10 Best Tom Clancy Games, Ranked

It’s hard to think of a single name that’s had a bigger impact on tactical and militaristic gaming than Tom Clancy. The way in which his name became associated with these games is a long and winding story. Tom Clancy wasn’t known as a game developer. He was an author.

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However, he understood the gaming appeal to his stories and sought to capitalize on that. The result is that years later, even after his death, Tom Clancy is still associated with quality gaming in the genre. It’s even expanded beyond simple shooters to open-world RPGs and beyond. Here’s a ranking of some of the best Tom Clancy games.

10 Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear

Anybody that’s read the Rainbow Six novel knows that it’s a difficult book to adapt into a game. The first game tried its best to follow the plot and include characters from the story. While the gameplay excelled at creating a special forces experience, the storyline couldn’t translate from the source material.

This changed with Rogue Spear as it moved away from any source material and tried to tell a story on its own. It was able to tie in the original’s acclaimed gameplay while managing to tell a cohesive narrative.

9 HAWX

In order to create a fully rounded brand of games, Tom Clancy expanded into aerial combat with HAWX. while the game play itself is similar to other aerial fighter games such as Ace Combat, Tom Clancy games have a knack for creating an immersive universe that sucks the player in and makes them a part of something larger than themselves. HAWX manages the pull this off by fitting in within the universe of other Tom Clancy games such as Ghost Recon and Endwar. It was a risk, but the game was successful enough to warrant a sequel.

8 Endwar

It wasn’t a huge seller, but Endwar should still be acknowledged as a worthy entry into the Tom Clancy line of games. It should be commended for trying to Branch out and cover other genre of games other than just the standard 1st person shooters that Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon had become known for.

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Like HAWX was for aerial combat, Endwar is a real-time strategy game that has players control entire armies in battle. It was also commended for attempting to expand upon the RTS style, including voice commands for units.

7 Ghost Recon Wildlands

Like most long-lasting franchises, Ghost Recon has taken many different forms over the years. It’s moved into a futuristic setting with some of its previous games, but Wildlands was a new and refreshing take on the series. It moved the game back to a modern setting, which the original was based on.

It’s also the first open-world game in the series, similar to something like The Division. However, the map is far larger. Also, it has an aspect of team cohesion that The Division tends to shy away from.

Rainbow Six Extraction has had an interesting life to become a Tom Clancy game. It was originally its own project before being folded into the franchise as a spinoff from an earlier game.

Also, it’s a cooperative online game that forces players to try and have real people as their squad meets rather than a CPU. It’s also something different as it has a sci-fi lean to it. The game features alien parasites, something new and different for the Tom Clancy brands. Still, it’s a fun game that shouldn’t be discounted just because it’s unique.

5 Splinter Cell: Conviction

The Splinter Cell games were more or less built on top of each other. This means that the first game laid a foundation that all the other games built on top of and became more complex. This changed with Splinter Cell: Conviction.

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It wasn’t necessarily a remake or a reboot, but it did offer a new type of way to control Sam Fisher. It simplified and streamlined the controls to create a really nuanced yet subtle way to play as the super spy. It’s hard to think of a more realistic espionage experience.

4 Ghost Recon

Along with Rainbow Six, the first Ghost Recon is credited with reinventing tactical team action. The games share many similarities as they both allow the player to control units of specialized individuals.

However, players can appreciate the nuances between them. Rainbow Xix is all about counterterrorism and policing whereas Ghost Recon is about soldiers and warfare. To the average person, that might not seem like an important distinction. But the differences are highlighted in the gameplay, as players control their soldiers across the battlefield rather than in a civilian setting.

3 The Division

The Division checked off many boxes that made it a great game. It had an open world, customizable characters, and a nonlinear aspect of its story that allowed players the freedom to play as they want it.

This is standard stuff for some fantasy games, but it was refreshing to see it using Tom Clancy’s style of terrorism and espionage. To elevate the game even higher, it had a strikingly realistic setting in New York City. Add in the fact it was eerily prescient with a pandemic storyline and it’s definitely one of Tom Clancy’s best.

2 Rainbow Six: Vegas

As Tom Clancy’s oldest and arguably its most popular series, Rainbow Six has had a wide variety of installments. It’s existed in multiple eras of gaming, but Vegas might have been a turning point in the series.

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It marked the transition from the old guard to the new as it really fleshed out the team nature of the gameplay and rounded it off with a compelling story. It wasn’t just that it had a great anti-terrorism plot. Vegas added drama and complexity to its characters, truly making it a great game.

1 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

One thing all Splinter Cell games have in common is a very intricate and nuanced storyline, so it’s hard to pick out which among them stands out. However, looking at the gameplay is a different story.

Sam Fisher’s trademark goggles are a staple of every game, but his maneuvers and controls became more complicated with every installment. This culminated with Chaos Theory, which had an extremely complex control system that when mastered, truly made the player feel like a stealth agent, which came in handy for its unique multiplayer.

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