Gritty, immersive, flawed but fantastic!
You start as a special ops soldier, dropped in the middle of an island under enemy control and given the task of destroying air-defences to facilitate an invasion. Your radio is going crazy with instructions, your objective marked and the other squads start moving. As you advance up a hill pretty soon you hear bullets whizzing past your ear out of nowhere, you look around at your squad firing frantically into the distance as they hit the deck…
Teamwork is the main theme here. Even though you are a squad leader, giving you much control over the three soldiers under your command, you need to co-ordinate your attacks with the other squads or you will die. This gives a lovely sense that you are part of a much larger team. When one of your guys gets shot you examine your leadership and question your tactics. The realism here is in that you are not Rambo, you are just a man with a gun and if you do not do your job the operation will fail, your friends will die and global war may follow. This may not be for everyone, but gives a whole other dimension compared to most other FPS games. For example, you are often given a new task with limited time, like taking out an AA gun when your helicopters have already taken off to support the main offensive. You find yourself racing up a hill with your squad, throwing caution to the wind and shooting anything that moves just to get to your objective in time. You really feel like you'd be letting the other guys down if you hesitate and waste time.
The visual and sound effects are lovely, not as good as other modern shooters like Far Cry 2, but this game is far superior in its implementation of everything else to create a sense of realism and immersion. The fear of death, the chaos of combat, enemy ambushes etc.
This game has its fair share of glitches and flaws, though this was true of the original. The most annoying is the disappearing bodies, which are a great source of ammo. You pretty much have to get to them within 30s which is stupid. This is a PC game, PCs generally have much more memory and rendering power, and these console limited aspects really annoy. Most of the glitches will seem unnecessary and a product of bad design, but they can be easily ignored.
In the end if you want to play an FPS so you can shoot your way through an entire army, destroying everything in your wake then this is not for you. This game is about caution, precision and tactics. At its completion, it will feel like a job well done. You are not a hero like Arnie, you are a professional.