Gameplay		9.0
Graphics		10.0
Sound		10.0
Value		9.0

Intro

Ghost Recon began as a newborn tactical shooter with the Tom Clancy name thrown in and was released for the PC and Xbox back in 2002. The game blended awesome tactical gameplay and multiplayer with old graphics to make a pretty decent game. A few expansions later and Ghost Recon 2 war born for the consoles only. Ghost Recon 2 updated the graphics and gameplay and was praised by critics. Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike, an expansion to GR2 was later released to similar critical praise. When the Xbox 360 rolled into town so did a new Ghost Recon game. Dubbed Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, or GRAW for short, the game shinned as the best in the series sporting the same tactical feel along with gorgeous next gen graphics and squad control. A year later and GRAW 2 comes around, proving that you don’t need years of work to make a darn good sequel. 

Story

In GRAW1 you were Scott Mitchell and you took control of the commander of an elite squad of US Soldiers army to fight against Mexican rebels who threatened the entire world. The story of GRAW 2 has you in the shoes of Captain Mitchell again fighting Mexican rebels who threaten to use 2 nuclear weapons. GRAW 2’s story takes place a few days after the conclusion of GRAW1.

Mexican rebels have gotten a hold of 2 dirty bombs and threaten to use them if the US Army gets involved with the conflict going on in Mexico between said rebels and the Mexican army. The US does decide to send in the elite Ghost team despite their very recent action. The game takes place on the US/Mexico border in Juarez Mexico and El Paso Texas. The Ghost team tries their best to stay hidden but when things start falling apart the Mexican army is called to help them revealing that the US has sent in troops. The story is like that of an action movie, its there, its average but its severely undermined to the amazing action that goes on during the course of the story. 

Gameplay

If you have played GRAW1 then the controls for GRAW 2 will fit like a charm and you will have no problem playing the game. For first time players the game works like this, you can run around and shoot and be merry until the enemy fires at you. If you run up to any nearby solid object Mitchell will automatically go into cover allowing you to peek around the corners or above the object that you are in cover on. The cover system, which felt awesome in GRAW, feels a little old with the recent cover perfectionists Gears of War and Rainbow 6 Vegas.

GRAW 2 gives you a plethora of guns and side arms to chose from via the new “reload stations.” (That’s my name for them) These can come from a caravan of allied vehicles, a M.U.L.E. (a small controllable robot vehicle), or an allied chopper. When you go to one of these stations a brief news update shows up telling you vital information on the battle ahead with information on what type of enemies and how armed they are to the details of the battle area. This is a welcome change and a nice one.

As in GRAW, GRAW 2 puts you in the command of a 3-man squad of Ghosts, or sometimes Mexican army soldiers. The squad commands are very basic and range from “move to” to “regroup.” You can also chose if you want your soldiers to go in to battle gunz-a-blazin or only fire when fired upon. The controls are basic and simple to use which makes commanding your squad easy. The allied A.I. has also vastly improved over the previous incarnation, as your teammates will actually want to stay alive this time. If left out in the open during enemy fire they will move to the nearest cover and start firing. While they are nowhere near as smart as Ghost Recons brother Rainbow 6 Vegas’ teammates, there is a substantial difference between the GRAW and GRAW 2’s allied A.I.

The biggest and best addition to GRAW 2 is the addition of the medic on your team. Your 3 teammates are now interchangeable and one of the teammates you can choose is a medic. This medic gives your whole team a certain number of medi-kits that can be used by the medic or yourself. In GRAW 1 if you had red health and you hit a checkpoint you would have to live like that for the rest of the level. Now in GRAW 2 you can get the medic to heal you and your good to go. This can make a winning difference in missions and is one of the greatest additions to GRAW 2.   

The enemy A.I. has also improved somewhat, especially during the second half of the single player game. In the first GRAW the enemy would take cover but they didn’t show much coordination between each other. In GRAW 2 the enemy’s will work together to try to kill you and your teammates. When they started becoming equipped with heavy machine guns you HAVE to use your teammates to survive. The game often throws multiple enemies on you at once upping the ante on pressure.

Just as in GRAW 1 in GRAW 2 the advanced Cross-Com system is in place. This Cross-Com allows you to see through the eyes of your teammates, a UAV drone which allows you to mark targets away from the battlefield, and other support systems the army allows you. Those other support systems include tanks, air support, and helicopter support. The newest addition to the Cross-Com is that now, holding down the right bumper, the small Cross-Com screen pulls up to cover the full screen. This is one of the most helpful additions to the game, due to the fact that you can easily control your team through a whole mission without moving Mitchell a step.  

