Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Xbox 360)

[Apotheosis]

Game Title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Rating: T - Teen :: Blood, Language, Violence.
Published By: Ubisoft
Developed By: Ubisoft Paris


Ghost Recon is a well established series. It has games and ports of games on the PC, Xbox, and now the Xbox 360. It's one of the three Tom Clancy franchises that have flourished in the North American market, and probably has the biggest cult following of the three.

GRAW is the first Ubisoft game for the next generation, as well as the first Ubisoft game for the Xbox360(While others may have been published by Ubisoft, this is the first title to be developed by one of their divisions.) It does a great job of integrating all parts of videogaming that are required to make a fun, and appealing game. Its only flaws come from things that most games suffer from. These small flaws rarely hinder the gameplay to an extreme extent, but can sometimes be a reoccurring bump on a relativley smooth road.

Ubisoft continues to follow its trend of improving excellence -- as it does in all its game series -- with GRAW. Using the new bloom lighting technology with a mix of HDR lighting, the game looks like a next-gen game should; sleek, smooth, and shiny. Everything from the menus to the closing credits of theSsingle Player looks streamlined to near perfection, and even better if played on an HDTV.

The Game itself plays just as good as it looks, with both Single Player and On/Offline Multiplayer(With Bots). The singleplayer has you take the role of Scott Mitchell, the leader of the Ghosts(your team.) The story is a typical Clancy novel that involves an anti-government group causing havoc and somehow throws nuclear weapons into the fray. The story is set mostly in Mexico City or on the outskirts of the city, and the developers made sure to get the design of the metropolis right. They took actual screenshots of the city, and tried to recreate it, as best as they could in the game. They did a great job with not only making a realistic Mexico City, but also making the missions vary in objectives and design. The levels are never repetitive, sure the fighting will be the same, but there will always be different situations in any firefight. You could be getting ready to run down a long street, sending your men to the left to get cover as you procede to the right, only to be ambushed by enemies on the rooftops and behind you. You need to adjust for these types of things, and work your squad mates around accordingly. The interface is simplistic and easy to master within an hour or so, but the things you can do with it have a lot of versatility.

You can set your Ghosts in either an "offensive" or "defensive" mode, depending on the situation you're in. Offensive will make them more aggressive and they'll jump into gunfights right away, whereas the defensive mode will make them more alert to their surroundings, and they will only attack if fired upon. Aside from controlling your Squad, you can also at times in the game control a UAV Camera (a.k.a Cypher or Drone) These small flying cameras hover far up in the sky, and can scan a region of the map for you, reporting enemy locations and such. You can also use the command system to control tanks and helicopters when they are given to you in the game. Your success in missions will depend heavily on how well you can position your squad, and control other units given to you during missions. There is a Brotherhood and Command score that fluctuates during every mission which you can see if you go to the menu while playing the game. This score doesn't affect anything directly, and is reset for each mission., it does tell you how well you are playing and using your resources.

All the missions have some generalities: In most cases you and your team need to reach or destroy an objective to receive a new one. As you do, the storyline progresses by various people giving you updates on the political situation, and your commander giving you new orders to complement the ever changing story. Some missions involve the chopper "mini-game" which has you mounted on your blackhawk's railgun, taking out terrorists below. These minigames work well, and are well integrated with the rest of the game. There are also a few scattered solo missions that have you going in by yourself. These tend to be more difficult in respect to levels where you have three other squad mates with you, but never become hard in an unfair way. The A.I in the game has its good and bad moments. Your ghosts will sometimes be confused by walls, and other obstacles in their way. If you place them in such a way that they are behind cover, they might not readily lean to the side of that cover to take shots at the enemy. Whereas if they are out in the open, they will rarley run for cover, or shoot back in an organize manner.. The same is true for the bots in the game. They will sometimes run around randomly for no reason, and make themselves very easy to spot and take out. AI has been a problem since the dawn of gaming, and while it has been improved over the years, it still has it's flaws.

When you are done with the singleplayer, you may chose to go back through it in a hard mode, which will put your patience to the test. Aside from that, there is also a co-op mode open to both splitscreen and online play. If offline, you and up to 3 buddies(or up to 15 buddies online or with four 360s and four TVs) can join up as one team and tackle one of 4 specially designed missions for co-op. If you'd rather play against your friends so you can smack talk and brag, you can play against them in various modes with dozens of different adjustments on about a dozen multiplayer maps. The online mode has a TrueSkill ranking system with leaderboards. You can host or join a room of up to 16 people and play them in all kinds of different gametypes. The only problem that occurs here(beside Xbox Live sterotypes) is that spawncamping can become a problem if respawns are enabled or if the spawn invulnerability option is turned off.

The game features a soundtrack with various types of music, and the songs are incorporated well in the single player story. They are dramatic, and fit the mood of the game well. Then again, you're playing this on Xbox 360, so if you don't like the music, you can always play your own. The soundtrack is by no means bad, nor are any of the songs corny of annoying to listen to. They are contrasted well with the game, and are a solid part of the game.

Singeplayer can be beaten in a few hours if you are good at the game, and have gone through it a few times, but it can also last around a dozen hours to first time players. The hard mode can be a challenge at certain times, and offers more replay value, but the reason this game will see a lot of play is the multiplayer. With so many gametypes, and different modes it'll last you a long time. Even the co-op alone could make you spend hours playing it with your friends.

The game has a few minor flaws in some departments of gameplay, both off and online, but these small issues are heavily overshadowed by the good aspects of the game, and there are many of them. This is probably one of the best 360 games out at this time, and it's a good pick up. If you're still not sure you'll enjoy the multiplayer style, rent it and see. Long times fans of the series will love it, new people may fall in love with it, and others may just like it. It's a solid game, and it's easily classifiable as a next-gen game, for a next-gen system.

Final Score: 9/10

[Coolgreen44]

Good Job man!!!!!!!!!

[Apotheosis]

Thanks, I wrote that review about a month back, but I edited large chunks of it for better content...and I hope I fixed all the spelling/grammatical errors.

[Coolgreen44]

Your guide is probbably good enough for the main site. Our commanding officer rssistes might add it.

[Andrew]

I would if I were him.

Nice guide, dude.

[Coolgreen44]

Apotheosis add a picture of the game box to the top to add style

[Andrew]

And some pretty flowers maybe? Oooh, and some candles.

[Apotheosis]

Ok, GRAW Box Art added...and...

for that special someone...





^^ That's actually a pretty cool picture...

Anyways, I'll try to add screen shots and the Box Art to future reviews.

[Coolgreen44]

I like that green candle!!!!

[Andrew]

Cool... Green...

I saw those candle's in a store near my house and they were 44 dollars.

[danizduhman]

[sydislam]

This is a great game and review. The only flaw with GRAW 1 and 2 was the length. Did anyone here play the PS3 version of the sequel? I also thought that Sony did a great job of implementing the six axis controls in GRAW 2.