March has arrived to put a break in the lack of Xbox 360 game releases. The much anticipated Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter videogame has arrived after being delayed from the original Xbox 360 launch date. This is a great game, but does have some faults that prevent it from being all that it can be.
Lets get right into what helps to make this a great game on Xbox 360. Graphically, GRAW looks fantastic as you go through Mexico. The realistic sunlight of Mexico helps bring out the location. When you are being transported in a helicopter you can really enjoy the sight of the city. The character models are very nice looking and have lots of fluid animations to give a further realistic look. The thing that annoyed me, however, is that they used fake reflections for glass. There aren't real-time reflections that will show people or anything. In fact, I did some analyzing and noticed that the 'reflections' that I looked at didn't even have accurate bitmaps to fake the reflection. The one thing that really got to me, however, is the lack of people in the city. If you are going to have it take place in a large, great looking city why have no citizens? It would have been great to have people running out of the way as you try to avoid shooting them. There would at least have been looters or something at this time.
Everything you see is in-game as there are no cut-scenes. There are also no real loading screens. Instead, you are debriefed while in transport to your next location on a helicopter or possibly in a tank. Your HUD features a small squad in the upper left corner that shows video from the perspective of your squad or, if available, chopper or tank. There is also a drone that can be sent out to do recon and you can see its perspective from there as well. In the upper right hand corner a television broadcast will occasionally come up to help progress the story. It would've been nice to be able to bring the left view into a bigger focus so you can actually see what's going on as it is really too small. You are, however, able to bring up a virtual map that shows locations of enemies that have been spotted and are known to be there. From this map you can send squadmates, chopper, tank, or drone to an area or command them to fire at a particular enemy.
As far as commanding goes, this is not advanced. There aren't many commands to give but this helps to keep the action constant. The worst part about giving commands is when you have backup at your disposal (helicopters and tanks). To change who you are giving commands to, you press left or right on the D-pad. When you are in the middle of a battle, this can get hectic. You'll need to give commands to the tank and then make sure to press left twice to get back to your squad. And while you get to give commands to helicopters and tanks to fire on enemies, you won't get to drive them. At times you will get to be a gunner on a copter but that's it. Tanks aren't that great because they can only go forward and backward once you take command. So while they are good for taking cover sometimes, they could've been even more useful. So apparently future tanks are going to suck.
Missions typically have you start in one spot of an area and after a set of objective are complete you will be given new objectives to complete that have you going to another location of the area. In a way, it is a bit linear. You also can't go that far from a certain area to try and look around or come up with a strategy location. The game certainly has restrictions and linearness.
The enemy AI actually comes out pretty intelligent. If they know that you are hiding behind a car, they will blow the car up. If you are hiding behind a wall, they might throw grenades at you if they have any. If you send in the drone to search for any enemies in the area, the enemies will start shooting at it. At the same time, they are also not all knowing, to be cheap. In this respect, you can try and fake out the enemy. So if you are being fired at by someone, you can try to sneak by to another side and find that the enemy is looking for you where you came from. The squadmates, on the other hand, could use some improvements. They'll still run in front of you as you are shooting. They also won't always take cover while under attack. You might have to command them to get behind a wall so they don't get killed.
An interesting thing is that you can revive a squadmate that has been killed. You can't replenish the health of squadmates to prevent them from getting killed, however. What gets confusing about this is that you cannot get revived or healed by anyone. To make this worse, there is no saving the game, only checkpoints for auto-saving. This gets to be annoying when you reach a checkpoint after getting your health into the red. This means that if you die and go back to the checkpoint you will have the same health you had when you got to the checkpoint. Your only other option is to restart that mission and try to reach the checkpoint with more health than your previous attempt.
Of course playing it on Xbox Live adds in to a lot of additional fun. You can even play co-op through exclusive multiplayer maps that are not the same as the single player campaign. This is nice and gives a bit more playtime so that you aren't playing the same thing. Though it would be nice to have the option of playing through the campaign mode in co-op as well it's not that bad that it was left out. Other multiplayer options include straight out deathmatches and team modes. There is also an objectives game where you must complete objectives to win the round. Other than that, there's territory where you must gain territory zones. When you are able to find a good room of players, Advanced Warfighter is a great game to play on Live!
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter really is a good game offline and online. There are some things that take the game down a notch. I'd like to see some more openness and a little more originality. As it is, however, Advanced Warfighter is a recommended purchase or definite rental in the least.
