Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 Hands-On

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 stormed onto the Xbox 360 in March, providing more thrills to fans of military-themed shooters. The PC version arrives next month, and it's a very different game from its 360 cousin. While the Xbox 360 and the upcoming PlayStation 3 versions are third-person action games, the PC version is a first-person game. Ubisoft and Swedish developer Grin used this approach for the original GRAW for the PC, and the two companies have again teamed up for the sequel. We recently got a chance to play a work-in-progress version of the game.

The PC version isn't simply the Xbox 360 game from a first-person perspective. Instead, the PC version takes the framework of the Xbox 360 version's story and builds an entirely new game around it. Once again you'll play as US Army Captain Scott Mitchell, of the fictional Special Forces group known as the Ghosts. In the first GRAW, Mitchell and US forces helped repel a coup in Mexico City, saving the US and Mexican presidents along the way. In the sequel, which is set just a day or two after the events of the first game, the Mexican rebels have brought the fight to the US border, in the area around El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico.

GRAW2 is built around the US Army's Advanced Warfighter concept, the idea that by networking infantry and other ground units together you not only digitize the battlefield, but also create a much more lethal fighting force. That means you'll experience life as a 21st-century infantryman, armed with high-tech weapons as well as equipment that provides you with vital targeting and navigational information.

If you played the Xbox 360 version of GRAW2, the first thing that stands out about the PC version is that before each mission you can custom-select the weapon loadout for each character in your squad, choosing a primary and a secondary weapon, as well as a sidearm or a heavier weapon. The choices include real and prototype weapons, such as the G36 assault rifle (a real-world rifle) or the M8 carbine (a now-canceled rifle). Since you can control up to three other soldiers in your immediate squad, you can outfit them with different loads, so you can have a designated marksman or a machine gunner. After the mission briefing and loadout screens, you're dropped into the mission, and in the levels that we saw, this involved fast roping out of a hovering Black Hawk helicopter into the action below.

As we noted in our recent multiplayer preview, the action in GRAW2 is a lot slower and more deliberate than in many other shooters. Infantrymen tend to have a cautious walk that enables them to keep their weapon up and ready at all times, and this translates into a methodical pace to the action. You can lower your weapon to sprint, but you won't be able to fire it, so combat requires you to slowly advance from cover to cover, ready to engage any enemy that suddenly appears. The neat sliding action from the first GRAW is back, so you can run across open ground and then slide, feetfirst, behind cover.

At the same time, you'll also lead your squad into battle. Like in the original GRAW, you can command your squad a couple of ways. There are normal squad commands, so you can simply point to a spot on the ground and order your squad to move up to it, or target an enemy and tell your squad to engage it. There's also the tactical map, which lets you get a bird's-eye view of the battle from overhead drones and satellites, and in this way you can select your squadmates like they were units in a real-time strategy game and issue them orders, so it's possible to guide them through the streets of a city and set up covering fire in a certain direction once they reach their destination.

In addition to your squad, you'll have command of other assets, including battlefield drones such as the Mule, which was introduced in the Xbox 360 version. The Mule is basically a large, remote-controlled armored resupply drone, capable of delivering weapons and ammunition anywhere on the battlefield. The nice thing about the Mule is that you can use it for a variety of purposes. If you're suddenly facing armor on the battlefield, you can use the Mule to rearm with antitank missiles. Or if you're under fire, you can order the Mule to advance through the gunfire, and then you can put the Mule between yourself and the enemy, using it as mobile cover. The Mule can even be used for reconnaissance, because you can get a full-screen video feed from the onboard camera.

All of these assets get put to use in the early levels of the game, which include a rugged mountain village, as well as the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico. These environments feature a mix of close-quarters fighting and open spaces, which is challenging. One minute you'll be sniping at an enemy a hundred yards away, and the next you'll be maneuvering through a warren of alleys and streets, engaging opponents a few yards away. Fans of the original Ghost Recon will likely be disappointed at the size of the levels. The very first Ghost Recon had gigantic levels that you could almost get lost in. The levels in GRAW2 are smaller and more linear, but they're large enough that you have some discretion in how you advance. For instance, you can choose to charge up a main street or try to go through a parallel alleyway, but none of the areas we saw felt really wide open.

The PC version hardly looks like the Xbox 360 game, and it's not just the difference in perspective. While the Xbox 360 version looked glossy and colorful, the PC game is grittier and a lot more subdued. They both look good, but it's difficult to compare the two since they're so different. At least the PC version ran fairly smoothly on a PC with a dual core processor and a high-end video card; the original GRAW felt sluggish, even on powerful systems. Sound effects like rifle fire are fantastic, and, interestingly, the PC version basically recycles all of the voice acting, mission briefings, and in-game videos from the Xbox 360 game.

Considering that the first GRAW is hardly a year old at this point, GRAW2 wasn't going to surprise us with any major new features. This game looks and feels very much like its predecessor, and it will appeal to those who like more tactical and realistic shooters instead of fast-paced run-and-gun affairs. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 ships for the PC next month.