Articles
By Nonny
Published: Mar. 4, 2007 10:25 AM
What a difference a few months make… Originally planned as a launch day title in the US, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter has been delayed twice before finally arriving just in time for our own Australian launch. Thankfully having played through the finished game it was more than worth the wait! What we have here is a highly polished rendition of the Ghost Recon series brought screaming up to date, with a benchmark of what can be achieved on the Xbox 360 platform. As the name suggests G.R.A.W. is set in the near future (2013 to be exact) which has allowed Ubisoft to utilize some of the US military’s latest combat tools to great effect and all of the gear used in G.R.A.W. is based on actual technology in development. The main focus of this technology is IWS, which stands for Integrated Warfighter System. The aim of this system is to maximise the efficiency of each Ghost soldier and the central core of the system is a state of the art communication device known as the Cross-Com. This device connects directly to each Ghost and provides them with a heads up display of the situation fed constantly by updated information from satellite data, news feeds or other team-mates. As a result it will highlight targets such as enemies, friendlies and objectives for you and thus affords a higher level of strategy and tactical awareness on the battlefield. Learning how to use IWS and the Cross-Com effectively for co-ordinated attacks and teamwork is vital in G.R.A.W. and the singleplayer campaign is scripted perfectly to ensure that you will have to use every trick in the book.
For the singleplayer campaign Ubisoft have really upped the ante in regards to storyline, plot direction and general scripted events. The campaign takes place exclusively within Mexico City after a summit meeting between the US and Mexican president’s takes a turn for the worse and a military coup ensues. Your orders are to rescue both presidents while preventing the military insurgence from gaining control of the city. As Captain Scott Mitchell, you must lead your team of Ghosts through 12 missions of hugely diverse scenarios unlike anything you’ve seen in the series before. From the moment you step off your helicopter ride into Mexico City it’s quite clear this is a next generation Ghost Recon game. Ubisoft Paris worked solely on the single-player portion of G.R.A.W. whilst the multiplayer component was developed separately by Red Storm. This split development process has allowed both teams to invest their full efforts into the game and both the multiplayer and singleplayer modes show this to great effect. Because of this shared & equal focus neither seems to have been cut short compared to say Call of Duty 2 which lacked any real multiplayer when first released.
Back to the singleplayer, this means that instead of the usual disjointed mission structure we’ve seen in previous Ghost Recon titles in G.R.A.W each mission clearly carries on directly from where the last left off. Here the story unfolds continuously as you progress through the game and to really enforce this change in pace (apart from required loading times) the action never stops with the end of each mission finishing by being picked up at a designated extraction location at which point you are fed new intelligence updates whilst being transported to your next objective. As soon as you arrive at that next objective you’re literally dropped into the next mission. One of the highlights of the campaign is that at times the drop-off points for certain missions are too hot to land anywhere requiring you to man the Blackhawk’s mounted chain gun to literally mow yourself a landing strip on the ground while the helicopter circles for effect. It’s a superb feeling and as the gun can overheat when used too much it’s not just a tacked on shooting gallery either as it proves critical not to get hit too much or you’ll be injured right from the beginning of the mission. The diversity of the mission structure is also simple yet hugely enjoyable. Along the course of the campaign you’ll conduct escort missions, seek and destroy missions, lone wolf missions, night-time sniper reconnaissance… it’s all in here. Also whilst some of the missions are solo operative affairs others require you to command some AI team-mates as well as a few other handy toys! Much like Ghost Recon2 before it anywhere up to three AI team-mates tag along for the ride in certain missions but in addition to this you can now also control a sentry drone (more on this later), an Abhrams Tank, an Apache Gunship and sometimes all of the above at the same time! What’s really cool about this entire arsenal though is that it can be controlled intuitively with the exact same command layout.
The change to the control scheme is subtle compared to previous games in the series but it’s a revision that has been beautifully executed to bolster much more control without loosing anything in the process. The biggest hurdle for fans initially is that the D-pad no longer controls your soldiers stance (standing, crouched or prone) anymore as these have been moved the left analog button to make way for all of the Cross-Com / AI controls. The Cross-Com display in the top-left of the screen shows which AI unit you are controlling at any point in time and pushing left/right on the D-pad cycles between them. The rest is context sensitive depending on what your aiming reticule is pointing at when issuing the command. If you are pointing at an open space, pushing up on the D-pad issues a command to move to that location whilst down on the D-pad commands the unit to fall back to your current location. However, if you are currently aiming at an enemy you can instruct to open fire on them or for instance if your team-mate has fallen injured you can instruct someone to go and give them aid. It’s a very simple setup which belies a fair amount of depth for delivering full control and for the most part it works well. At times your AI team does stupidly walk into oncoming fire and become more a hindrance to your progress but overall it works in most situations. Some more subtle controls have also been introduced into the game which really completes the package. As mentioned the stance control has been moved to the left analog stick button but what is really nice here is that the developers have added a few extra moves for good measure. A full click & hold puts you immediately into a prone position whereas just clicking the stick down and letting go will only put you into crouch position. The sweetest thing of all though is doing these moves on the run… now you can literally run and dive into prone in the middle of a fight and there is a similar slide-to-crouch attached to the crouch move. Not only do both look really, really cool but also they are simple and very effective to pull off ingame which is the real proof of a good control scheme. In addition to this there is one more control feature that’s been ripped straight out of Perfect Dark which is the cover mode. In G.R.A.W this is a context sensitive move that will occur just by walking up to a wall and pushing towards it, at which point you will stand flush with the wall permitting you to peer around corners, reload in safety and generally be more tactical in picking off your enemies in style. Once again because it is context sensitive (in PD0 you had to press A to initiate it) it feels very natural to use though it does tend to work a lot better in 3rd person view than it does in first person.
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