Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 Reviews
My biggest complaint with Tom Clancy will always be his plots. Whether it be Rainbow Six vegas where a mercenary army invades Las Vegas so no one notices the ICBM sitting at hoover dam, to his favorite fall back of "something terrible just happened in Latin America...again", Tom Clancy always seems to take a genre that needs very little plot and distracts from what is extremely solid gameplay. In this regard Tom Clancy's name means two things when I see it: 1. The plot is going to distract and 2. The gameplay is going to be solid.
GRAW 2 does not disappoint.
GRAW 2 offers up a clean tactical shooter that feels far more polished than its predecessor, that falls somewhere between the Vegas games and the Splinter Cell games in terms of patience and planning needed. You can't get away with the run and gun that seems to be creeping into the Rainbow Six series(which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I enjoy the new ones) but you won't find yourself sitting for several seconds every minute or so waiting for someone to walk by like you would in Splinter Cell. You find cover, you shoot, you advance. All the time controlling your AI allies.
The AI allies are really what distinguish this game from the Vegas series. Rather than having a pair of supporting characters, you're in command of small segments of a much larger battle, though the way the game plays out you wouldn't really ever notice the larger battle if not for the news reels that pop up on your hud. This level of depth in command can be fun, attempting to advance with as few casaulties as possible by giving orders to ghosts, tanks and the occasional helicopter. This sometimes chess board match does slow down the gameplay at times as you try and find the right position to move your men into without getting them slaughtered. An inch by inch crawl forward along a street or an abandoned building gets dull before it gets intense.
But I suppose that is what war is. Moments of boredom seperated by moments of sheer terror, or in this case, intense firefights. The inch by inch crawl may leave you ready to shut the game off, but it does have a pay off in the end. Once everything is in place, your team is in cover, your helicopters are overhead, and you engage, the battles will immediately suck you in. As you try and pop your head up to fire without getting shot and see the stream of crossfire as your men rip into the entrenched enemy, or watch your foes fall one by one as you draw them into the open only to be taken out by the team's sniper, you'll find yourself instantly drawn in, forgetting about the world around you.
This mix of boredom and intense action follows through into the multiplayer. GRAW 2 is the kind of game where you can run and gun, if you don't mind spending more time waiting to respawn than fighting. People are easily killed, and assault rifles do a lot of damage. The multiplayer is better suited for players with patience, though there are a handful of meat grinder levels. A great sense of satisfaction will follow once you've found that perfect spot and torn apart a few hapless enemies that dare to cross past you.
GRAW 2 is an enjoyable experience, with a decently long single player experience. If you're hoping to find a great story, and perhaps a protagonist you care about, I'd be sure to check those hopes and dreams at the door. But if what you're looking for is a more realistic(I imagine, I actually have no idea what real combat is like) shooter experience and have a bit of patience you can spend, GRAW 2 is definitely worth checking out. After the single player is nothing more than a memory, the multiplayer will keep you coming back for a couple of weeks if you're anything like me. For its modest price tag these days, GRAW 2 is definitely worth checking out for the shooter fan.
P.S.: No disrespect to Tom Clancy fans :-p.
4.0
