Fulfilling the role of a Captain is certainly not an easy thing. You must stay up endlessly for hours, complete deadly missions, and lead a squad to an objective in harrowing conditions. With Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 for the PlayStation 3 console, players will be submersed in a realistic warfare experience as Captain Scott Mitchell. A key figure of the armed forces, Mitchell and his Ghost squad are the final tool for damage control in Mexico’s civil war of 2014. The country is in a state of chaos, and utter destruction. With your team, you must retain the peace, stabilize humanity, and keep civilization in tact.
It’s not the game’s unbelievable atmosphere or story that keeps the players constantly asking to return to war, but it’s the unrealistic gameplay. From the time you pick up the controller, GRAW 2 feels natural. From an over-the-shoulder perspective, use L1 to precisely aim, R1 to pull the trigger, tap X to take cover or reload, hold X to change your weapon’s rate of fire, hold circle to switch guns, and R3 lets you use your scope if you have one. As you battle sadistic enemies, filling up the gritty atmosphere, you can order your squad around with the D-pad arrows to have them Move, Fall Back, Stay, and or Follow on you. With this newly customized and optimized squad control system, players can overcome the Mexican Rebels in a strategic manner.
When you finally lock and load, you discover that although the missions require a strenuous amount of work, they are trouble-free with the aid of squads. You’ll discover that the success of your squad relies on specialization of where the troops will be. As we proceed into across the ash-covered streets, our unit faced an arduous mission as the mercenaries rampaged our troops in a church courtyard. A helicopter promptly came to our extraction point, and we barely escaped a rocket that almost spun the chopper.
In the greater composure of it all, GRAW 2 focuses on the way you play to stay alive, and most importantly keep alive. The core ability to tackle the same objectives and missions from multiple perspectives is a key component to the battle system in GRAW 2. When a mission starts, you can choose not only different weapons for adaptation to that specific mission situation, but also to customize your battle stratagem.
At many points in the game, you can easily utilize a M.U.L.E, a futuristic ATV that carries along weapons, health, and bullets for your mission at the forefront. The M.U.L.E can be summoned via the same D-Pad interface that orders your dexterous troops around. If you want a more hands-on approach and the follow command isn’t to your liking, you can hold down one of the shoulder buttons and drive the vehicle yourself from the first-person perspective. Although the vehicle can take damage, if you’re squadron is seriously injured and need to scout ahead, taking the M.U.L.E. up the road isn’t a bad idea. In fact, there’s even a hovercraft called the UAV Cypher you can pilot ahead to scope the baddies, helping you be up to date on what’s ahead and out there to get you and your squad prepared for the upcoming battlefield. The primary difference between the 360 version of the game is that even though you can primarily use joysticks to pilot these warfare amenities, they are Sixaxis-enabled in the PlayStation 3 version. You can tilt the controller in GRAW 2 to move the M.U.L.E., fly the UAV, and do a couple of on ground moves such as rolling and roll shoot.
The Sixaxis controls were a bit delayed, but there were no apparent issues in terms of control. In earlier builds, the roll was a bit tough to initiate with the Sixaxis, but it’s much improved and can be enhanced with the controller’s sensitivity options.
The port of GRAW 2 is definitely closer to the real thing than previous Ubisoft ports, such as Rainbow Six Vegas. Luckily, the overstated camera movements found on the 360 when any squad members will furtively run to a cover point. There’s a frame rate slowdown in the rides when approaching an input point within the mission and mostly when you receive Intel through the I-com. The colors are definitely much better on the PlayStation 3 version than they are on the 360 version—especially on PlayStation 3’s “Full RGB” setting.
This time around, the A.I. is also much better in comparison to the 360 version. Usually, when you would toss a grenade next to rebels near a car, they would idiotically run to a point of cover right near the grenade. As expected, they’d surprisingly blow up. This time around, the A.I. actually communicates with one another realistically while being seriously frightened by a grenade instead of screaming rather dully.
The sound of GRAW 2 for the PlayStation 3 is nothing below amazing. The thump of the bass of motors, grenades, tank shells, and helicopter explosions are stunning audio wise and visual wise. The battle communication is vivid and really helps you feel like your there in Mexico during the war. With a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system, players will be able to fully immerse themselves further in the hectic warfare to get the full GRAW 2 experience—with a nice subwoofer to shake your clothes as the shrapnel’s blow up around us. GRAW 2 doesn’t just deliver fully on visual and gameplay, but it delivers an immersive experience that allows players to take part of the warfare atmosphere.
Online is another remarkable aspect of GRAW 2. The voice communication with another player is crisp and loud, which is definitely a plus in our book. Even though you can’t see who is talking, the immersiveness doesn’t fail to falter. The graphics are toned down a bit for multiplayer, so gameplay can be smoother. But, as you run across the battlefield with your best friend, the graphics are still stirring. There is very slight drop of frames per second, but the experience remains very smooth overall. Since the game just came out, it is a bit difficult to find matches. As more and more players get a hold of this great title, however, this will definitely be cleared up.
GRAW 2 for the PlayStation 3 plays great, feels great, and sounds great. All in all, the port over to the PlayStation 3 is an impressive one, and thankfully the players are given much customization over the controls to battle in the war to their best ability and liking. The gameplay is smooth with an amazing multiplayer interface and the sound is unbelievably capturing in the war’s hectic atmosphere. Ubisoft did a great job on carrying this over to the PlayStation 3 and this is a game that no one should pass up. Now, enough reading. Get out there and fight. That is an order soldier!