The single player game is a shining example of how to make a sequel to a game better than the first game. The game is split into 3 chapters over 3 days, its like what 24 would be like if it occurred over 3 days, in other words A LOT of stuff happens in a day. The single player game isn’t as long as I hoped it would be, on the default difficulty I beat it in about 5 or 6 hours. This may sound like a pitiful excuse for a singeplayer but the amount of crazy action that goes on in those short hours is mind-blowing. The explosions shake the screen and makes you want to duck and get out of the way of the fire.  

Even better than the single player game is the multiplayer option of GRAW 2. The multiplayer takes and improves on all the strong points of GRAW 1, making for one heck of an awesome, addicting online portion. The multiplayer in GRAW 2 plays very similar to the single player portion but it has the feel of Ghost Recon 2, as Red Storm makes the multiplayer portion and they made Ghost Recon 2. The one difference between the single player and multiplayer is that you can’t get into cover in multiplayer which makes you think more on your feet when caught in gunfire. When a multiplayer game starts up you chose a main weapon, a small arm, and an explosive or smoke grenade. In the multiplayer lobby you chose between 5 different classes that slightly alters the weapons you can select from.

GRAW 2 comes with an impressive amount of multiplayer maps to play a boatload of game modes on. The multiplayer is very customizable and allows you to play however you want. Some of the modes include sharpshooter, team sharpshooter, heli-hunt, and co-op territory. Speak of co-op there is a whole 5 level co-op campaign available to play with up to 16 people online. The campaign has you in varying locales but some of the co-op maps are nearly identical to the adversary mode maps. The maps are in varying locals and offer up great places to have intense gun battles. The maps mold the multiplayer mode and shift it to the greatness that it is.

The gameplay in GRAW 2, while nearly identical to GRAW 1 has improved in all the spots that GRAW 1 fell short, creating a very memorable game. 

Graphics

 There is no doubt that GRAW 1 was a stellar looking game but somehow Ubisoft went and made GRAW 2 even prettier. The single player graphics are absolutely breathtaking. The environment looks like you are in the midst of a terrible civil war with the highly improved smoke and particle effects. The smoke bellows from whatever random fire is going on. In helicopter rides before most levels have Mitchell flying over Juarez seeing the destruction can feel real. The weather effects for the single player campaign have also vastly improved, particularly noted in one helicopter rail gun sequence where the rain wisps from the gun creating some of the most believable rain effects in a video game. There are a handful of dull looking desert missions but once you get back to the metropolitan setting your socks will be blown off once again. The character models have improved slightly over GRAW 1, if that is even possible. The explosions, the meat and potatoes of the single player game, look even more visually and viscerally satisfying in GRAW 2. Even a random car in a parking lot will create a mini mushroom cloud when blown up, and when whole tanks blow up its even better. The single player game is one of the best looking things on the Xbox 360 and currently holds the title for best explosions in a videogame. Ever.

One of the biggest disappointments in GRAW 1 was the downgraded graphics engine to support smoother frame rates. Luckily in GRAW 2 the multiplayer looks just as good as the single player, and sometimes, even better. With multiplayer there are many different locations to visit opening up new opportunities for Red Storm to flex their graphic’s finger, and flex they do. From lush tropical forests to a flooded city, the graphics in multiplayer never fail to amaze. The character models are very Ghost Recon 2-ish but with a massive graphics upgrade, which is an overall good thing. The animations are quite nice and the games have barely any lag. If there is one problem with the multiplier’s graphics is that the stupendous explosions from single player don’t transfer over to the multiplayer, leaving a pretty cool, but ultimately unsatisfying explosion.

The graphics in GRAW 2 are among the best for the console in both single player and multiplayer.

Audio

If one thing can be said about GRAW 2’s audio is that it kicks major butt. The voice-overs are average at best with a few spots of painfully bad dialogue strewn throughout the campaign. Despite these few lines of corny-osity the voice-overs can be helpful. The musical score that plays through the game provides GRAW 2 with a more cinematic feel to the whole package. One example of this is the Arabian-ish music that plays during the desert levels makes you feel like you are in Black Hawk Down, it works great. As imagined, the explosions sound almost as good as they look. With some explosions spanning multiple cars, or tanks, the sound can literally rattle your windows. (Provided you have a sound system that can dish out that kind of sound.) The gun sounds are very well done, not being too loud while also not being to quiet.

The audio in GRAW 2 is a sure fire sign to the care and thought put into this sequel.

Overall

In conclusion GRAW 2 takes everything that GRAW 1 did well and improves on it. Then it takes everything bad that GRAW 1 did and makes it better. Then it takes GRAW 1’s multiplayer and molds it into one of the most addicting multiplayer modes out there.
In other words, GRAW 2 succeeds in every possible way that a sequel can.