Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter Review

DanDaMan · 09:59 PM

I picked up a copy of this game for the 360 today. Heard so many good reviews I thought I couldn't go wrong. The good news is it's fantastic. Graphics, music, levels, missions are just stunning. The lighting is amazing and the sound and voice chatter really add to this game. It starts with you riding in a chopper to the sounds of Jimi Hendrix playing All along the Watch Tower and then the chopper lands and your off - no cutscenes just seamless play. Brilliant.

I'd say the squad based control is a little weird - you look and click and off they go. If you tell them to go out into the middle of a battle they'll happily trot off and get killed. Okay they are not dumb but they aren't halflife 2.

There are so many options and things to do it'll take quite some time to fathom it all out. The biggest thing is learning how to use cover and shoot from behind walls and stuff. You have to run up to the cover, press the Y key and then you can shoot from behind it, reload, give orders etc.

Controls are suprisingly easy for a console considering the array of options like firing modes, reloading, switching weapons etc - don't even miss keyboard and mouse now as the Xbox 360 controller roxs. You can switch between first person and third person views which is handy.

Load times are quick and the maps have lots of detail and stuff to blow up. Funny how there isn't any civilians around but I guess with all the stuff they crammed in processing power even for the 360 had to be cut somewhere. Shame as a few NPCs could have really added to the drama.

This game is also known as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 3 - pretty confusing huh?

Graphics

90% next gen stuff

Music/Sound

95% weapons, sound effects and voices are all great and really add to realism

Playability

Take you about an hour to figure everything out and become at ease with everything

Overall

92% A must for any xbox 360 owner. Better than COD 2 and a great showcase of what this system can do for FPS and Action fans

I'll leave you with a few screenies running in HD on my plasma:bgrin:

DanDaMan · 03-16-2006, 09:53 PM

Ket · 03-16-2006, 10:20 PM

looks very nice 8) now lets all wait and be prepared to gawp at what DX10 can do oon PC

DanDaMan · 03-17-2006, 09:27 PM

forget waiting for DX10 - this is awesome

few hours in now and just am in awe of this game
The levels around the city are amazing. You can run up into buildings, smash glass, destroy cars, shoot through car windows and kill the enemy.

Order tanks in, order choppers around, shoot around corners while taking cover. Team mate control is becoming second nature now too. Set them to recon, attack, follow. Constant radio chatter and sound affects make it just like you are in a battle zone - especially with the 5.1 surround sound.

This is the best FPS I have played to date and makes Halflife 2 look clumsy. I can't wait to try multiplayer and co-op modes.
I can only imagine what the next wave of xbox 360 games are gonna be like. All this from a £200 console - I just spent more than that on a graphics card today and it can't run games nearly as good.

Ket · 03:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanDaMan

forget waiting for DX10 - this is awesome

few hours in now and just am in awe of this game
The levels around the city are amazing. You can run up into buildings, smash glass, destroy cars, shoot through car windows and kill the enemy.

Order tanks in, order choppers around, shoot around corners while taking cover. Team mate control is becoming second nature now too. Set them to recon, attack, follow. Constant radio chatter and sound affects make it just like you are in a battle zone - especially with the 5.1 surround sound.

This is the best FPS I have played to date and makes Halflife 2 look clumsy. I can't wait to try multiplayer and co-op modes.
I can only imagine what the next wave of xbox 360 games are gonna be like. All this from a £200 console - I just spent more than that on a graphics card today and it can't run games nearly as good.

So basically, what you can do in STALKER then? :p doesnt look like the 360 is pushing much in the way of AF in thoughs screens either, not much point in running around a world you cant see properly because you forgot to put your glasses on before the mission

DX10 will blow everything out the water if M$ dont mess around with their original plans too much, though somehow i suspect a new wave ofgraphics cards when DX10 hits in about 6-8 months (or as ismy gustimation without working out exact dates of supposed release)

ed- just checked it out, its official, new hardware will be required for DX10, meaning that 7900GT you bought will be an expensive paperweight soon

:p

ed2- DX10 seems likely to ship with vista, and a quote from the source "We will do a unified architecture in hardware when it makes sense. When it’s possible to make the hardware work faster unified, then of course we will. It will be easier to build in the future, but for the meantime, there’s plenty of mileage left in this architecture"

"Nvidia did not respond to enquiry seeking for comment. Typically, the company does not comment on unreleased products."

In other words, nvidia doesnt bloody know how to do it

but ATI do...

"ATI Technologies has already developed a unified shader architecture used in the Xenos graphics processor of the Xbox 360 game console. Nvidia believes that it is much harder to design a processor with unified pixel and vertex shader processors, as it is not a trivial task to create appropriate load balancing logic that would arbiter the unified arithmetic logic units."

So i'll say it again (i never get tired of saying this

) OOHH YEAH! cmon nvidia! whos your daddy huh? whos your daddy! ATi!

(btw, "envidia" in spanish i think it is translates as envious :p )

in a nutshell;

nvidia:kick:ATi

DanDaMan · 03-18-2006, 09:12 AM

Don't forget those pics were taken with my camera at night - in the actual game everything is 100% better

and the 7900GT was only bought to facilitate upgrade to 30inch lcd whenever I can afford it

I don't use the PC for games anymore now so the 7900 is a mute point. Until I see something on the PC that blows away the Xbox I can't see the point of spending £2000 to build a killer rig when you can do it for £200 - I know the plasmas expensive but that is multi use

Well that is until I can build a monster system and connect it up as a dedicated Media PC to the Plasma. Gaming is just so much fun at 42inches

Ket · 03-18-2006, 03:14 PM

ahh ye of little faith, the pc will trounce consoles, it just takes longer for technology with the pc because its infinately more complicated 8)