This isn't so much a sequel as a careful reiteration of the first Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter game. They've honed (what a good word that is) the template by adding some new visuals - lighting effects, convincing smoke, that sort of thing - and they've tweaked the interface. But essentially the Sweden-based development team, Grin, have delivered the same fancy-lookin' tactical shooter as before.
The Tom Clancy tag tells you this is going to be real world small-arms tactics and that's exactly what you get - a hint of Brothers in Arms, a whiff of the original Ghost Recon games, and plenty of mildly futuristic infantry technology. This is how war might be in a few years' time: specialised, computerised, morally dubious, and featuring those cool grey satellite maps detailing your lack of progress in some bombed-out city somewhere on the wrong end of the American peace process.
The question is, I suppose, whether you want to buy into the Ghost Recon rebirth or not. If you've already had a crack at the previous Advanced Warfighter game then I think you'll be able to make your mind up when I say that this one is slightly better.
If you want more of that business of creeping, leaning round corners and telling your team to "Execute!", then you'll know whether you've got a spare 30 quid to spend here. For everyone else the problem is a little less straightforward, so let me take some time to describe the game. Then you can nod, thinking the game promising, or simply flick onwards to the next article, having decided that all this Warfighter malarky isn't for you.
This is a game where taking things slowly is the key to success. You're faced with large tracts of complex urban environments - such as the slums of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, where most of the action takes place - and baddies could be anywhere. Luckily you have a squad of hi-tech squaddies at your disposal: you're a Ghost, the very best of the US military's computerised soldiers. This means that if an ally spots a baddy you get him flagged on your head-up display.
It also means you get to look at a satellite map at any moment, enabling you to judge the lie of the land as you move. This map also acts as one half of the command interface, allowing you to create waypoints for your men to move to on command. It's a bit fiddly, but occasionally useful if you decide you want to attack enemies from a number of different angles.
Timing it right, so that one of your guys doesn't draw fire before the rest, takes practice. This overhead option is also supplemented by occasional UAV drones, which float overhead and can join your 'team', allowing you to scout areas that it would be dangerous to move into straight away.
The other half of the command interface is your middle mouse button. This allows you to command things as you see them. Cycle through the commands and you can get your battle-chums to form up on you, creep stealthily, or move to a specific location.
Just like in Brothers in Arms, you can look at a location and order them to it, with HUD rings on the ground showing you exactly where they're going to stand. Fighting like this means that you have to push through environments quite carefully. You have to place your men so as to give them some cover and yet allow them the maximum fire-arc to hit things. Charging them out into the open will only get them a first-class ticket home - in a body bag.
This degree of man-management requires a special kind of awareness on your part - you'll be spearheading the fighting, for sure, but you need to be aware that your men aren't necessarily going to look after themselves. You also need to be aware that they are going to provide you with a huge amount of additional firepower. GRAW2 is a game in which you are the hero, but you're a hero who can only take a few hits, and whose ammo is going to run out rather quickly indeed.
Aesthetically this is all quite special. Dusty, sun-baked climes are delivered with astounding authenticity, and the explosions are unlike any I've seen in a game (see screenshots). Then there's a smattering of physics-enabled cleverness. Things in your environment spin and bounce and fall just as they should - although there were some odd bugs too, such as the time firing a bazooka knocked me onto a rooftop, where I was trapped, because there was no option to climb down.
While this is a game that is heavily draped in military fantasy, it's also one that feels deeply plausible - the setting, your tactics, the locations, it's all what you'd want from your sneaky combat in a contemporary warzone. The multiplayer environments, too, are exquisite, but you're going to have work very hard to get any good at this side of things. The singleplayer campaign - which is really rather short - is hardly appropriate training for the warzone you're going to experience online.
Despite all that it gets right, I found Warfighter dissatisfying. There are a couple of reasons for this. The most crucial one, and I'm amazed that this is still an issue in games since Medal of Honour, is that the snap, crackle and pop of its firefights are so lifeless. It's a weedy, disconnected experience.
Your rifles are all silenced, making them sound like someone smacking their lips in a nearby room, and even the impact of incoming bullets seems like little more than insects colliding with cardboard. Honestly, you only have to look at Battlefield 2 to see how that gunplay ambience should be handled. I am stunned that it's so weightless here.
This means that the slow pace causes tension to give over to tedium on a regular basis. Advanced Warfighter 2 is a technical accomplishment, no doubt about it, but it's not really an experiential accomplishment. For all its prettiness, it's boring.
Then there's the overall lack of balance. The difficulty, or initial lack thereof, is a major problem. There's no moderate option: it's either so easy that you'll complete most missions on the first go, without even trying particularly hard, or (on tougher settings) it's so ludicrously difficult that you're suddenly, regularly, dead without any real idea what happened.
The lack of feedback to the player, both in sound and in the 'feel' of where fire is coming from (which in other games is transmitted via obvious HUD elements) aren't enough for you to be able to stay alive. There's also some weirdness going on with leaning around corners, whereby they try to make the positioning of your gun realistic in relation to the wall... it just made me swear. Sometimes, reality can just be a bitch.
In the same way that I enjoyed Rainbow Six: Vegas, I'm glad that Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 exists. But where a game like SWAT4 manages to be fun, GRAW2 just feels a little bit too much like hard work. The fireworks don't crackle with the kind of spectacle we're paying for, and there just isn't enough juicy meat on the tactical bones for us to regard this as a feast.
I found the first one too hard on PC )single player that is) so I got bored of it fast...multiplayer was unforgiving, but good fun as I do like tactical shooters online the best.
I'll probably get this on the 360 though as my PC rig struggled with GRAW 1.
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