GRAW 2 - Ghost Recon 2 - PS3

Ubisoft, Red Storm Ent. , Ubisoft Paris Aug 23, 2007 »

GRAW2 offers up a solid, though short, single-player campaign. But the bulk of its gameplay can be found in its impressive multiplayer offering.

The Good
Intense, gritty modern infantry combat
Impressive multiplayer suite with countless combinations of competitive and cooperative game modes
Good looking graphics and excellent sound effects.

The Bad
The single-player campaign is over before you know it
Since GRAW2 is the first GRAW game for PS3, you feel like you're missing part of the story.

GRAW2 puts you in the steel-toed combat boots of US Army Captain Scott Mitchell of the fictional 5th Special Forces Group (the Ghosts) for a grueling battle south of the border in Mexico. While you needn't have played the first game to enjoy the second, it certainly helps to understand the overarching plot. A Mexican civil war has erupted between mutinous army units. For various reasons, the elected civilian government and the US have been drawn into the conflict. In the new game, the fighting threatens to spill over onto US soil along with the threat of nuclear weapons, which gives your superiors even more reasons to scream at you over the radio to defeat the rebels.

What follows is more of the intense infantry combat that featured in the original GRAW. You will go on both solo and team missions to achieve a varied set of objectives, from rescuing a Mexican journalist who has clues about the insurgency, to neutralizing enemy encampments, and more. The action unfolds on both sides of the border this time, and the game ably captures the first-world and second-world settings. The Mexican side of the border faces even more turmoil than in the first game. The visuals in GRAW2 are also more stunning than in the original, thanks to sumptuous atmospheric lighting and effects. The incredible scale remains; once again you'll look out over vast cityscapes that consist of hundreds of buildings as you fly over in your Black Hawk helicopter. But now, you can also take in the stunning vista of a setting sun over the desert, or gaze at gigantic pillars of smoke rising from the fires of a war-torn Mexican city. Also, the PS3 suffers from a bit more aliasing than the Xbox 360, the colors are duller, and the frame rate struggles at times.

Control of your teammates, vehicles, or drones is a lot easier now thanks to the improved communications system. Now you can get a full-screen video feed from any friendly asset on the battlefield, which essentially lets you be in two places at once. You can find some cover, tell your men to move to another position, and then use their video cameras to locate and call out targets for them to engage. A cool new battlefield drone called the mule has many uses, which include battlefield resupply and healing, mobile cover, and remote-controlled scout. You're able to control the mule directly from the camera view or give it movement orders on the fly. The overhead drone that was cumbersome to use in GRAW is also improved in the sequel because it's far easier to control, and you can view its video feed in full screen rather than in a postage-stamp-sized window. The game uses the Sixaxis motion controls in a limited, mostly ignorable fashion (the few motions available aren't very good), but the bigger issue with the PS3 controls is that while there are multiple control configurations to choose from, none of them let you use R2 as the trigger. This seems like an annoying oversight, especially because Rainbow Six: Vegas for the PS3 (a cousin to GRAW) did have such an option.

The six-mission co-op campaign is also a lot of fun because you can romp through a separate storyline along with up to 15 other players. The gist of the co-op story is that a Panamanian strongman is funding the Mexican rebels up north, and a separate team of Ghosts is dispatched to get the job done. Battles rage around the Panama Canal and its outlying areas, with dynamic objectives and other neat new features adding an extra layer of challenge and coordination to the entire affair. Previously, you had to worry only about killing all the bad guys as fast as you could, but with dynamic objectives, your team has to coordinate its actions to accomplish secondary goals. These goals include blowing up two radio towers simultaneously; destroying them separately would risk the appearance of enemy reinforcements.

The teamwork in the game is also enhanced in the co-op and competitive modes by the new aid system. If you're shot in a manner that wouldn't instantly kill you, your character will drop and roll around on the ground, wounded. You can choose to die and instantly respawn, but if there are friendlies around, they have a limited amount of time to patch you up before you die. This adds an extra bit of urgency to the voice channel as players cry for help and others rush in to save them.
There's such a wealth of content in the multiplayer suite that it alone makes GRAW2 an easy purchase for multiplayer fans. The flip side to this is that if you don't like to play online, then GRAW2 is an iffier proposition. The single-player game is fun, but its brevity is certainly an issue. Still, if you're a fan of modern combat, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 makes a compelling case for a game that you have to play.