I’ve always been told never to judge a book by its cover – and the same applies to many things in life, such as games. Judging from the Full Spectrum Warrior cover, it’s another war game set in the Middle-East; and you’d be right, in a way, but it’s more than that – this isn’t just another mindless shooter, it’s a squad based strategy game.
The first thing you notice when you start Full Spectrum Warrior is the presentation; it’s all very well done. Once you get past the training, the game starts with a movie-like intro, giving you a bit of background for each soldier in Alpha and Bravo team (with a more detailed bio in the manual) and then you get thrown right into the action.
As I have said above, this isn’t just another shooter; you are in command of two squads, Alpha and Bravo (and sometimes a third; Charlie team), and are given several missions to complete in a fictitious Middle-Eastern dictatorship called Zekistan. Control is done very well for this type of game on a console – the left analogue stick moves a context-sensitive cursor around, which adapts to the landscape as you move it. For example, if you move it behind something that can be used for cover, your squad will group position themselves behind it accordingly.
Shooting is done in a similar way, and as such, will be disappointing for some people; you can’t shoot directly, you can only give your squad the order to fire. Pressing X will bring up a large aiming zone and then hitting A tells your squad to cover that fire sector. This means that your squad will keep scanning that area, and will only shoot enemies in that sector. (Unless they are a direct threat) Pulling the right trigger activates the “fog of war” - this is used to clearly show you which areas your soldiers are actually covering by removing the colour from and blurring the areas they aren't able to see, and can be used to give them individual fire sectors, but spreading them out too thinly can be the difference between life and death.
Full Spectrum Warrior is a very hard game to review, and the gameplay is just as hard to describe. Stripped down it’s essentially a matter of getting one team to keep an enemy busy while the other flanks them and takes them out; but that’s not the point of the game – it’s how you do it that makes it fun, not what you’re actually doing.
FSW feels like it was made for co-operative play; it’s not that it is a bad game offline solo, but online is where it really shines. Offline you have to constantly switch between Alpha team and Bravo team, issuing orders to both, but online you are only in control of one team. Doing this you can discuss various tactics and co-ordinate attacks much better than you can offline. A great thing about the game is that it actually saves your progress online to be played at a later date. Completing levels online will count towards your single player progress, so if you’re stuck at a particularly hard part offline, you can get a mate to help you out in co-op, and then continue solo again. Another good thing is that when someone leaves your game, it becomes a single player game, immediately giving you control over both squads, so just because someone has left doesn’t mean you have to start the mission again. Strangely, although it has online co-op play, it doesn’t have any system link support or a split screen mode.
Full Spectrum Warrior is a whole lot of fun, especially online, but it isn’t without its share of problems. Due to the fact that you don’t have direct control over your squad, you rely heavily on their AI when doing things, and while it’s usually great, there are times where you end up dying because of it. For example, if you have a grenade thrown near you, if you had direct control you would have run away from it in time, but due to a combination of the control system and the AI, it often ends up with your squad being killed because they don’t react quickly enough.
Throwing grenades yourself is very annoying as well. For gameplay reasons, Pandemic has decided that soldiers can only throw frag grenades about one third the distance they can throw smoke grenades, but not only that, they can only throw them about 40-50ft, yet the enemy can throw comfortably further than that, which is annoying, and hardly realistic. There were several points in the game where an enemy was just out of reach, and made it take much longer to get past that point due to this. You also have an M203 grenade launcher at your disposal, but strangely, no matter what the distance, it will always travel in a completely straight line to your target with no arc at all; I’ve fired one well over 200ft and it has gone completely straight – again; not realistic.
Cover is a crucial (literally life & death) aspect of Full Spectrum Warrior. If you don’t stay in cover, chances are that you’re about to be killed. The problem is that this is skewed in the enemies’ favour. Even if you are behind cover, you can still get shot. However, there are some situations where an enemy is literally invincible behind some types of cover, unless you get behind (flank) them.
I have already mentioned the AI, but another problem with FSW is the pathfinding. A lot of the time they will take the most direct route to a point, even if it has them running in front of your other squad laying down suppressive fire (‘suppression’ means that they will fire full-auto at a set fire sector and not stop regardless of what is in their path – meaning there is a possibility of deaths through “friendly fire”). The AI doesn’t seem to be as “smart” online either - your team will have you yelling "NOT LIKE THAT YOU PILLOCKS" (or similar) at them on more than one occasion - guaranteed. There will also be times where they just simply “forget” commands, or worse – when they just stop dead in the middle of the street – if we’re being charitable, this might be to simulate panic in the midst of a firefight – one thing’s for sure; it keeps you on your toes, and never lets you forget that you’re in command, and these guys’ lives are in your hands…
One last thing worth mentioning about the gameplay is the cool replay mode. Whenever you die (or if you choose to save one mid-mission) you have the option of watching a replay of your game – the great thing about this is that you can jump in and take control at any point, so you can go to the bit where things started going wrong, correct them, and continue on.
Graphically I hadn’t been expecting much from this. Games that are said to be “sims” generally don’t look that great due to the complex AI running in the background, and although some still screens looked nice enough, the preview videos I had seen looked rather blurry and low detail. But that couldn’t be further from the truth; Full Spectrum Warrior is actually one of the best looking games around right now. The texturing is great – it may not be the highest resolution seen on the Xbox, but it does a really good job of making everything look “real.” In addition to this there are some very good animations for your squad, and your enemies, it’s all really fluid and adds to the experience. The lighting is great, it just adds to the atmosphere of the game, and emphasises the “realistic” look of the game. There are some great effects too – self-shadowing on the soldiers, heat haze effects on the ground, and the “blooming” effect on the sky around midday looks great.
Sound is also done to a very high standard. The weapon sounds are just what you would expect, and add to the atmosphere, but the voice acting really shines here. Every squad member has their own personality, and it shows from the way they speak, and react to what is going on.
Despite having quite a few problems, and the game being skewed in your enemies’ favour, Full Spectrum Warrior is still a fantastic game. It feels very polished, and has a really good atmosphere about it. Here at Gamecell we’ve had great fun going through the game in its entirety online, as well as offline, and it’s an experience like no other. Yes, it does have problems, but the rest of the game more than makes up for this. If you’re looking for something genuinely new, especially for Xbox live, I would highly recommend giving Full Spectrum Warrior a shot.
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