Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 Review (Xbox 360)

If you have ever doubted just how much advantage the Dominator system equates to on the battlefield, here's your opportunity to sample it first hand. Was the development of the real Dominator and the interface to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 linked? We don't know but when our games editor saw the real system demonstrated, he visibly paled. Ubisoft has already given gamers in Australia 10,000 good reasons (AUD$10,000) to play this game in an upcoming Xbox Live tournament. This no doubt left the majority of our readers, who can't play online games competitively and don't live in Australia, entirely unconvinced. Here's our games editor with a full review.

Story

Funnily enough, GRAW 2 picks up where the first game ended - fighting between Mexican rebels and the government in Ciudad Juarez has escalated to a threat of nuclear war, and looks to spill over the border into El Paso, Texas. Players again take the role of Captain Scott Mitchell, taking his team of Ghosts and an array of cutting-edge battlefield technology out to kill the bad guys, and save the world - it's your standard video game affair, but manages to get away with it by constantly bordering on satire.

Gameplay

For those who are unfamiliar with the first game, GRAW is a third-person shooter that runs with the left-stick move, right-stick aim control setup that will be familiar to most console gamers by now.

As is par for the course these days, a cover system has also been implemented, so you can pop out from behind cover, shoot and hide again intuitively. It works well, but I think I've been spoilt by the highly-tuned and slightly super-human feel to the Gears of War cover system, as the GRAW 2 system feels like molasses, especially when you have five guys shooting at you. Aren't we supposed to be controlling one of the world's elite soldiers?

What makes the sequel worthy is the Crosscom, which bears frightening resemblances to the (real) Dominator we covered earlier this week. The Crosscom allows you to see through the eyes of all the members in your squad, by holding the RB button. You can cycle through available allied units using Left and Right on the directional pad, and order them to move to another position, or attack a selected target by pressing Up on the directional pad. You can pass entire missions or the whole game entirely through the eyes of your allies, and there are a couple of achievements on offer to encourage you to give it a try.

Through the various missions you will encounter different combinations of allied units, my favorite being the UAV you can use to scan an area for troops before you or your team go in. You'll also be commanding tanks, APCs, helicopters, jet air strikes and a handy weapons locker on wheels.

It's a well executed and incredibly satisfying blend of three parts third-person shooter one part real-time strategy, but sadly the campaign will only last you a few sessions before you're done. Despite a fairly difficult last mission, I felt like I was only just getting in to the game, and having it end where it did was fairly disappointing.

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