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GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
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Mediocre
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 03/31/2006
- Updated on: 06/25/2007
- Released on: 03/28/2006
- Originally published on GameSpot: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (PlayStation 2) Review
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for the PlayStation 2 continues the disturbing trend of releasing games on different platforms that have the same name but offer vastly different gaming experiences. If you were wondering if Advanced Warfighter for the PS2 might offer something similar to the superb tactical shooter of the same name on the Xbox 360, you can stop wondering now. It doesn't, and it's not even close. As much of a compromise that the Xbox version of the game was to the 360 version, the PS2 version waters down the formula even more. This version of the game takes what should have been a wide-open, tactical experience in a massive metropolis and turns it into just another run-and-gun shooter that ramrods you through narrow corridors.
It may share the same name as the tactical shooter on the Xbox 360...
You take the role of Captain Scott Mitchell, a squad leader in the Ghosts, an elite unit of light infantrymen in the US Army. Mexican separatists have attacked a North American summit going on in Mexico City, and they have killed the Canadian Prime Minister, while both the US and Mexican presidents have gone missing. Along the course of the game's campaign, you'll need to rescue both presidents, recover the nuclear "football" that was also lost by the US president, and take out the leader of the uprising. The campaign will take you through different parts of Mexico City, including Camp Chapultepec, downtown, and outlying shantytowns.
The heads-up display uses an overlay with digital information. This includes your health and ammo readouts, as well as a couple of picture-in-picture video windows. One of these is a window where you'll receive orders from off-site commanders and officers. But where the Xbox and Xbox 360 versions of the game showed you the view from your squadmate's helmet camera in another window, the video view here is replaced with a minimap on the PS2 version that's so far zoomed in, it becomes completely useless. The window that shows your commanders giving orders aren't even true video screens, as they just show a loop of the men flapping their mouths, like an animated GIF. These windows and the way they are implemented in the game make them a waste of screen real estate and they do little to add to the ambience.
The rest of the graphics do little to impress, either. Unlike other Ghost Recon games, you play this one from a first-person perspective, so all you see is your gun model. The character models offer passable levels of detail, but the texturing looks muddy. The environments for the cityscapes and other areas are drab and nondescript, and the level design in this version of the game is extremely limited, like you're being railroaded through a linear maze of streets. It may look like you're walking down the avenues of a city, but for all the freedom you have in the game, the streets of Mexico City may as well be the corridors and hallways of an early-generation first-person shooter. For all the compromises that have been made with the complexity of level geometry and size, the game still has to subdivide single levels from the Xbox version of the game into two or more sections, increasing the amount of time you spend in loading screens. The frame rate and animation are the worst aspects of GRAW's graphics. The game stutters constantly, and when multiple enemies are visible, they jitter around the screen as if you're playing an online shooter with high network latency. This is not only annoying from a visual standpoint, but it also hinders your ability to aim and fire with any confidence.
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Where to buy
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (PlayStation 2):
$19.99
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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RadioShack.com
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$19.99 | Yes |
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