Behind the façade of GRAW 2's horrid story and bland presentation hides a competent old-school tactical shooter.
With many developers shifting towards a more mainstream target audience, it was especially surprising to see Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 get released in 2007. Even more than its direct predecessor, the game seemed completely oblivious to recent industry trends, and delivered an experience that was intense, rewarding and, most of all, brutally difficult. This surprising throwback to the hardcore tactical first person shooter is partially explained by its peculiar development process: instead of simply opting for a PC port of the more arcade-inspired console version of the game, Ubisoft commissioned the now defunct Swedish developer GRIN to produce a game that would cater specifically to PC gamers. And that they did. The PC version of GRAW 2 turned out a shooter that, above all, reminds us of the pre-Lockdown Rainbow Six games due to its focus on stealth-based, slow-paced gameplay that relies heavily on team coordination and cooperation. This does not mean, however, that GRAW 2 feels archaic or outdated. On the contrary: with the help of incredibly satisfying, realistic gunplay and comparatively advanced AI, the game becomes a very attractive alternative for gamers who wish to continue playing old-school tactical shooters without having to deal with the quirks of the game design of yesteryear.
However, one aspect in which GRAW 2 did totally adapt to the mainstream shooter market is its story. The plot can be summed up with "Mexican rebels steal a nuclear warhead and you have to kill them". This horridly chewed-out premise is lamentable in itself, but it is the storytelling in particular that is so insultingly bad that I at one point genuinely believed that this was a parody. It is as if the writers obtained a list of the most common clichés in military-themed video games and crossed them off as they incorporated each and every one of them in the most shameless way imaginable. Not only is the story filled with the usual commander chatter about how 'noone gets left behind', but the game blatantly employs what could best be classified as Western imperialist rhetoric without making any attempt to justify it. Particularly the way in which the Mexicans are portrayed is downright insulting to both the Mexican people and the intelligence of the average gamer. Mexican characters all speak English, but we are ever so often reminded of their nationality by their random and nonsensical use of Spanish words, making for such cringeworthy constructions as "Señor Ghost".
What makes the clichéd story so regrettable is that it may give players the wrong impression of GRAW 2, as what lies beneath is actually a very complex and intelligent shooter. Perhaps the strongest evidence for the game's intricacy is its versatility. Like in the first GRAW, you can put together your own loadout - and that of your teammates - before each of the 10 campaign missions. This way, the game allows for an array of different approaches. Of course, this is not the first game to let you choose between assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns and submachine guns, but switching between different kinds of weapons can, more than in most other shooters, drastically influence the pace of the gameplay. Each weapon type is best suited for a certain approach, and what weapon you have also influences how you will use your teammates. For example, going for a close-quarters weapon means that you will have to rely more on your team's sniper. Regardless of however you choose to equip yourself, though, you will always have to be careful and patient, seeing as one shot from a cunningly positioned enemy can already prove fatal.
The teammates themselves are a mixed bag. They are relatively good shots and will successfully take on just about any enemy 1-on-1, but they can often get stuck behind objects or fail to follow your instructions correctly, which may result in their demise. On the whole, their presence is more helpful than annoying, but it may still often feel like you have to babysit them due to their lack of initiative. Fortunately, the command system is very practical and easy to use. Simple commands may be issued from the standard first person view, while more complex manoeuvres are to be planned on a real-time map that is supposedly generated by a drone that permanently travels with you. This map will also reveal enemy positions (although, frequently, objects will prevent you from spotting everyone this way), making blitz attacks on enemy control points relatively easy to execute. This can, however, break up the pace to a point where it becomes more frustrating than helpful, after which you are likely to resort to the simplified first person commands. These pacing problems become all the more apparent when you play the missions that take a more lone wolf-like approach. During these endeavours, you have just one teammate accompanying you, and the game just seems to flow much better. The challenge and tactical gameplay are left intact, but the execution of the mission is a more fluid process due to the lack of micromanagement, making it a more streamlined and believable process. This makes one wonder what the game would have been like, had more missions taken this approach.
The campaign of GRAW 2 lasts for a good 9-10 hours, with the different possible approaches adding to the replayability. The missions themselves are not even that extensive: it is mainly the extreme difficulty that will keep you from blazing through this game in an afternoon. Each enemy location will have to be approached with extreme caution, and even then, a flank attack or a rogue sniper may force you to reload your last save. Fortunately, this is not as frustrating as it sounds. For starters, GRAW 2 allows for quicksaving, preventing you from being sent back 5-10 minutes like often happened in the first GRAW, which only featured autosave. Secondly, most of the game's difficulty is derived from actual, fair challenge. Enemy soldiers have roughly the same health as you and your teammates, so the probability that you will get hurt or even killed in a fire fight is very high if you do not know exactly what you are doing. Regrettably, though, this does not prevent the game from having a couple of annoying difficulty spikes. The final mission in particular can be brutally unforgiving, as it cost me 3 restarts to just keep my team alive in the first seconds after insertion. During the rest of the mission, you are presented with an overkill of trial and error in discovering enemy positions. You will frequently find yourself running out in the open just so you know where the enemies are shooting from, so you can snipe them from a safe distance after reloading your save. On the whole, though, these moments are scarce, and, as said, the addition of the quicksave feature makes this game a whole lot less frustrating than its predecessor.
Unfortunately, GRAW 2 did not manage to correct all of the errors that its predecessor made. Both games share the same setting, namely the Mexican city of Juárez and its outskirts, and both games portray this city with the same uninspired fifty-shades-of-brown colour palette that we have seen in so many military-themed games before and since. GRAW 2 only rarely deviates from this aesthetic formula, with the night-time recon mission in a villa being one of the few welcome exceptions. Graphically, the game falls into the 'fine' range, with most of the character models and objects looking like you would expect them to in an average 2007 PC game. The game could have distinguished itself with some more creative art direction, because the setting would have definitely allowed for such liberty. But sadly, the developers chose not to take advantage of this freedom, perhaps in an effort to remain aesthetically similar to the first game.
GRAW 2 is a game that very clearly caters to a certain demographic, namely that of hardcore PC gamers. As such, the game is absolutely worth getting if what you are looking for is a good tactical shooter campaign. There is a multiplayer mode as well, but there are barely any active servers left, although playing co-op online or over LAN with a friend is still an option. The game itself is not without errors: the deplorable story(telling) can be very distracting, and sometimes the obligatory micromanagement disrupts the flow of the game. Shamelessly misplaced in-game adverts add another slight but nonetheless noticeable crack to this game's foundation, given that you are, like me, sensitive to these things. But despite these objections, the versatile and customisable gameplay makes for an experience that is, above all, both challenging and satisfying. GRIN's game certainly is a brave effort, as it seems to ignore most of the evolution towards more arcade-like gameplay that many tactical franchises - even the console versions of GRAW - have experienced over the course of this generation. This does mean that you will certainly have to work to get anywhere in this game. But when does a tactical shooter fan ever take something for granted?