mainstream exposure.
Ubisoft is not currently in a good place, but the publisher has released its share of great games that fit the Ryanverse, even if most of them are set in an alternate timeline and don’t feature Jack Ryan or John Clark. If you have Ghost War fever and want to take a longer holiday in this universe (or an adjacent one), play these legendary Tom Clancy games.
As stated in the intro, not all of these games are part of the Ryanverse, but we are going to focus on Tom Clancy titles that fit into that world well. Also, don’t worry, we are going to mention a few proper Ryanverse games.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
Enter The Ryanverse As John Clark
Before Tom Clancy fell into the hands of Ubisoft, Red Storm Entertainment developed and released the first Rainbow Six game, and it is actually based on the novel with the same title rather than an original creation that slaps on the “Tom Clancy” name like a sticker. The game was actually developed in tandem with the book, resulting in the most authentic to the source material release in the franchise. Unlike a few others coming up soon, Rainbow Six is set in the Ryanverse, with players actually getting to play as John Clark.
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Before 1998, first-person shooters were defined by DOOM, Quake, and GoldenEye 007; you know, games where you mostly sprinted through hallways, hoarded massive arsenals, and absorbed hundreds of bullets. Don’t get me wrong, I love all three of those games to this very day, even if one of them has aged like a glass of milk (guess which one). However, Rainbow Six was a breath of fresh air that established the tactical base Tom Clancy would become synonymous with. You need to plan missions and then execute them to near-perfection, with a single hit meaning death.
While naturally dated, Rainbow Six is still pretty impressive, and it is the best option for players who want to embody John Clark.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (Chaos Theory & Blacklist)
Sam Fisher Is Gaming’s Equivalent Of Jack Ryan… So, Join The Fisherverse
After Jack Ryan and arguably even more so than John Clark, Sam Fisher is the most famous Tom Clancy character, and the Black Ops operative stars in his own long-running franchise (or, at least, he used to, before Ubisoft forgot that he existed). Alongside Metal Gear Solid and Hitman, Splinter Cell helped define stealth-action games, and newcomers should start with either the final entry (Blacklist) or the best game (Chaos Theory). Let’s quickly highlight both of them.
- Chaos Theory – The plot is classic Tom Clancy in the best possible way. An algorithmic cyber-warfare crisis in East Asia threatens to trigger World War III, and Sam Fisher is the only person qualified to ensure that doesn’t happen while keeping everything under wraps so the public never finds out. It perfected the franchise’s light-and-shadow gameplay. You are constantly monitoring sound levels and ambient light meters, carefully picking locks, hacking terminals, and interrogating guards. It represents the quiet, methodical, data-gathering side of the Ryanverse just as well, if not better, than the Amazon Prime Video series and its Jack Ryan: Ghost War sequel.
- Blacklist – If you want something closer to the more high-octane Jack Ryan stories or adaptations, Blacklist is the way to go. Not only is it the most recent and, consequently, accessible entry, but its gameplay is far more aggressive than Chaos Theory, which isn’t to say it is necessarily better. It just takes a different approach to stealth, and there is nothing more satisfying than chaining stealth takedowns.
The other Splinter Cell games are good too, and I would recommend playing Conviction if you specifically enjoy Blacklist. It is one of the least liked entries in the franchise, but it is a fun blockbuster entry.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
Fuse The Tom Clancy And Ubisoft Open-World Formula And You Get Wildlands
While Breakpoint was kind of a dud, its predecessor proved that the Tom Clancy formula could be adapted successfully to open-world design, and it has aged remarkably well. In Wildlands, you are deployed to Bolivia, which has essentially been converted into a corporate narco-state run by the ruthless Santa Blanca drug cartel. You control “Nomad,” the leader of a four-person squad of elite Tier-1 Ghosts. Unlike traditional military games, where you are part of a massive invading army or a one-man wrecking crew that can take out entire platoons as part of their morning routine, Wildlands puts you behind enemy lines with zero official backup and no rocket launchers.
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Your mission is pure, classic Clancy espionage: dismantle the cartel’s operations piece by piece. Going from their production lines and smuggling routes to their political influence and security forces, you will quietly but devastatingly tear apart the whole organization en route to forcing a confrontation with the cartel’s terrifying leader, El Sueño. Wildlands is such a weird game for me personally, as it released at a time when I felt done with open worlds and stealth shooters, but I couldn’t stop playing for a good month. That might not sound like a lot, but I am the type of person who is constantly looking to shift to a new game.
Shadow Watch
When Tom Clancy Was XCOM
Don’t mind that his name isn’t in the title, as Shadow Watch is very much a Tom Clancy game. Also, it is directly set in the Ryanverse, albeit with its inspiration being the Power Plays spin-off series. Unlike nearly every other recommendation, Shadow Watch is not a shooter but a strategy game, ala XCOM, that tasks you with managing a group of operatives froom an isometric perspective. The gameplay is surprisingly unique for Tom Clancy games since it is, arguably, the perfect fit for the franchise, but we never really saw Ubisoft go down this route.
Besides the turn-based gameplay, another thing that truly sets Shadow Watch apart from every other game bearing Tom Clancy’s name is its visual style. Rather than aiming for gritty, photorealistic military assets, the developers opted for a beautiful, stylized, hand-drawn comic book aesthetic. The visuals have unsurprisingly aged incredibly well, better than pretty much every Tom Clancy game released before 2010.
Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears
Jump Into One Of Jack Ryan’s Most Famous Adventures
While I would recommend seeking out any of The Hunt for Red October games since they were never good and haven’t improved with age, 2002’s The Sum of All Fears is a respectable extension of what Red Storm Entertainment had done with the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games. Just to be clear, you don’t play as Jack Ryan, but rather an elite FBI Hostage Rescue operator who is conducting missions either during or after the events of the novel and movie. John Clark acts as your handler.
The Sum of All Fears frames Ghost Recon‘s gameplay and engine around tighter, linear indoor missions that maintain a faster pace than Red Storm’s two older games. Yes, at times, this feels like a stripped-down, more casual version of those superior games, but it is still a solid effort.
The Best Tom Clancy Games, Ranked
There are plenty of remarkable games under Tom Clancy’s name. Here are the best ones for players to check out.
