In 2013, the Army will unleash a new breed of soldier. A soldier whose lethality has been honed by the finest technologies. A soldier equipped to see first and strike decisively. Today, he's yours to command. Get ready to work your way through the streets of Mexico City in this pulse pounding military shooter as you bound from cover to cover to guarantee this is one mission you do walk away from.

THE STORY SO FAR
Much like the Fox show 24, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW from now on, cause I'm not writing that name over and over) is a hodgepodge of political story ideas that come from every which way, and since there are too many names to keep track of, you'll basically take away from each briefing that you have this general idea to accomplish and you've got to go and shoot everything in your way.

The gist of GRAW is that the year is 2013 and Nicaraguan rebels have stolen some US military hardware that they are going to sell in Mexico to paramilitary forces. As a Ghost (a trained warrior who is not to be seen), your job is to go in there and make sure that doesn't happen, but then a Canadian prime minister and American president have to get in the way, you've got to save their butts, and then everything goes crazy and it's nothing but complete anarchy.

The story of GRAW unfolds in several different ways. For one thing, when you begin or end a mission, you've got these interactive cutscenes, usually involving you sitting in a helicopter or armored vehicle, hearing the narrative that drives you from one level to the next. You have free reign to swivel your camera around with the right thumbstick, but other than that you just sit back and listen to what is being said. During the helicopter scenes I usually just looked out the door at the rendered Mexico City and gave "oohs" and "awws" at the sunset, because inside of the vehicles there isn't that much happening.

After those cutscenes though, you get even more story through the actual gameplay. Since you know the outset story of a certain mission, the gameplay of that level will continuously feed you more informational tidbits through both radio chatter and the use of your Narcom window, which acts like a little picture-in-picture television set that keeps you in contact with several different individuals to keep you updated on situations whenever it calls for it. So, for instance, you might have to go secure the President, but if something comes up that needs your immediate attention, the Narcom window will come up and somebody back at the base of operations will give you your new instructions to follow.

Though the story is a tad hard to keep straight, it is at least presented in an engaging way, with my personal favorite moments of storytelling being those instances over the Narcom or either events that happen on the fly in the game. My absolute favorite moment came from when I was trying to find one guy (like I said, can't remember any names from the game) and as I'm approaching this structure a huge explosion rips through the area. I then head for the guy, tell him to hang back, and then it is my Ghost team and some other soldiers defending our area against an onslaught of attackers until help arrives. Bullets are whizzing by everywhere, the sound is just phenomenal, the musical score is rising and getting more dramatic the longer we hold our position, and it is just a great moment to experience.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
The single player experience, as already mentioned, revolves around the GRAW storyline. You'll start off with a training mission (you better go through it if you want to get anywhere in this game) and then it's off to your first mission.

One of my biggest issues with the game is the overly complex controls. Sure, I've seen worse, but I've also seen better, and GRAW falls in the middle by trying to make the game sim enough to please that group of fans and arcade enough to please those as well. The thumbsticks work like every other FPS on the system (though the experience is a third person perspective for GRAW), the left trigger is used to aim, the right trigger is used to fire or throw grenades, the X-button turns on your night vision (I literally went through an entire mission stumbling around in the dark cause I didn't know about this feature, cause I skipped the training mission when I started a campaign since I had just done one that was apparently completely different and didn't cover that info at all), A-button reloads and changes rate of firing depending on how long you hold it, the Y-button controls your cover and uses object, etc. There are just too many things going on in my opinion, which might be more manageable on easily handled four on one skirmishes, but when the action starts to heat up, don't be surprised if you find yourself accidentally hitting a button you didn't mean to and totally screwing up your perfectly laid out game plan.

Obviously, with any military shooter, the gameplay all boils down to kill or be killed, and in that way GRAW isn't any different. Keeping true to the sim aspects and the Tom Clancy name that always leans toward realism, you can't simply run gung-ho down a deserted street, blasting every guy that you come across. Instead, you've got to be very methodical, which means constantly taking the time to just pause and look around, bringing up the map to get you a better idea of your surroundings, and then giving your soldiers commands as you bound up and down the street, running from cover to cover, and peeking out behind every building to make sure no soldier is waiting to blast you to pieces.

While we're still on the issues of controls, I ran into numerous occasions where the cover portion of the gameplay (one of the major gameplay mechanics if not the most important one) suffered because the game simply didn't want to handle it correctly. On numerous occasions I'd be attached to a building, and when I slide over to look around the corner, the game would instead take me off of it and walk me slap dab into an open field where bad guys easily spotted me and riddled me with bullets. Other cover control issues involved not being able to seek cover (back to the object cover is what I'm talking about) behind objects that would appear as if you could, and being faced in a direction that serves you no good, which means you have to do an extra button press to get you situated right.

Whenever you aren't hiding and evaluating a situation, you'll be lining up enemies in your crosshairs and taking them down one by one. Much like you and your team of Ghost, these enemies like to use cover as well, though not every enemy is as smart as you'd want them to be. For instance, for every guy who properly ducks behind cover and leans out to take a few shots just like you are doing, you've got the idiot running straight for you and screaming like a madman. For the most part you just have to pay attention to where shouts and gunfire are coming from and point you weapons in that direction, but through precise aiming (the left trigger) and scouting with your eyes and recon drone, you'll be able to make red diamonds appear on both your screen and the map, which better allows you to analyze the situation and plan your actions accordingly. When these diamonds come up, the enemy's health will also register as a percentage (100, 75, 50, etc) so that you can tell whether the battle is close to being won or not.

