Fire Teamwork

By Ben Barker


Prolific Xbox® publisher THQ, who most recently rocked the black and green console with MX Unleashed, is also behind Full Spectrum Warrior™, a brilliant new third-person tactical-action shooter that puts you in command of eight U.S. soldiers behind enemy lines. Developer Pandemic, also responsible for Star Wars: Battlefront coming out later this year, originally created the simulation for the Pentagon, as a training tool to teach soldiers how to command, protect, and lead squads of troops in urban combat. More than a year of intense development later (after a splashy L.A. debut at E3 2003), the Xbox version is set to utterly smash your expectations of squad action, both online and off, for the Xbox.

That downed soldier needs a medic fast.

You and Your Big MOUT
Full Spectrum Warrior is all about MOUT: Military Operations, Urban Terrain. You’re in command of two four-man fire teams of real U.S. Army soldiers. Unless you’re playing on Xbox Live™ in a co-op game of Full Spectrum Warrior, in which each player takes either Alpha or Bravo, you can easily switch between controlling either team with the Y button. The right thumbstick controls the camera. The left thumbstick controls targeting cursors (most commonly the movement cursor), and the A button is mapped to context-sensitive actions, such as executing the move once you’ve placed the movement cursor where you want your team to be. The B button works as the standard back action, for canceling commands. Also, if you press and hold B, it works as thetake-cover-now-NOW-NOW button that can save your boys when you unexpectedly come under fire. The X button is the closest thing to firing a weapon in the game. It’s used to call a fire zone that your troops will target and shoot into automatically. When held, it brings up the grenade toss cursor.

The GPS unit shows objectives and potential targets.

The Troops
Direct control of each soldier is mapped to the D-pad. Press up for the team leader, left for the automatic rifleman, down for the grenadier, and right for the rifleman.

• Team Leader: The team leader can access the GPS system and call in fly-overs that can paint enemy formations onto your handheld. Unlike typical shooter radar, the team leader’s GPS unit doesn’t track the enemies as they move, but the map of solid, unmoving objects providing cover is invaluable. Like the ordinary rifleman, the team leader carries an M-4 carbine as his primary weapon.
• Automatic Rifleman: The automatic rifleman carries an M249 squad automatic weapon (SAW). What’s that? A really big gun that can chew through enemy cover and enemy alike. Use the automatic rifleman to eliminate foes or lay down suppression fire for other team members.
• Grenadier: Full Spectrum Warriorgrenades are realistic to a fault—and no, they don’t stick to anything—but that doesn’t mean that grenadiers and their M-203s aren’t critical to the safe deployment, use, and return of fire teams Alpha and Bravo. Smoke grenades provide crucial cover when moving over dangerous open ground, and the good-old-fashioned varieties that blow stuff up are pretty useful, too. The grenadier also offers the only really direct control of a weapon in the game, with the grenade targeting cursor.
• Rifleman: Even more dangerous than Chuck Connors, the rifleman in every team is your G.I. Joe, packing the same M-4 as the team leader and faithfully covering the rear.

The team leader is responsible for his team’s lives.

Command Pressure
At first glance, Full Spectrum Warrior may look like many other squad-based shooters—like Brute Force™,Armed & Dangerous™, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® —but looks can be deceiving. Among the big differences between Full Spectrum Warrior and other squad-based games is the fact that you’ll almost never directly control the actions of an individual soldier. That is, pulling the trigger does not fire the weapon of the soldier you directly command at any given time (except, occasionally, the grenadier).

Since this is based on a training tool, Full Spectrum Warrior assumes your soldiers can follow orders and do their jobs. The trick is: Can you do yours? As the overall commander of both Alpha and Bravo teams, you aren’t just responsible for the successful execution of missions. You’ve also got to get your troops out alive when a firefight erupts. A wounded soldier cannot be left behind, and there are no extra lives in warfare.

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