Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

When I bought my Xbox 360 a few weeks ago I had to decide what game to get with it? After some looking and studying I settled on Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. Another game in the long line of Tom Clancy based shooters Ghost Recon started out as a squad based tactical shooter on the PC and has now moved on up to the newest of the new on the Xbox 360.

The first thing you notice when you boot up GRAW is how amazing it looks. The graphics are mind numbingly great. Mexico City serves as the backdrop for the game and I have never seen a city rendered so well. The place actually feels like a thriving metropolis with streets, alleyways, high-rises, overpasses, slums, and open plaza’s. Unfortunately there are no people to be found which is odd since Mexico City is one of the most densely populated cities on earth. The game of course explains this is because a major coup is going on and there is gun fire in the streets. As a nice touch you can here loud speakers warning civilians to stay in there homes and way from the windows. Very nicely done if you ask me. Most games would simply strip the life out of a city and just leave it at that. The visuals are farther enhanced by the superb lighting. Heat radiates off of buildings and the roads, the sun glare blinds you at high noon and in the evenings everything has a soft glow that would be very pretty too look at if you didn’t have Mexican rebels trying to blow your brains out. The characters are very well animated and move fluidly and believable.

On the sound front there is nothing which I can think of which can compare. Maybe its because Ive recently hooked up my receiver optically and am taking full advantage of my 5.1 surround setup but I have never felt so immersed in the audio of a game. Car alarms blare when you shoot cars, you can hear your teammates yell commands, and the rebels scream at you in Spanish when you open fire on them. Explosions have a loud bassy boom to them that really makes that tank you blew up come alive.

Speaking of teammates the AI is a bit more of a mixed bag. As the leader of a squad of “Ghosts” you command three additional troops who are here to help you fight your way through this military coup. You command your troops and additional support vehicles through the Cross-com which is a heads up display which shows you what your teammates see. It works great for scouting and giving commands. You order all three of your troops around at once so its not possible to set up elaborate ambushes but it simplifies the process greatly. Your soldiers are fairly accurate without being overpowered and will kill their fair share of enemies you run across. Certain situations will lead to a few cases of brain farts. I found this true when I was hiding behind cover and ordered my troops to come to me and take cover. Most of the time they would do it right but a few times they would run up and surround me with one of two of them behind cover and the rest standing in the open. Enemy AI is pretty good also. The Mexican rebels use grenades to flush you out, take cover and try to outflank you making them tough nuts to crack. They employ the full bag of tricks too ranging from snipers to tanks meaning you will have to adjust quickly to a variety of situations as they arise.

Controls in the game are generally very tight. The game is set by default in a very close up third person view. Only the head and shoulders of your guy are visible leading to an almost FPS view point and the game controls much like one. The biggest control scheme in the game is the cover system. When you run up to a wall or other barrier which you can hide behind you press your back up against it and the view shifts. You can now peek out over or around the sides of your cover to get a view of whats out there without hopefully getting your face shot off. The system works very well, if your behind cover you tend to be fairly safe from enemy fire as long as they remain in front of you. However if you keep sticking your head out to open fire on them they zero in on your position and plug your brainpan. You have the option of firing normally or using a tightened aiming mode which slows your movement but is more accurate. Toss in a wide range of weapons and you will always have a new way to liquefy bad guys.

The storyline is great and the single player campaign is very enjoyable. It’s a tad on the short side taking me about 7.5 hours to defeat. A lot of the missions involve some trial and error as you figure out how to best defeat a group of enemies. This usually involves a lot of dying and reloading but progress never feels slow. After a couple tries at a certain obstacle you can usually beat it and move on. This game truly shines in multiplayer. The options and game modes are unmatched. From coop to deathmatch and everything in between if you can think of a game mode GRAW has it. All the modes are linked over Xbox Live so bring your friends and kill each other or work together in the Co-op campaign mode. Multiplayer controls much looser than the single player mode. You lose the take cover feature, and spend much more time running and gunning, but its still to your advantage to stay behind things and not put your dome out in the open for too long.

Overall GRAW gets two thumbs WAY WAY up. I would consider this a must have for any new Xbox 360 owner.