The gameplay is quite exciting and tense, as the still of an area leaves you with more questions than hope, as you just know enemies will be coming out of nowhere at any moment. And when the fire fights start happening, the game gets really cinematic, what with the shaky camera that bobs and weaves as your character runs, and such flashy moves as diving to the ground, rolling on your belly, and sliding behind cover (my personal favorite). There is just something innately cool about seeing your man get shot (you can heal them/bandage them by pressing the Y-button when close to them), running towards them as bullets miss you by just inches, and then activating a slide so that you zip behind cover; it is moments like these that make GRAW such a grand experience.

To spice up the gameplay even more, and so you don't simply go through one level after another, going through the same motions to reach your goal, the game is also sprinkled with helicopter missions, that involve you laying waste to as many enemies as you can, presumably, I'm guessing, either making the approaching level easier or harder depending on how many you took out during this on-rail shooter portion.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
I'll get this out of the way first: the lobby system is by no means perfect. While I got my feet wet with the multiplayer options, I didn't want to affect any ranking I might have, so I instead chose several unranked matches to compete in first until I saw how it played differently to the single player gameplay. Now, since the games are setup by the players, you are at the mercy of those individuals who first started the game. I wanted to play some solo multi so if I screwed up it was only affecting me, but I entered five different lobbies before I could find one person to keep consistent, because otherwise I'd wait around for one match to finish, it would, and then the creator would change the game type to something more team based. It was highly annoying, and that isn't even factoring in the time spent waiting (minutes upon minutes) and those dead moments being forced to listen to two idiots chat back and forth over their headsets.

After you get past the lobby, however, things definitely take a turn towards the better. There are a ton of different modes to play, ranging from Solo (frag everyone you see), Team (groups work together), Co-Op (take on the AI with buddies), Territory (hold hot spots), Objective (accomplish tasks to win the game), Elimination (kill every enemy that isn't working with you) and Campaign (play through the Co-op campaign missions). You can also build game types, so if you don't see an initial one to your liking, prepare to tweak away to your heart's content; the game box says there are 1000 customizable multiplayer game types.

Before you get shooting, however, you'll want to change the look of your character and assign him a job class so they have a specialty in one way or another. I personally crafted my character to look like someone from Stargate: SG-1 because…well…I'm a sci-fi nerd. What can I say? I wanted me a Jack O'Neill type clone running around the environments.

Besides playing to have fun, you'll also be attacking the multiplayer to unlock achievements (37) and up your TrueSkill Rankings, because competition drives everything nowadays.

The only problem I had with the actual multiplayer is that audio plays an important factor, which means you've got to take the good and the bad with all that encompasses, so if you can't stand listening to some idiot in Illinois cuss up a storm or say just absolutely ridiculous things, you'll have to grin and bear it since you'll have to communicate with your teammates or else you'll need the audio on so you can hear from what direction enemies are attacking.

GRAPHICS
The Tom Clancy series of games has always done lighting effects well, and for GRAW there is nothing different about the commitment level to making the game look and feel real. When you first see Mexico City, you'll be awestruck by the sheer beauty of the graphics. Sure, the environments are war zones where every manner of explosion has gone off, leaving the city vacant except for your team and the enemy, but try and tell me these aren't some of the best looking areas ever. The way the sun casts shadows from your helicopter onto a nearby tower, the dust kicked up by your chopper coming to pick you up, the gorgeous fire bloom that happens each and every time you blow up some vehicle, and the world, thanks to the 360's power, means beautifully detailed streets, vehicles, and a city full of buildings that, when you witness from a helicopter before or after a mission, never pop in to view, but rather are just there, showing that a game this good looking wouldn't be capable on another system.

The character models also look great (except the faces that look a little bit odd, especially on close-ups to show their lips trying to synch up with the dialog) and they move very fluidly for the most part, except when they sometimes get too jerky when leaving cover with certain weapons equipped.

SOUND
Most of the time voice acting isn't a deal breaker for me, and in the case of GRAW, the case remains the same still. The voice work isn't exactly Oscar material, but it isn't laugh out funny bad either, so in the end GRAW's voice work is just there; it gets the story across and that is all it really needs to do.

The sound work, however, is top notch, as everything sounds so real and pitch perfect. The sound of gunfire tinkling off a metal crate you're hiding behind, the beating of your chopper's blades, the thunderous boom of a car exploding into the air…these are just a few instances of the great sound work. If you've got a great surround sound system setup for gaming, be prepared to crank that sucker as high as it will go and get ready to immerse yourself in this Mexico City at war.

The orchestrated music is also noteworthy, as not only does it help make the game more cinematic and epic, making ordinary things seem like end of the world revelations, but it is incorporated perfectly into the gameplay. Those moments of calm after a fiercely heated battle are filled with low strings that try to sooth your rattled nerves - so you'll be better prepared when the next battle comes your way – and the actual battles themselves are full of strong, impassioned horns blaring, making you feel as if the fate of the world resides on your shoulders and yours alone.

CLOSING COMMENTS
GRAW is the first Tom Clancy game on the Xbox 360, and if it is any indication, Clancy fans have a lot to look forward to as eventual Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell games make their way to the already beloved system. GRAW isn't perfect, mainly due to the complex controls and some of the hiccups I experienced in regards to difficulty and the game simply not responding to what I wanted to happen, but the multiplayer delivers and is probably the best Live experience you'll get on the Xbox 360 so far. It isn't perfect, but it is still one of the best reasons to own a Xbox 360.

For more impressions from a different perpsective, read what Rosethorn has to say.

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