If you're looking for realistic and fun squad-based game, you won't find it here.
Yep, I had a very high expectations for this game. After the first Full Spectrum Warrior was released in 2004, along comes the sequel, better, longer and featuring stuff that (on paper) should make the game even more fun and "challenging". This time, the enemy AI comes slightly improved, meaning the enemies won't take cover behind the boxes that aren't there anymore, and perform other idiotic suicidal stunts, such as running straight at your firing line, things that were common in the previous installment of this electronic wonder boy. Knowing that, you would assume that the AI of your squad mates has been improved as well. Wrong, my dear reader. Your men are about as smart as the fried chickens in McDonald's. When you give them the order to cover (for example, upon stumbling on an enemy that just popped out from behind the corner), they'll just stand in one place and stare at the wall. If they're running from one cover to another, and the enemy pops out right in front of them, they'll simply ignore him and keep on running until they reach their destination, allowing the bad guy to shoot them in the back. If you order the "hot" movement (when they're supposed to move slowly, covering each other in all 4 directions) from one place to another, they'll often ignore the enemies as well. Or fail to notice them, altou you can see them very clearly. Or simply shoot and miss. The game is entirely scripted, so they may pop am enemy in a certain place, if the game allows you to. Yes, it's very obvious, from the way enemies appear on the windows sometimes, wide exposed for you to shoot in a certain place where the game wants you to shoot them. So much for "realism".
I'm not going to even mention the story, since it's just the same old annoying crap you are bombarded with in just about every military-themed game lately. The good and honorable US Army arrives to the stereotypical Middle-Eastern country to liberate the poor people from the evil terrorists' oppression. Even in the opening cutsceenes you can see a goody-goody sergeant talking about his life being meaningless, and how he joined the army in order to make the world a better place. Pure propaganda. Maybe a hidden recruitment commercial for the army? Makes me wanna puke. Ah well...
Anyway, the whole game is presented to you in a series of cutsceenes that look just like news footages. Even as you play, the camera follows your squad like a real camera should, giving you the role of an invisible squad leader. It's also restricted to what the actual commander can possibly see, forcing you to take a careful peek behind every corner, and planning your movement carefully. That is kind of cool... The controls are a bit diffcult to learn and customize, since the game uses the default keyboard-mouse setup. But most of the time you only need a few basic commands, which makes the controls fairly effective. It's just that is so darn difficult to learn what's what, and separate the things you really need from completely useless keyboard shortcuts. All thanks to the horrible tutorial which never clearly tells you what you actually need to do. Do you need only to press the left mouse button or hold it? It only shows you a picture of mouse and tells you "fire", and assumes you're gonna figure it out. It also forces you to learn some pretty advanced commands (that the game is so much bragging about) before you even learned the basics. And fails to even mention some less fancy, and far more useful commands. It's just abysmal...
But even tough the tutorial is horrible, the actual controls and camera are very good, and react well to your commands. Once you learn the controls, you won't have any trouble with it and will start to enjoy the game, at least for a short while. Well, the missions aren't very interesting, of course, and all revolve around the same concept - go from point A to point B and kill everyone. Pick up a wounded, maybe bust a sniper position with a mortar strike... Well, what can you expect? This is supposed to be a realistic game, you can't expect a boss fight with cyber assassin Saddam Hussein carrying a minigun. Sometimes you get to command a vehicle, such as Bradley, or call an airstrike, or mortar barrage. That was actually pretty fun. Unfortunately, it happens rarely in the game. Most of the time you'll be crawling through dull streets, taking obvious cover and shooting evil terrorists in the same old repetitive way.
Yes, my friend, after a few missions, you realize that, despite the flashy presentation, this is a very dull game. You take cover, enemy pops out of nowhere, takes cover, you can either flush him out with a grenade or take a careful pot shot and hope your rifleman gets him. That's right, you can only ORDER someone to shoot, you can never actually pull the trigger yourself. Despite the fact that your opponent's standing behind the partial cover with his head and half of his back exposed, he stays miraculously unharmed by your hail of bullets. It's either grenade or pot shot, nothing else... Of course, in the previous game, your squad would become an impregnable fortress after finding good cover. This time, a factor of randomness is here to gun down your mate even if you're shooting from behind a perfect cover, which feels completely out of place and unfair. Enemies hitting you from an impossible positions in a few spots in the game are also something to worry about. Maybe a bug or something. Probably not. Even tough your men are all wearing helmets and body armor, one bullet always means an instant incapacitation. It makes no difference if he gets hit in a toe, or right between the eyes. You have to hurl him back to the medevac, which takes about 5 to 10 minutes. That's right, this is a "realistic" game, so forget about medkits.
But the game still could've been good and less frustrating. If only there was a proper save system involved. This way you're sentenced to mere checkpoins, which are always too few and too far in between. It's so damn punishing, and for no reason at all, except to make the game more "challenging". I mean, are the programmers insane? Do they seriously think that making the game rediculously difficult would make it more appealing? For a masochists, maybe...
As for the "tactical" side of this game, you can just forget about it. The game is so heavily scripted it all comes down to simple trial and error routine. A street that was peaceful a moment ago, and apparently safe, becomes an inferno after your squad moves a few meters forward. Enemies just pop out of nowhere and start blasting. Even if you scout ahead, the enemies don't move until you do. It's simply stupid. Once I had to deal with a sniper. So I had half of my team cover me and lay a suppressive fire, while other half ran towards the building in order to lob a hand grenade through the window and kill the bad guy. You know, a thing that would be actually... TACTICAL. But nooo, your badass marines can't seem to throw a grenade more than a few meters away, or into the air, so it only left me with the good old pot shot order. Yep, I tried to lob a 203 grenade, and managed to get it right into the room where the sniper was. He survived. I mean, really... COME ON! I could go on forever with examples such as this, of how you could deal with a situation in a tactical way, and how the game actually lets you deal with the same situation in an idiotic, unrealistic way that often puts your men or vehicles at risk. The programmers obviously don't know a first thing about squad tactics, urban warfare, or even weapons. A 203 grenade flies in a straight line in this game, like an RPG. Your men don't seem to have any plastic explosives or AT weapons to deal with, let's say, enemy vehicles or pillboxes. A standard equipment in the real world. Enough said?
So underneath the flashy presentation, profanity, and civilians getting killed in a crossfire (which is all the realism you can get here), this is a very shallow, repetitive game with horrible AI and brain-dead mission design. You may enjoy it for a few mission, as I have, but you will soon learn how to despise it.
Avoid this game at all costs!