Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

By Holliday

GRAW! Everyone’s favorite acronym (and crustacean mating call) is here, and lads, do I love it. I remember the days of my youth (because I am still living them) and I was playing Ghost Recon on the PC. I was hunkered down in the bush trying to creep up on a castle of sorts. I had my funky looking crosshair and things were tense. Then I saw, to the left, a squirrel run up a tree. “No way” says I. And I started looking for more squirrels. Death soon followed, not by squirrels but those terrorists who do not appreciate nature like I do. But the love was in the details. Ghost Recon was a great game and this new version is no exception.

GRAW comes a long way from Ghost Recon’s roots. This is a good thing though. It is still very tactical, the movement realistic and taking a bullet is a deadly affair. However, they have taken some more dramatic liberties with the narrative and what kind of missions you’ll be going on. Personally, I think it is exactly what games in the Tom Clancy library have needed. They often have drum-tight gameplay injected with a rather generic plot. Splinter Cell started showing promise by making Sam Fisher a character rather than just a soldier. As the Splinter Cell games have progressed their narratives have gotten more interesting, however, even Chaos Theory’s plot did not drive me through the game (the solid gameplay, graphics and presentation did).

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is frantically paced and your mission objectives are constantly changing on the fly. It doesn’t even have the standard “mission” structure we are used to in tactical games. Most of your objectives are relayed to you in-transit or after some unforeseen event. There is no “load out” screen, or briefings from the higher ups. No cut scenes or videos that ‘break’ into the gameplay as if you had eyes elsewhere. Instead, everything is delivered via your cross-com or what is directly happening. The first mission you are flying over Mexico City (all of it) in a Blackhawk (with a little All Along the Watchtower playing) and your pilot is giving you the sit-rep. You are in control here. You can look around the Blackhawk. Watch him give orders or stare down at the city. Other times you are in an APC with the secured Mexican president, riding to the next waypoint and receiving the sit-rep from your commanders or watching news feeds on your cross com. You never really leave the situation. Day turns to night, night turns to day. Everything really feels like it is happening in real time. Things like this are the “in-betweens” of the game. All of them enjoyable and the really make the game feel cohesive. You never feel like you magically got “sucked” back to home base and released on another excursion.

Most of this is because you are kind of in the right place at the wrong time at the start of the game. You are on a mission that sounds like a classic Tom Clancy plot. Some black market thugs have gotten hold of some military thingamabob and you have to get back “the package”. But as you go about your merry way the situation quickly becomes FUBAR. I actually do not want to leak the events (although many are probably already aware) but lots of stuff goes wrong and your objective switches from a simple recon mission to hauling ass out of there and securing the president. It is probably over dramatic and makes your Ghost Squad out to be some rather hardcore muscle but that is the beauty of it. It is far more interesting. Some events throughout the campaign make you say “Holy Hell!” not only because what just happened was a visual and auditory climax but because of the plot ramifications as well. “Safe” seems to have no meaning in Mexico City. The situation is always dire and shit needs to be done. Are you a bad enough dude to do it?

Hell yes you are. You and your Ghosts are truly the most powerful weapons on the battlefield. And that is really what it is, a battlefield. This feels like modern combat in every sense of the phrase. All the lingo, the movements and animations, the sounds and tactics feel so realistic it is just a joy to watch your Ghosts (and yourself) fight. You move from cover to cover, checking your six, flanking, using smoke, using cover fire, distraction and higher ground; you do all this because you really have to, not just because it looks cool. Taking an enemy head-on is just foolish, even on the normal difficulty. It is like a constant state of tactical paranoia. You dread wide open plazas but quickly find paths to move from newsstand to car and so on. You even have to think about your choice of cover. There is “soft cover” that is not so safe. Cars are a good example, I try to use them as a last resort because a bullet in the right place or a nearby grenade turns a safe wall of metal into a bomb that will most certainly take out your squad. At times when cover is scarce I have actually blown up a car myself to use the flaming frame since I might need to stay behind it longer than usual.

The control you have over your soldier is wonderfully robust. I have yet to find a situation where I have said “I wish he could just do this”. The control over your ghost squad is a very simple approach to complex tool. They essentially have two orders, do it and come back. These are up and down on the D-pad. However, everything is context sensitive and works remarkably well. Point at a corner and have them go to it, they’ll get on the wall, peak around the corner now and then and engage hostiles if they are in assault mode. Point at an enemy and hit up, they’ll focus fire on him. Point to a wounded teammate, they’ll heal. Point to an enemy truck, they’ll destroy it (with grenade and launchers if you have a grenadier). They are smart, not perfect, but they are a load of fun. I love watching them carry out the orders. They will take care of themselves so you do not have to fuss with them, but they are there and able when you need them for a specific task.

The ghost squad is just one of the many units you will give orders to via the much hyped “cross com”. While I was first a little under whelmed with the descriptions of the cross com, I now understand why the GRAW team was so excited about it. You become ever so deadly on the battlefield because of your command power. It is not just your ghosts you have control of. You control UAVs (spy drones), Tanks, APCs, Apache Helicopters, Blackhawks. At times you bring down hell on your enemies in the form of unparalleled firepower. This allows for some insane engagements where you take on armies of enemies through clever tactics and superior weaponry. The control is simple to use. Press left or right to switch which support unit you want to order to and you’ll see their view on your cross com. For the heavy guns (tanks, APCs, apaches) you generally issue kill orders then move your ghost squad around taking advantage of the confusion. You can order your APC to advance then move your ghost squad behind it as mobile cover. In one engagement you are assaulting an enemy compound (at night) with an apache and an APC. The ensuing battle is just tremendous. All in night vision it is like organized chaos. Your apache and APC take out the vehicles they send at you while you maneuver your ghosts around eliminating the soldiers and such. You feel like you have participated in every part of the battle all at once. Plus seeing an apache rip up an enemy APC is a sight I’ll never get sick of.

That is just the single player portion of the game. There is co-op and adversial MP awaiting as well. I have dabbled in both but an online experience often takes a while to get the total feel of. I might report back later on my multiplayer findings but I can assure you right now, they are not disappointing. The flavor of the game carriers over but is tweaked to make the most of a multiplayer environment. I am really itching to try out the 4 specially made co-op campaign maps that are different from the SP game.

All in all GRAW delivers. I haven’t even mentioned the graphics or the sound. Both of which are just beyond belief. The explosions thundering through my 5.1 home theater system make my heart skip a beat. The draw distance (or lack of) while in Mexico city is just breathtaking. The details are just astounding. When you take cover behind a car and the enemy shoots it. The tires will pop and deflate, the windows will individually shatter, alarms will go off, the doors with become unhinged and the metal bullet-ridden. Whatever tricks they used to pull off the visuals in this game they’ve worked. You feel like you are in a city. You feel as if you just ran down that street you could run forever, but you do not want to. We don’t have the president’s sit-rep Mitchell! The rebels have secured Chapultepec Castle! We need to secure those M1A1 tanks! We need to save the day again, this time we actually care.