Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Verdict: Stylish and slick tactical shooter.
Platform: 360.
Rating: 4/5
When you think of ghosts, images of floaty spectral beings probably come to mind or perhaps the Liverpudlian twang of Derek Acorah calling out ‘Is anybody there?’. What doesn’t come to mind is a group of Hi-tech American soldiers tearing up Mexico City with rocket launchers.
Highly regarded for its tense multiplayer games, the Ghost Recon series has always been let down by its single player campaigns. With Advanced Warfighter, Ubisoft have tried to amend the problems by radically overhauling the game while retaining all that made the series good.
Set in the near future, the 3rd person shooter introduces the Cross Com device - hooking your soldier up to a communication network, it provides help on the battle field. Displayed on screen with vivid cyan and red icons, satellite relays provide you with up to date information on enemy and allied locations, a CCTV style window provides you with a third eye so you can see what your team mates are viewing and a 3D map can be brought up to issue movement commands and root out enemies with the flying Spy Drone.
Besides all the Hi-tech additions and the obvious graphical improvements the 360 musters, there’s a subtler change to the game too. Introducing more natural movement and interaction with the environment, they’ve increased the immersion by replacing button presses for certain actions with more fluid, context sensitive commands with the sticks. Walking up to a wall and continuing to push into it results in the soldier sticking close to it in a more covert, cover friendly manner and there are many more instances in this logical, intuitive style.
Unfortunately Advanced Warfighter still falls short of its single player goals with massive difficulty spikes and A.I. problems forcing you to nanny your squad so they don’t get themselves killed. What stands out though is Mexico City - the sprawling, urban metropolis you’re trying to survive.
Online is still superior and they’ve even ditched the impenetrable menus of old. Playing against other people or working together in missions against A.I. allows you to really put the Cross Com through its paces as Spy Drones, Sat Nav and the third eye style camera prove crucial to success, especially when all it takes is one, silenced ghost of a bullet to end your game.