I had great hope for this game, but however I was wrong… A lot of things don't feel right…..
I will not discuss about the plot as I think it's pretty self explanatory and this is something you really have to play the game to find out. There is nothing wrong with the plot of GRAW; it takes place in the future where there is a civil war going on in the Mexican border and Ghost team is set to save the day.
Overall this game gives you a very realistic feeling, you can kill enemies by one shot, and you can die the same way too. The guns were very nicely done, they look great and detail in the first person view and I love when you change the fire mod you can actually see you character changing it. Weapons sounds very realistic, the assault rifles have very high recoil, a few shots can send your cross hair into the air so the practice right firing mod at the right distance is very important in this game. Unfortunately there aren't many guns to choose from and most of the time you will stick to the same old rifle throughout the mission.
The music fits right into the atmosphere you feel the tension when you engage the enemies; the ambient sounds of the street are awesome .The voice acting is ok, you don't get to hear much of conversation anyway, the soldiers speak with native language, and they will response to attack by shouting towards each another.
I like the introduction where you jumped out form the plan and you get this massive view of the city, the pilot tells you the current situation and your objectives. It gave me the impression that I can complete the mission in any mean I want, but this is not what I can do in the game. The level design itself is pretty limited, you don't really get to explore the whole city, and if you explore (like me), you will end up with blockage or dead end very often. This makes the gameplay more or less linear. (Maybe I'm asking too much but I think in real life, when you engage in heavy defense, you would like to choose circle around the city and avoid confrontation as much as possible. This is, a tactical shooter after all, and I believe the Ghost 's duty was not really to clear out the hostile troops.) There are, however, alternative routes specially "designed" for those of you who don't like face to face engagement, but however the reaction of AI is very fast and you will get pined in a location very often with no possible solution but to charge at enemy.
You can't interact with things, that's fine, you can't going into buildings, that's…..well, understandable due to the year this game was released but still this is something I feel it will be great if they added in. You can't jump. Yes, you can't. This wouldn't be much of a problem if you can climb, but no, you can't. Often I find my character get stuck with the small block of obstacles which I have to walk around instead of just…step on it and walk over it….. You don't have binoculars, that's just lame, and your only method of surveillance the environment is by pressing tab brings you to the satellite command view. Don't get me wrong, the satellite command view was brilliant, but it kind of makes me feel like cheating and I really like to spot enemy by myself , it makes me feel like I'm really in the army instead of using some high tech cheating devices.
The control is awful…. The number keys (1, 2, 3, 4, etc) is not for changing guns but to selected your ghost members ; F brings up the weapon selection menu; ctrl is for crouching which is fine but you expect to press it again to stand up, no, you will go into prone and you press it again your character will not get up!....If you played BF2, and then you witch to GRAW, you will have a hard time remembering all the keys. Even if you did there is no guaranteen that you are not going to press the wrong button when you get ambushed or in a hurry. (like I played far cry 2 and vegas 2 for while then swith to GRAW and arh!...I pressed 1,2,3 for gun selection....)
The AI is broken. Your team mates are useless. They have no intelligence and sense of danger, sometimes when you ask them to go one location and he will end up facing backwards. They shoot when they are under cover and they won't shoot when they spoted enemies. On this other hand, the enemies shoot very accurate, sometimes they can spot you through walls .They react very quick when alerted, I've even been flanked for a few times.When you think you have the element of surprise but most of the time you really don't. You can't stealth in GRAW, this even worse when during one of the night mission where enemy literally saw me , and he only had a flashlight…I was like 80 meters away from him and I'm no way near the light source…You have a silencer add-on but that's only for the look. OK I admit it has some uses, fewer enemies will notice your presence but what's the point anyway, most of the time you will engage them and kill EVERYBODY in your path, it's not like you only going to take out a few bad guys and avoid confrontation or something like that.
I mentioned that one shot can really kill you, so you can say a team of four people can't really match a whole chunk of bad guys if they are able to spot you hundreds of meters away, not to mention that you DON't have binoculars!.... You will die a lot. The tactical aspect of this game is broken due to dumb team mates and clever AI, and these makes the difficulty unforgiving.
My conclusion is, try not to play it if you are not a hardcore fans to the franchise. This game is not going to suit everybody, and even if you brought it you might not have the patients to set through to the very end, I gave it overall 5/10 for the bad AI and gameplay, and this sums up my review for GRAW PC version.
PS: try console version... They are not as bad as this crappy PC version.