Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2

Written by Jason Cisarano  on July 09, 2007

Single-Player Hands-On Preview: The Ghosts take on a rag-tag group of Mexican rebels... again

Tweet

Comments

After having the chance to spend some quality time with the multiplayer version of the upcoming Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2, there was no way we could avoid having a look at the single player game. The multiplayer brought a few changes, some better than others. Its unforgiving damage system, slower movement, and complex multiplayer mission objectives require team play for success. On the other hand, it includes a new class and point system that unlocks weapons from one match to the next and feels a whole lot more gamey than seems fit for a tactical shooter that takes itself this seriously. The single-player game seems aimed to keep the tactical shooter fan happy and promises detailed control over friendly loadout, improved enemy and friendly A.I., and an impressive control system that developer GRIN is calling УCross-com 2.0,Ф not to mention great graphics and a deep storyline. Here's our take after spending some quality time with the first mission of the single-player game.

The single-player plot picks up right where the first GRAW left off, with Mexican rebels still causing trouble down south. In fact, things have escalated into full-scale civil war between loyalists and the rebels, and the rebels have made some connections with bad guys in Panama who have taken over the canal and are looting ships. Through these connections, the rebels have gotten their hands on some nasty weaponry, maybe a dirty bomb or some sort of biological weapon, and the means to deliver these weapons to U.S. soil. It's up to the Ghosts to not only find and destroy the weapon, but also to stop the rebels from advancing across the border into El Paso, Texas. This time, though, the Ghosts are Уgoing in dark,Ф since the U.S. president has officially withdrawn all troops from the Mexican conflict after the coup attempt in the first GRAW. Captain Scott Mitchell and the rest of the team are on their ownЧofficial policy will be to disavow any knowledge of the operation.

Like earlier versions of Ghost Recon, GRAW 2 has players controlling a small team of elite operatives, and it adds a few features to make controlling the Ghosts that much easier. The new system is called Cross-com 2.0, and it models the high-tech battlefield of the future in which all soldiers are wired to a central data server for instantaneous information transfer. The first thing this means for GRAW is a picture-in-picture feature that allows the player to monitor what teammates see. The player can then zoom in on a particular Ghost's view to give orders or simply get a better view of the situation. The game includes several remote-controlled air and ground vehicles that the player can use in this same way to get a look at unknown or dangerous areas.

The first of these vehicles is the hovering UAV, which allows the player to get a bird's-eye view on the battlefield. There's also a remote-controlled ground vehicle called a MULE that can also be used for ammo resupply or mobile cover. Both types of vehicle include cameras that can be used to spot enemies without risking friendly casualties. The MULE isn't included in the demo level, but the flying UAV worked as advertised. The only problem is, it also squeezed most of the fun out of the game. These devices mimic the hardware U.S. forces are taking to the battlefield today, and in the real world, a UAV makes perfect sense since it can minimize surprises and friendly casualties. But in a game, it simply ruins all the suspense and lets you know what's coming up around the next corner, kind of like looking at detailed mission walkthroughs before playing the game.

It looks like GRIN has been playing Brothers in Arms, since the FPS command mode is a lot like the WWII game's interface: click the middle mouse button and a destination ring appears on the ground that you can move around to choose where to send the selected unit. Unlike Brothers in Arms, GRAW gives the player a slew of commands to give the troops, including two different awareness modes: Assault and Recon. The Assault mode will have the Ghosts pouring fire on any and all targets and suppressing targets behind cover. It also includes a Уcover thatФ order that can have an individual Ghost aiming in on a specific zone. The Recon mode, on the other hand, is about cautious, quiet movement. It's perfect for getting close to enemy installations and taking out sentries on the way, since Ghosts in this mode will always go for the silent takedown and use silencers when available.

