But with that in mind, here's some great personal opinions on various subjects:
Left from Right: Allen, some guy, You, Brown
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (a.k.a. the game that came free with my new video card)-
This game starts on a really good note. That note is what I like to call the "start menu." There's a cool cinematic playing in the background that I guess they decided to chop into various pieces, so that when you choose "load game" you see one movie and when you pick "options" you get to see another. This movie I daresay is one of the coolest parts of the game...no matter how laxidaisical I was about loading my game, the cinematic always managed to pump me up and get my adrenaline flowing. Your guys are walking down a street in Mexico City when they hear a tank coming, so the main character (the guy you play) flips on his helmet-mounted digital display and his team breaks into two fireteams. One fireteam chucks a smoke grenade (which aren't in the actual game) while the other fireteam shoots the confused tank with a shoulder-mounted missile using good tactical planning (also not simulated in the game). After that, they continue to walk down the street in a group. Here comes my favorite part. They hear another engine coming up, so your character holds his hand up in a "stop" gesture to his guys. A pickup truck with a bunch of mexicans in the back roll by. One of them sees your character and thinks he's waving, so he waves back. Your team stands down and continues on their way. Later, your guy swings his rifle up towards another noise, but it's just a woman shutting her window in fear. I thought it was a really cool way to showcase the civilian element in urban combat (not simulated in this game). Later on your guy shoots a guy through the wall he's hiding behind, utilizing his heat-sensing goggles to find his target (which are not simulated in the game either.) You may have noticed that the start-menu cinematic shows you a lot of cool stuff that's not actually in the game, but I don't hold it against the cinematic for lying to me, because it still pumps me up every time.
This game is ostensibly based on a forgettable series of books by Tom Clancy, master of the cheap military fluff novel. Your guy's name is Mitchell, and he's the leader of a futuristic 4-man squad air-dropped deep into Mexico City in order to clean out a rebel force that has kidnapped the Mexican and American Presidents and the Canadian Prime Minister. I guess the Canadians are so religious that their leader is some kind of super-reverend, but the Mexican rebels don't care about Protestantism and they kill him anyway. The rest of the game determines whether or not you're a bad enough dude to rescue the President. Not the US President...when you find him he's managed to rescue himself with the help of a pistol he stole from a guard whose throat he tore out with his bare hands. The Mexican President is the guy you have to watch out for, because he's basically lying in the fetal position in a bombed-out embassy and you have to pick him up bodily and throw him in a helicopter to save his sorry ass. What, the IED was too much for you? Pussy.
Your squad isn't the most memorable bunch of guys either...there's Allen the insane sniper, another white guy with a hard name to remember, and of course Brown. He's the black guy, so it's easy to remember which one he is. Chalk up one for Tom Clancy's brilliant penmanship! Each of them is equally bright, which means they'll point their gun at you instead of the enemy while moonwalking directly into enemy fire. And they die...a LOT. I sometimes used them as decoys to lure enemy bullets while I headshotted them from range. Why not? Even if they're left to die bullet-ridden in the gutter, they just magically re-appear in the next level. There's a good reason why your team is called Ghost Recon. You'll say "try not to fuck it up again this time, Brown" more times than you can count after he magically respawns next to you in the chopper for the umpteenth time. And then he stares right into your soul with his pure-white eyes and gives you a toothy, open-mouthed grin. CREEPY.
So despite all the bad, unfinished elements of this game, here are some good bits:
1. The running slide: You can sprint for cover in the midst of a deadly firefight and hit spacebar, which makes your character leap and slide across the ground while dust sprays onto the screen and lingers there for a few seconds. I used this feature way too many times because it's just too cool.
2. The "teaching blind and deaf retards to read" aspect: The first time I actually coaxed Allen to actually use the shoulder-mounted missile he was carrying in order to shoot down a helicopter (because I had already used mine) I was so proud I could have wept.
3. Obligatory black heavy-weapons dude named Brown: He was everything I could have hoped for in a strong yet clichéd african-american character. Sometimes I'd give an order and he'd be like "Uhh..YEA..MOVING sir!" like he didn't think it was such a good idea but did it anyway. Then he'd open up with a hail of bullets from his light machine gun while screaming "COVERING FIRE, FIRE!!" and I'd grin like an idiot.
4. The camera drone: Sometimes if you're lucky they give you a little camera drone that flies around the battlefield like a little remote helicopter and targets bad guys for you. I loved that little fucker, especially the robot-noise he made when I gave him an order.
5. The Spanish classes finally paying off in real life: The Mexican rebels actually speak Spanish, so it was nice when during a firefight one of them would yell "Estoy recargante, Señor!" and or "Estoy tirando granada!" and knowing what the hell that meant. Hint: One means "I'm defenseless, please shoot me" and the other means "I'm gonna frag this fucker if he doesn't move in the next 3 seconds, and even if he does the black guy is gonna die anyway because he doesn't know Spanish."
Rating: can't rate because it was free
Reviewed by - Frankenstein
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