It's back to south of the border, down Mexico way.
Barely a year after the first Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was ported to the PC comes GRAW2, as it's known. And once again, this isn't just a port of the 360 version. It's a game built specifically for PCs, and it shows, with its emphasis on a first-person perspective, its vast and detailed levels, and its hardware-straining spectacular visuals. Unfortunately, it all feels far too familiar.
The setting is still Mexico, against the backdrop of a civil war, south of the border, down Mexico way. This wouldn't be so bad if the game visited more locations than the same oh-so-brown canyons, shanty towns, and ruined cities from the first game. You get the same drone that helps you scout ahead on an overhead map, and you're basically shooting at the same red diamonds on your HUD that mark enemy locations. There are times you'll have to remind yourself that you haven't simply reinstalled GRAW 1, and that you are, in fact, playing a sequel.
The levels are bigger, and the visuals are certainly some of the best looking brown places you've ever seen on a PC. There are apparently more physics tricks if you're one of the few people to have an Ageia PhysX card installed, but even then, these environments are largely non-interactive, with little to show for pitched gunfights and flying grenades. Cars blow up nicely, but a tin shack is as inviolable as a concrete bunker. You'll have to be content with knocking over a stack of palettes or old tires.
The guns are lovingly drawn, and the character animation is spectacular. The helicopter insertions at the beginning of a mission never get old, particularly being flown in on a "Little Bird". There's a new mobile resupply vehicle called a Mule that you can bring along for some missions, but given the weapons scattered on the ground after a battle, a shortage of guns was never a problem in GRAW. But overall, the whole thing is oppressively familiar.
You're controlling three AI teammates, and this is where the game really comes alive despite its faults. It's still exciting to quickly drop contextual waypoints, managing your team through a heated firefight, watching them advance, take up positions, and fire. You can lay all this out from the overhead map, almost as if you were playing a paused real time strategy game, and then drop back into the game to watch it execute. This is the game's main gimmick, and it's as effective as ever.
Unfortunately, the enemy AI still consists of two actions: firing at you with godlike precision, or standing around in the open waiting to get shot. The scripting is rigid and predictable, so there's little need for the sort of complex teamwork the planning screen allows. In fact, it's all too easy to simply plow through the game by just sending your men ahead. The main challenge comes from cheap "gotcha!" enemy placement, which just means you'll have to remember where that guy was when you reload and play through the same area again. With the exception of some missions giving you a couple of entry points, there's no variety to encourage replay, and no option to replay maps in different ways, as is offered in the Rainbow Six games. GRAW is built for a single play-through and then it's done.
Then there's the multiplayer, which is where the developers show a spark of creativity. You get several modes and maps, many of which seem to have been carried over directly from the last game. The game engine really impresses when you realize how big the maps are, and how much room they afford for tactics. In addition to the standard deathmatch, king of the hill, and attack/defend, there's a welcome new mode where one team has to blow up three anti-air installations scattered around the map while the other team defends them. The attackers have to be careful, since they don't respawn until an installation is destroyed. A spotting system lets attackers tag enemies so they're visible to everyone on the team, and you can improve your loadout by earning experience points. It plays like a shrewd combination of Counter-Strike, Battlefield 2, and Jailbreak.
One drawback to multiplayer is that there are precious few options for configuring matches. It would have been nice to give players control over limiting weapons, changing victory conditions, or even allowing use of the drone like in the 360 version's multiplayer. On the PC, GRAW2 offers none of these options.
So if you want a sequel that advances the game and does new things, this isn't the place to look. But if you're content playing pretty much the same game in pretty much the same place with pretty much the same toys, GRAW2 is a good way to recapture the same fun you were having a year ago. And you'll get the cool new multiplayer mode thrown into the bargain.