Hands-On Multiplayer

In a broad sense, it's always a treat to view a game before launch. Rarely, though, is there an opportunity to get a real quality look at multiplayer components before a game hits retail. The logistics of getting enough builds together for a serious match are too cumbersome for such opportunities to be routine.

Therefore, getting to sit down with coworkers for a little taste of the multiplayer play in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter™ was a particular pleasure. For details on the options available to customize each match, check out our Multiplayer Options article, but for hands-on impressions, stay put and read on.

There's a distraction.

Camo for Real
It seems a relatively small detail; after-all, a lot of army-based multiplayer games employ camouflage, but very few do so effectively. The camo available in Advanced Warfighter works, and I mean really works, to the point where you're oblivious to enemies mere feet from where you are. Let me put it another way; if you hide yourself correctly, your enemy would have a better shot spotting someone in a Halo® 2 camo power-up.

I netted a mere two and a half hours of multiplayer
play, and all I wanted to do was fast forward time to
March 9 when this bad boy hits retail stores.

Custom Look
If there's an annoyance to be found in many online shooters, it's that you end up fighting against an army of clones. Everyone looks alike. Not so in Advanced Warfighter with the custom looks you can create for your soldier. With just a few options of different hat and glass combinations along with different camo-paint for your face, you can really differentiate yourself from your friends and enemies. Also, you can establish a different look for each class, so, for example, your rifleman could sport a completely different look than your grenadier.

Visual Stability
Ideally, the visual prowess sported in offline campaign modes is translated to the online multiplayer component. Traditionally, this just isn't the case, but Advanced Warfighter continues the trend of Xbox 360™ games that buck the trend. Minus some of the more subtle ambient environmental effects (for example, wisps of smoke rising in the distance or dust clouds swirling about at the end of the street), Advanced Warfighter is as sharp, defined, detailed, and well animated online as it is offline. There's no longer a steep disparity between the two modes.

 Cover you can count on.

Pacing
If there's one thing the survival-horror genre has taught us, it's that tension builds over time. All out action-fests ala Halo 2 are fine and dandy, but there's something to be said for crawling carefully through the brush, calling out an enemy location to an ally while slowly bringing your rifle to bear on the poor enemy soldier that took a peep from behind a burnt-out truck. There's even more to say about the panic that strikes when you realize he was just baiting you to give his friend a clean shot. Each shot you take and every movement you make in Advanced Warfighter is filled with tension. It's the way it ought to be.

Deathmatch Depth
I'm no deathmatch basher, but lately I've used that simple multiplayer game type as a diversion while I wait for friends to log on for a team-based match. Advanced Warfighter has me rethinking that practice. Gone are the days where you spawn and shoot everything that moves until you hit the target number or time runs out. There are several game types you can try all by your lonesome online.

Take the Bounty Hunter game type, for instance. At the beginning of the round you receive a target (highlighted on your HUD by a red diamond) and you only get points for killing that target. Kill anyone else and you reset your points. It's a simple but ingenious change to the standard formula and really requires a different style of play.

Short controlled bursts do the trick.

Simple Realism
I've generally preferred more realistic shooters over the years. I'm not big on dumping two clips into an enemy only to watch them walk away, so naturally I enjoy the two-shots-and-your-dead mentality Advanced Warfighter brings to the table. There's a bit more to it than that, though.

Something as simple as switching weapons takes a reasonable amount of time (something the game's predecessors also did well), as opposed to offering instant gratification. The rate of movement is slower and more in keeping with the rather cumbersome equipment you're toting around. The cover you use is as protective as it ought to be, employing realistic physics and density so flimsy cover like shrubbery has appropriate shortcomings while a brick wall properly deflects acute damage like that from a grenade blast.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is bringing some serious gameplay to the table and, like all great games, its quality is evident from the outset. I netted a mere two and a half hours of multiplayer play, and all I wanted to do was fast forward time to March 9 when this bad boy hits retail stores.

Article by Alex McLain

• The Ghost Recon home page.