Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
By XTheGreyGhostX
Junior Xbox 360 Journalist
You are sitting in a Humvee one day after your fight to recover Guardrail IX. Your gun rests on your lap, while your driver compliments you on your heroism over the last several days. You look out over the desert of Mexico. Fort Bliss lies in the distance. Your driver is still going on about your bravery at all your different missions and you finally tell him to shut up and keep his eyes on the road; little do you know, this kid will die tomorrow while trying to save your life and the lives of your squad. A feed from General Keeding starts up in your helmet and he asks, “Mitchell, are you ready for more?”
You reply “yes,” and now we are here with the sequel to the smash hit, arriving just one year after the original. You are wondering, “How good can it be? It has only been a year. How much work could they have put into it? It will most likely just be an addition to the original.” Well, you’re right and wrong at the same time. This is basically the same game with better-looking graphics and some new additions. It still outshines all competition, and will stand at the top of Third Person Shooters, its’ brothers Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell bowing before it.
The single player takes place two days after the end of the last game. You once again play as Captain Scott Mitchell. You start off driving to camp for a little R and R (Trust me. You need it.) As you are about to pull into camp, General Keeding tells you that you’re not done yet, and that he needs you once more. With only around a dozen missions, the SP Campaign is very short and can be completed in around 5 hours depending on how fast you go and what difficulty you are on. The basic story is that the US is still trying to sign the NAJSA, which is the North American Joint Securities Agreement. It’s an agreement between all the countries of North America to help protect all of there borders, but Mexican rebels are still opposed to it doing all they can to stop it, including stealing two nuclear warheads and aiming them at the US. Your job is to destroy them. The controls feel slightly slower. It takes you a bit of time to raise your gun or go up against a wall for cover.
Don’t count on your squad being much help. It is a rarity if they kill someone without you telling them to. The only thing they will help with is letting you know where the enemy is and sometimes what gun he is using. They will say things such as, “Behind the white car!” or “He is using a Gun Cam!,” which helps none the less.
You will go to many different locations such as a desert, small Mexican Villages, grave yards, border checkpoints, and large cities. You even have a mission set in El Paso, Texas.
New additions to the game include the MULE, which is an unmanned support vehicle that carries weapons and ammo, Little Bird attack helicopters and Stryker Armored Vehicles. All of which you can command. There is an interesting day/night cycle that will change during missions. The longer you spend on a mission, the more change there will be to your lighting. If you playing a night mission, it will get lighter the longer you spend on the mission. If you’re playing a day mission, it will become darker the longer you play that mission. The Cross Com has also been updated and now with the click of your RB button, you can see whatever any vehicles or soldiers under your command see. You also have a new addition to the game: the medic. In SP you can have a medic heal you and your squad with the push of a button. The UAV has also had a tune up and will help you immensely. Using your full screen view, you can now move it around yourself, by just moving it with the analog stick.
The graphics have also been stepped up, past the near perfection they were before. Everything from your camouflage, to the faces of people you meet, to rocks, to smoke and buildings, seems extremely lifelike, making it the best-looking shooter out to date.
The sound has also had a great increase, with everything from gunfire, the rumble of engines, your own voice through you squad’s mic, and even the ringing in your ears when a grenade goes off close to you, adding greatly to the realism.
The Multiplayer is basically the same but better-looking with a few modifications. You have a much larger variety of maps then last time, though some are just copies of the original maps. You have a bit more character customization. You can now choose your gender, and there are some new kinds of camo and head gear. There is a good supply of weapons though there are less then last time. The major improvements were put in this game, instead of the last one through a patch. You can now switch to your pistol by pressing one button, and you can now heal downed players by simply pressing the Y button over them.
Overall, it is basically the same game with some new additions and can’t really be called a new game. It is more of an updated version of the same game. None the less, it is still a great game and very much worth it. Just don’t expect an entirely new game.
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