 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Red Storm |
| Publisher: | Ubisoft | |
| Genre: | Squad-based FPS | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 (2-16 System Link and Online) | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | System Link, Xbox Live (online play, leaderboards, content download) |
When I first heard about Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW), I was worried about the future of the franchise. Previous entries in the Ghost Recon franchise were all about fighting outdoors in vast expanses and infiltrating remote outposts, but this game takes place primarily in urban Mexico City. Also, the Cross-Com system appeared to be a little too complicated for a series that has always focused on highly realistic settings and intense one-shot, one-kill type gameplay. Fortunately my fears regarding these have proven unfounded, as the series has made a smooth transition into urban fighting. Unfortunately, at least on Xbox 360 anyway, it's also the buggiest Clancy title I've played yet.
Once again the player assumes the role of Capt. Scott Mitchell, head of the elite Ghost unit. The year is 2013, and Nicaraguan rebels have stolen U.S. military hardware with intent to sell it to Mexican paramilitary forces. Soon everything is thrown into chaos, as a Mexican general attempts to take over the presidency and also kidnaps the U.S. president. Thus the Ghosts must step in to rescue the two presidents, and stop the general before he throws the nation and world into chaos. Yeah, it's pretty standard stuff for the franchise, and indeed it plays out in typical over the top fashion. While the storyline never becomes totally unbelievable, it stretches the bounds of reality in several situations in a way that's more fun than cheesy.
As a soldier of the future, Mitchell has at his command a number of resources not previously found in the series. Allowing the player to manage all of these resources is the Cross-Com system, which is integrated into Mitchell's heads-up display. A window in the upper-right corner of the screen feeds Mitchell valuable Intel from HQ and other news sources, while a window in the upper-left corner allows him to control those fighting alongside him. It's here that you'll see "live" video from the viewpoint of other squad-mates, and give orders to support vehicles including tanks, helicopters and unmanned drones. These are controlled via an intuitive interface, where left and right on the d-pad toggle between different resources currently available and up and down direct the resource currently selected to perform different actions that are context-based. For example, if the player's cursor is focused on an enemy while a tank is selected as the resource the action will change to order the tank to attack, whereas otherwise it would just tell it to move forward.
Just when the on-ground action starts to get repetitive, several times throughout the single-player campaign Ubisoft lets the player man the helicopter's machine gun turret to take out enemy soldiers, tanks, troop transports, and even other helicopters. These areas don't require a lot of strategy (other than occasionally easing up on the trigger to let the gun cool off), but they're incredibly fun in short spurts.
Complimenting the Cross-Com system is a revamped map, which is pulled up via the Select button. This map shows the location of any enemies previously spotted by teammates (the unmanned drone is very useful for this), the layout of the terrain, and allows Scott to give orders to attack enemy positions not in his direct line of sight.
Aside from the Cross-Com system, the game also features the same general controls as previous games in the series. Based on what the cursor is pointing at, the player can order teammates to heal another wounded soldier, advance to a certain position, etc. Scott can also perform a number of contextual actions himself, including placing demo charges, manning turrets, rolling while lying prone, and picking up other weapons dropped by enemies among others.
Altogether, these changes to the series combined with the same realistic gameplay as before make this game the most strategic Ghost Recon yet. Not only does the player have to manage his own squad; now he must also manage several other resources at the same time while watching out for himself as well. Ubisoft even did away with the strict mission structure that often broke up the action in past games, instead replacing those between-mission screens with rides inside helicopters (sometimes doing the shooting as I mentioned above) and ground vehicles where the player also receives intel and communication that sets up the next mission.
However, a couple of quirks in the implementation prevent it from being perfect. The first is that the game automatically assumes the player wants to "take cover" behind certain obstacles, and will make the player "stick" to that obstacle allowing him to then peer out and duck back behind it quickly. This is fine (and even useful) in theory, but the game will sometimes assume you want to take cover when it doesn't make any sense to do so. For example, I've been running alongside the outer wall of a level and had the game actually stick me to that wall. Now tell me, what sense does it make for me to "take cover" beside a wall when every enemy is on my side of it? Aside from being a little annoying (it slows you down and forces you to press the Y button to move out of cover), in my experience it also resulted in a few cheap deaths when I wasn't trying to take cover at all.
The other problem with gameplay is that squad mates and enemies are still idiots. It's been that way with the series for a while now, but with all of the power the Xbox 360 provides (and after playing Call of Duty 2) I've come to expect more out of soldier A.I. Teammates occasionally don't take proper cover behind a wall or car, totally exposing themselves to enemy fire. They'll also walk right in front of your line of fire, getting shot in the process. I found myself once again relying on the strategy of often holding them back intentionally while I took care of certain obstacles, and then letting them proceed to handle the easier tasks. In fact, I probably had the most fun on the missions I ran solo simply because I didn't feel the need to babysit. By now, I should be able to trust elite soldiers a bit more than that.
As you'd expect, GRAW features some outstanding multiplayer options. The game supports up to 16 players at a time on Xbox Live or System Link, while up to four can play locally. Players can play Solo (everyone for themselves), or work together in Team or Co-op mode. Game types include the following: Solo Objective, Team Objective, Co-Op Objective, Solo Elimination, Co-Op Elimination, Team Elimination, Solo Territory, Co-Op Territory, Team Territory, and finally Campaign,. Among these the host of a game session can choose from dozens of different settings, thus tweaking the online experience as you like it. Since I'm not picky, in my time online I just went with the rules of whatever game I happened to stumble across without really searching for specific game types. Thus I've experienced most of the major combinations, and I had fun regardless of the setup. One thing that every player has control over (aside from standard settings like brightness) is choosing to play as one of several different classes (marksman, rifleman, automatic rifleman, and grenadier), each providing a different selection of weapons to choose from. Even with only 10 maps to choose from, they're so diverse and balanced that you'll definitely find yourself having to adapt your class based on the map selected and rules of each particular game. If you played any of the previous Xbox versions of Ghost Recon (or even Rainbow Six really) online, you'll feel right at home here.
Posted: 2006-04-03 16:50:55 PST