I was a big fan of the original Ghost Recon. I appreciated the realistic ways in which the firearms behaved and the heavy strategic element. The game let you command a platoon of up to 3 squads and direct them around a terrain map. If they advanced through enemies they'd probably get cut to shreds but on the other hand if you used cover and concealment and set them up properly they could tear the enemy to shreds. The game had suppressed weapons, specialized antitank weapons, and a variety of small arms all implemented. In other words it was for the time a FPS with a lot of attention to realistic detail and with a heavy strategic element.

So yesterday I went into a store and saw Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for $20.00 and I decided to buy it. However, it is very disappointing to me so far. In the first place it crashes a lot, and yes I patched it. Secondly, it seems like almost all the platoon-level strategy that was the hallmark of the first Ghost Recon is completely gone! You only get one squad and no longer a platoon, so that's a downgrade and a simplification.

The gameplay is also much more arcade-style and a lot less strategic. In the first place, the enemies actually have a much harder time killing you and your men than in the first Ghost Recon. They miss a lot more frequently and the amount of hits you can take is many times more than in the first game. Now, I realize that there have been a lot of improvements in body armor between the time when the first Ghost Recon came out and today, and that taking more hits is realistic on that level, but what about hits to your leg, to the side of your vest, to the head? I think that they took it a bit too far in the direction of survivability; it's now possible to blithely run past the enemy, eat a burst at close range, and not be much worse for the wear. The emphasis on the game really seems to be on your mouse-aiming skills and not on careful planning and meticulous execution like the first one was.

Finally, Advanced Warfighter has too much in-your-face scifi. Your character keeps recieving video feeds on his helmet. I feel like I'm in a cyberpunk novel whenever that happens. That belongs in Deus Ex or a Gibson novel but sure doesn't feel realistic. I really feel like they're pimping an overteched feel.

So all in all I feel like Advanced Warfighter is almost completely different than the original Ghost Recon. I'd rather play the original Ghost Recon. I feel ripped off $20.00.

Ok, so I'm not the only one who's tried this game and felt like this game disc is best used as a coaster.

Have you tried Frontlines: Fuel of War? It's okay in terms of the drones, but other than that, don't get it unless they patch the game and even out the balance issues. Still, it's very fun to control the drones in that game hunting down folks and such.

what pissed me off about the entire ghost recon series (including both Advanced Warfighters) was the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks teammates. the planning screen didn't help either.

COD4 is much better in this regard. (Probably because it's heavily scripted, and not very sim-ish).

I find Rainbow 6: Raven Shield to be much more fun. still dumb team-mates, but better planning.

I'd love to go through some of the Ghost Recons in co-op, but everyone I play with locally is a mouth-breathing deathmatcher (no offense to the mouth-breathing deathmatchers)


SECOND EDIT:

the one thing I DID like about GRAW was the MR-C, or Modular Rifle - Caseless.

50 rounds of 6.8mm caseless in a nice bullpup carbine? Yes Please.

it's still a concept right now. but I wants one anyway.

I found the squad A.I.s in both the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchises to be horribly frustrating and nearly impossible to work with. The games looked beautiful (not as good as Black but what is? ) but the gameplay was horrible. I don't think a first person shooter is the best platform for squad-based tactics. There was a third-person XBox game (the name escapes me) where you commanded a four-man squad in some made up middle eastern country (Zekistan?) that seemed to work pretty well but it was so true-to-life it was almost not fun to play. Ideally, I would like a default third person squad command game where I direct my troops where to go and how to use cover and covering fire and then switch to first person view for sniping or other gunplay.

Death to mouth-breathers.

Let me recommend this game to you, then: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=948

It's similar to what you say you want. I played through it 2 or 3 times and enjoyed it immensely. Be sure to read the manual first since it is designed to be simulationistic. And you should be aware in advance that your support units are prone to creating friendly fire incidents.

I guess you're referring to Full Spectrum Warrior. Also available for PC and PS2.
There's also a sequel, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, though that was less well received (more bugs, etc.).

I haven't played Full Spectrum Warrior, but a friend of mine told me that certain things were exaggerated and predictable to the point that they were no longer realistic. Specifically, he told me that the game sort of worked like rock papers scissors with certain combinations of equipment and positioning being infallible versus others and no possibility of something unexpected happening.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

I hated the original Ghost Recon. I couldn't stand the way it was considered realistic. The game world was antiseptic and predictable, the enemies had spectacularly horrible AI (and your teammates simply didn't have any at all), and the weapons weren't any more realistic than Counter-Strike. The damage model was very lethal, which I guess was kind of like being realistic, but it was so lethal that it was, if anything, just as unrealistic as Counter-Strike.

Anyway, GRAW pretty much has the same problems, only there's less freedom on the maps and more scifi nonsense all over the place. GRAW 2 is closer to the original GRAW, which I say in the most pejorative sense possible.

GRAW for the 360 was a completely different game, and in many respects it's the most realistic of all of the Ghost Recon games. It has tons of action game nonsense, but there's real AI, and the combat comes closest to feeling real out of all of them.

I dunno about that man. Have you ever tried to take a Russian down with the M9? It can take several shots if you don't hit the head, and quite a lot if you keep hitting the limbs because you're far away.

I actually remember the M9 as being a reliably one shot kill weapon, along with the MP5. Don't know where to start with the OICW. The fundamental problem with the way combat in general was modeled, though, was that it was a very predictable exchange. Real war is chaotic, noisy, and messy. You don't know that your weapon will always shoot where you want it to (though, ironically, with no training, I can probably shoot an M16 as well as or better than the standard ghost), you don't know that your M16 is always going to kill your enemy in one hit, you don't know that your cover is going to hold, etc. If combat is not chaotic, something's wrong with the game. The original GR does stand up as one of the best games ever with regards to camouflage, though. And I guess GRAW has really nice sound effects for the M9 and a scene where I shot down a helicopter with an assault rifle, just like real life.

If you want to be slightly less disappointed with your GRAW purchase, try this. It won't make a bad game suck less, but it's nice for what it is. I think GRAW PC is really a lost cause, though.

I'm with ya on this one, WR, though not quite to the point that I feel GRAW (or GRAW 2, for that matter) sucks. I just don't feel like...it...hrm. How to say it best?

I guess I kind of think of GRAW as the SR4 to Ghost Recon's SR3. Gameplay is the same on the very simplest level (it's a FPS and you have NPCs on your side), and they share the words "Ghost" and "Recon" in the title, and there the similarities pretty much stop. I'm not going to say one video game model is better or worse than the other, but there's no denying that they are different. If you bought GRAW expecting Ghost Recon (or any of its expansions, which I still love), you will be as disappointed as if you were biting into an apple and tasted an orange.

Does that mean oranges suck and apples rule? Not at all. But it means it's not what you were expecting when you made the purchase, and that's hardly ever very fun.

GRAW 2 PC, which I admittedly also did not like, is considerably closer to its original GR heritage.

The great unwashed nose-picking masses.