Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter Single-Player Preview - Fighting the Future

By Brad Shoemaker, GameSpotPosted Feb 13, 2006 4:03 pm PT

The fate of the Mexican government--and Western political stability--is in the hands of the Ghosts in the first Tom Clancy game to hit the Xbox 360. Our exclusive preview has all the details.

Ghost Town

Fight an insurgent-led coup on the war-torn streets of Mexico City in Advanced Warfighter's intense single-player campaign.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series has been undergoing a steady gameplay evolution since the first ultra-tactical entry hit the PC in 2001. The 2004 sequel focused more squarely on flashy, run-and-gun action with bigger explosions and a third-person perspective more suitable for the console crowd, though it retained the realistic trappings of the original game. After strategizing our way through the first several missions of the Xbox 360 version of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, the third game in the series, it looks like Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Storm has continued to refine the series' trademark tactical military gameplay while adding in the most explosive action the series has seen yet, not to mention a host of futuristic, high-tech toys and some of the nicest visuals we've seen on the 360 to date. (And if you don't believe us, why don't you watch some brand-new high-def gameplay movies for yourself?)

Advanced Warfighter's fast-moving plot makes you hit the ground running almost as soon as the game begins. Your first mission has you moving solo into the dense urban jungle of Mexico City to investigate the whereabouts of a fellow operative who is himself gathering intel on some shady characters' nefarious doings. But things take a turn for the dramatic when insurgents stage a coup d'état in the midst of a multinational political conference taking place in the center of the city. Since you and a number of your fellow Ghosts are already on the ground, the parameters of your mission suddenly become a lot heavier, as you're tasked with rescuing the American and Mexican presidents and quelling the uprising. No big deal, though. All in a day's work for the Ghosts, right?

The core gameplay here isn't fundamentally different from that of the first game way back when, though the controls and third-person perspective will be most familiar to veterans of the second game on the Xbox (and its expansion, Summit Strike). Calm down, purists--you can still use first-person for maximum realism. Of course, you'll have a wide assortment of advanced assault rifles and antiarmor weaponry at your disposal, so you'll have access to various levels of zoom, grenade launchers, and other fun stuff depending on your loadout.

Advanced Warfighter has incorporated some new action-oriented elements that make the gameplay even more fast-paced than before. For instance, when running you can now perform a sort of base slide into the crouching position, which is useful for moving toward cover at high speed and then quickly getting down behind the barrier safely. You can also back up against any flat surface, Solid Snake-style, and then peer around corners or up over low walls to take a quick shot before jumping back to safety. These little enhancements have so far made the game feel much more immediate and satisfying than past Ghost Recons, though the tactical nature of the series still seems well in place. Just because you can go running around like an action hero doesn't mean you'll win that way, in other words.

The cross-com's advantages almost make the game seem too easy--until you realize how heavily the odds are stacked against you.

The most noticeable addition to Advanced Warfighter is the extremely busy heads-up display, which lights up like a Christmas tree when the action gets hot. You'll be fed an immense amount of combat and tactical data in real time throughout a mission, and this constant stream of info is enabled by the cross-com, a high-tech monocle that overlays targets with highlights and distance indicators, delivers a picture-in-picture video of your allies' perspectives, and more.

The cross-com almost makes the game feel too easy, until you realize the action gets so intense that you have to rely on its features just to survive. For instance, once you ID an enemy soldier, he'll be marked with a red outline that will even show up when he's behind cover. Friendly units will similarly be highlighted in green, and your own teammates will have a blue outline, along with floating arrows that point to their exact locations. Throw in a night-vision-style view enhancement that cuts through obstructions like smoke in order to highlight pertinent threats, and you've got a formidable advantage against the terrorists trying to bring down the Mexican government.