Saturday, March 25, 2006

GRAW First Impressions

I just recently picked up GRAW (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter) for the Xbox 360. I'd heard claims about it being "awesome", a "killer app" and a "must buy" for the 360. I was a bit skeptical about it personally.

I don't feel that way anymore.

Simply put, If you have an Xbox 360, you should strongly consider picking up this game. If you have an Xbox 360 and an Xbox Live account, run to the store right now and get this game. Seriously. It's that good.

The Single player campaign is awesome. There's hardly any downtime throughout the course of the entire game. The only slow points are the between mission cutscenes prepping the next mission. From time to time, you'll get to man the chopper's minigun and be tasked with clearing out the landing zone. These sequences are fun. It's a bit disturbing how fun it was chopping up the enemy troops but then I remind myself that it's just a game and hell, they started it.

I did notice a few A.I. hiccups while I was playing, especially concerning your own teammates. These guys are supposed to be the best of the best. Too bad they don't know how to use their training all that well. They run around outside of cover and when one of them goes down they won't heal their teammates when ordered. There's more but I really don't have the time to get more in depth.

The multiplayer is a completely different story, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It alone is the reason to buy this game, the single player campaign, in all its greatness, pales in comparison. There are so many ways to customize games to your liking. From your character's appearance to what type of weapons you can choose when you respawn. You can go up against 15 others in either adversarial or co-operative modes. The co-op missions pit you and up to 15 others against the aggressive and rather intelligent computer A.I. My favorite mode so far is co-op territories which tasks you and your teammates with defending a base from wave after wave of enemy troops. The matches I played were easily some of the most fun I've had playing an online shooter.

That's all I have to say about it now. I should have a full review up a little later after I spend some more time with it.

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