Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter Review

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) is one of those games that raises the bar for all action games that come after it. It features a great single player campaign that more than any other game before it makes you feel like you’re really in the middle of a battlefield. It also features a multiplayer game that is the most addictive Xbox Live experience since Halo 2. In short, it’s a complete game that should be in every Xbox 360 gamer’s library.

The single player campaign takes place in the near future in Mexico City. The US president is there for the formal signing of a North American joint defense treaty with the presidents of Mexico and Canada. However, there are elements in the Mexican military that are deeply opposed to the treaty and seize the opportunity of the meeting of the presidents to stage a coup de tat. As the leader of the elite Ghosts unit, you are sent into the middle of the fray to ensure the safety of the American president as well as to rescue the Mexican president from danger – sorry Canada, your Prime Minister didn’t make it past the initial attack. You may be outnumbered, but you’ve got technology on your side in the form of the Advanced Warfighter system. This system provides you with a constant com-link to your squad, your support, and with headquarters, providing you with up to the second intel and situation reports and allowing you to issue commands to your team and call out targets to your support assets. All of this is monitored and controlled through a heads-up display that still lets you keep an eye out for danger. It’s a cool system made even cooler by the fact that it is actually in development by the US Army. There are plenty of Sci-Fi shooters out there and none of them have anything like this system which is just a few years away from being a reality.

One of the things that is so impressive with the game is that it makes you feel that you are really in the middle of Mexico City during a time of war. The high rise towers, tenements, plazas, and back alleys of the city are all there, and you’re given a fair amount of freedom as to which path you choose to reach your next objective. Sure, the game does have its boundaries, but if you concentrate on achieving your objectives rather than looking for the levels’ edges you’ll rarely come up against them. You’ll constantly need to make decisions about which street to take, scan tall buildings for snipers, and look for the safest route across a large open plaza. This is no run and gun, shooter on a rail here and the game is a tense, immersive, and enjoyable experience because of it.

Another factor that makes the campaign so enjoyable is the variety of situations that you’ll face. You’ll have to assault fortified enemy positions as well as defend against enemy assaults. You’ll face lone snipers, enemy squads, and even armored vehicles and convoys. You’ll also have the opportunity to man the machine gun on a helicopter and be responsible for clearing out a landing zone so that you can deploy your squad. There’s a lot of excitement here and it makes for some very compelling gameplay. For example, one mission has you defending the Mexican president in the rubble that once was the US Embassy against a full-scale assault. You’re outnumbered and seriously outgunned, especially when enemy armor begins to roll in. You must manage to keep the enemy soldiers from flanking you while keeping your head down as machine gun fire pounds the rubble around you and tank cannon fire shakes the ground with deafening blows. You’ll need to stay alive long enough for the air cavalry to arrive and under this kind of assault it won’t be easy. The tension and excitement are guaranteed to quicken your pulse and the feelings of joy and relief when the Apaches arrive to take out the enemy armor are genuine. This is the stuff of great gaming.

Keeping tabs on everything during the chaos of battle is made relatively easy by the Advanced Warfighter system. The d-pad is used to issue move and assault orders to your squad and the order choices are context sensitive to keep things simple to manage. For example, point your reticule at an enemy soldier and you can give fire orders, point it at a wall and you can give your squad orders to move there and take up a defensive position. When you have armor or helicopter support available, the d-pad is used to select the active asset and then used again to issue context sensitive commands. You’ll also often have an unmanned UAV recon vehicle available. You can command this flying drone to move to an area and scan for enemies so that you have an idea of what lies ahead. Since you’ll need to move the UAV to areas outside of your line of site you’ll more often than not give commands to it via the 3D map interface. This screen gives you a look at the area around you including buildings and streets, and you can use it not only to issue move and scan orders to your UAV, squad, and supporting units, but to get the lay of the land as you plan your next move.

GRAW continues the Tom Clancy games’ tendency towards realism, so it won’t take many hits to punch your ticket and you’ll be in constant danger of falling victim to a one shot kill. This forces you to take a cautious and tactical approach to the game, and rewards a judicious use of cover. You’ll go a lot farther in the game by trying to see the enemy before they see you, and taking them out at larger ranges before things have the chance to devolve into a full firefight. A run and gun approach will not work here, not only because you’ll be killed pretty quickly but also because your weapons’ accuracy is very poor when you fire on the move.

If there’s a downside to the game it’s that the AI sometimes can be a little sketchy. Your squad generally handles themselves very well, but on occasion you can catch them leaving themselves exposed in the open or refusing to make slight adjustments to their position so that they can fire on the enemy. Overall they’ll get their share of kills, but like in most shooters you’ll have to make the vast majority of kills yourself. The enemy AI is also pretty competent overall with enemies seeking cover and moving to try and flank your position. On the flipside, enemy soldiers sometimes remain in place and it is a simple matter of patience to wait for them to pop their head up and oblige you with a headshot kill.

On the multiplayer side of the coin, GRAW comes with so many gameplay options you’re sure to find something that you like. The game supports free for all, team-based, and co-op game types for elimination, territory, and objective game modes. There is even an online-only mini-campaign designed for co-op play. For each of these combinations of game types and modes you can set the respawn level, available kits/weapons, AI enemies, and more. All of this multiplayer action plays really well online, with no noticeable lag or drops in my experience with it. You’ll love making your way through the single player campaign, but the excellent and varied multiplayer modes will keep you coming back to the game for some time to come.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 94%  Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is the most advanced military shooter available on any system, bar none.