Beyond the FPS picture-in-picture effect, the new Cross-com system includes an overhead tactical view that gives the player complete control over the Ghost team on a level that's more like an RTS than an FPS. The overhead view looks sharp and gives a detailed 3d map of all terrain features and buildings. It also allows the player to give move and fire orders and even set a soldier's field of view to make sure that he's covering a flank or danger area. One nice feature of this interface is that it shows the exact final position of each Ghost when moving them as a group, and those positions are chosen based on terrain and cover, without the need for you to micromanage each individual. The overhead view (and the first person view, for that matter) supports the colored diamond tagging system familiar from the last game and described in detail in our multiplayer preview. When any of the Ghosts spot an enemy soldier, it's automatically tagged with a red diamond that appears both in the tactical and first-person views.



Since the non-player characters are so important to the game, GRIN has promised a series of upgrades to both friendly and enemy AI. They say that the enemy will be capable of running complex flanking maneuvers and will be aware of terrain height and use it to their advantage. Unfortunately, the AI in the demo on the УnormalФ difficulty level was about as clever as the zombies in a George Romero movie. The bad guys would often just stand there as the Ghost team gunned down their comrades. Often enough during movement using Cross-com, a ghost would go УrogueФ and choose a path that would split him up from the rest of the team and have him hung up in some random location in the map. On higher difficulty levels, the enemy AI brightened up a bit and did try to flank the Ghosts. It also reacted a bit quicker, it shot a bit straighter, but it still stood around often enough while a firefight was going on just a few meters away. Hopefully, there's more AI tweaking going on up there in Sweden.

The objectives in the demo mission are fairly straightforward: locate and destroy a rebel stronghold in Juarez, destroy several rebel artillery pieces, and blow up a bridge to slow down the rebel advance toward the border. Like the multiplayer demo mission, this is a nice looking map. They share more or less the same shantytown look, with plenty of twisty routes to the objectives. The mission briefing stage gives the player the choice of two different insertion points, allowing players some autonomy in mission planning from the beginning. Still, this mission is really pretty small, especially compared to some of the missions in the first GRAW that had players covering what felt like miles of urban terrain. Even though there are a few choices as to path, there really aren't many surprises as to where the УhiddenФ camp will be, and quick players will probably finish this mission in well under half an hour.

Speaking of mission planning, the single-player briefing stage allows a decent amount of control over the Ghost team setup. The player continues to inhabit the role of Scott Mitchell from the earlier game, and can build a team of up to three Ghosts drawn from a pool of five. The Ghosts are specialized in several classes and the system is nothing innovative. There's the usual demolitions, sniper, and rifleman classes, each with an appropriate primary weapon. The demolitions class is a bit odd, since it's the only one that can use an underbarrel grenade launcher and doesn't have a monopoly on placing explosives. Unlike the multiplayer game, weapons and equipment are very customizable: each team member has a couple of choices for each weapon slot.

The class system doesn't include any sort of skill ratings for the different team members, so there's no real reason to choose one rifleman over another. You do get a little blurb-biography for each one, but they're really not all that compelling. If you want to know Ramirez's birthday, you've got it. If you want to know if he's any good with a pistol, well, that's anybody's guess. It's also possible to ditch the whole team and play the mission solo, if that's the kind of challenge you're looking for.

On the tech side of things, it looks like GRIN has done a lot of optimizing and improvements to the game engine since the first Advanced Warfighter release. The updated game looks just as good as the original, if not better, with some seriously detailed character models and textures. The environments in the maps released so far are packed full of atmosphere and feel as close to Уreal worldФ as anything in any game available today. And it runs smoother than the original did on the same hardware. In fact, GRIN hasn't upped the system requirements on the new game. It's a refreshing turn away from the vicious newer-better-hardware cycle that has die-hard players laying out hundreds (or thousands) of dollars every couple of years to play the latest version of their favorite games.

It feels like the single-player game is tuned more to the standard first-person shooter crowd than the multiplayer. The player can run a bit faster and has a much deeper health bar. The single-player game is also supposed to include medics and health kits to help out injured teammates. Wounded characters no longer limp around, as they did in earlier versions. And the player's aim seems a lot better than in the on-line game, where it is possible to miss a shot at improbably short distances. Here, long shots seem just a little too easy, and weapon recoil is much less pronounced on the light machineguns. Still, one-shot kills are possible on both sides and enemy AI is able to lay down some impressive firepower when it gets its act together.