Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (PC, 2007)

The Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) games are among my personal favorite first-person-shooter games. The graphics are great, without being system-crushingly over-kill (I'm looking at you, Crysis), the weapons are realistic and the controls are fair.

To get right to the point I'm going to highlight a few details about this game (and how it relates to GRAW1) rather than a pro/con list, since opinions vary:

DETAILS:
- Every button-based control is customizable in GRAW2, from the "run" button to the "move forward" button. Even the standard WASD can be changed if desired.
- The moves are fluid compared to other FPS games; it feels a lot more like moving your mouse cursor to target a point than other games which sometimes feel like you're playing cup-ball.
- Unlike Call of Duty 4 (CoD4), the cursor points exactly where you're looking; you don't need to "hold your breath" to steady it. This may make it slightly more unrealistic, but overall makes the game that much better in my opinion. (Of course an in-game option to switch between these options would be the most ideal, but I don't know of any games which have it.)
- You can run limitlessly. Also unlike CoD4 you can continue running for as long as you hold the "run" button in GRAW2 (and GRAW1). There are still two MAJOR disadvantages to running though, which make it so that not everyone is just running around all the time: (1) it creates a lot of noise, which is more likely to give up your position - something you don't want to do in this game, and (2) while running your gun is down, and it takes a moment to pull it back up to the firing position after you stop running. Therefore, if you're running around a corner and see an enemy, you've probably just alerted him to your position (from the noise) and given him "first shot" since it will take a moment to get your cross-hairs on him.
- No voice chat. Unlike Unreal Tournament (UT) games, neither GRAW game (for PC at least) has built-in voice chat. It's nice to not have 12-year-olds screaming expletives through your speakers, but it also means you need a 3rd party application running in the background to voice-chat with teammates in team-based scenarios.
- Text chat IS present. Like most FPS there is a text chat function. However, like most FPSs you have to stop playing, type your message, send it, then continue playing, hoping you haven't gotten killed yet. Useful, yes, but rarely.
- The weapon selection screen is lacking. In GRAW1 you could pick a base weapon, add a sight/silencer/grenade-launche​r, pick up a secondary and extra ammo, all weight-dependent. GRAW2 has traded this for a "select a predetermined profile" method. While there are more guns in GRAW2 (meaning more profiles than "customized gun options" in GRAW1), it's still frustrating that you cannot select your favorite gun + your favorite sight + a frag grenade. Hopefully GRAW3 (if it ever comes out) will fix this.
- No weapon limiting. If you create a server in GRAW1 you can choose to disallow snipers, grenade launchers, grenades in general, etc. In GRAW2 none of those options exist. So you'll be playing online in a server where the rules state "no GLs" and someone will inevitably turn into Rambo firing grenades to rack-up kills. Again, hopefully GRAW3 will fix this.
- Awesome maps: GRAW has better maps than almost any other FPS games I've seen. An easy map creator would be a nice touch, but as-it-is it's still quite amazing.

Out of room!

Yeah really totaly lame Hand Grenade controlability on this game, heck I myself mustve thrown different types of grenades when I was in the Army and what I know is that a normal time fuse burns for about 5 seconds - not a split second like the one on this game that always just ends up killing your character. Also this game has the hardest if not lousiest directional throwing of the grenades, in real life even a 3 year old can "bounce" a frag with ease, unlike in this game where you try to ricochet it and the grenade just bounces back in front of your feet - guys cmon really lame throwing there now!

AI - ahh yes Artificial Intelligence of your 3 Amigos in the team...WORST EVER!

No intelligence in there if theyre supposed to be the best special forces soldiers well why the heck would they be not too smart and get themselves right into the line of enemy fire and into the killing zone?

You tell them to go to a certain place and they wander off somewhere else - now thats an obedient soldier who follows orders alright!

This is an Excellent game ... the AI is Great ...Enemy AI flanks and seeks cover ...Enemy Snipers shoot and hide ...

The Movement and graphics are TOP NOTCH .... trees ..high grass.. houses
They look like "real" people ...so you get very caught up in the action
The single player game is pretty long 9-12 hours and has COOP ( not just 4 people coop either ) coop is thru lan or online

ONLINE Team Deathmatch (adversarial) is very good and the netcode is very good so even pings of over 300ms do not feel laggy (but you can tell your not a low ping )

the downside ... Not a whole lot of people playing this game ( never more than 20-30 servers open) has No Jumping and no weapons when you run ...
but you do get use to this very fast ...and the game works for all player types whether you like to camp or rambo
the weapons are very fun to use ...

hope you get the game ...and play with those of us that sincerely love this game....I have no problem saying this is the best game I have ever played
give the game a chance ...took me a couple days to get use to no jumping and running with no guns ...but what the game "HAS" is done very well

I go by YOGI ingame in case you feel I wasted your money ...you can let me know ... but if you give the game a chance ....I think you will love it like I do.

It is an OK game over all. little glitchy and not as smooth as Call of Duty. i personally did not like the commanding of each individual unit. i much rather give one button commands and stay in the action instead of going to a window constantly to command my units. The graphics and realism where good. I decided to buy to have hopefully another game like Call of Duty to play, and it disappointment me in that form. i also though it would be good because i have the game Tom Clacy's Hawx, and that was a very good game. one of my personal favorites. so i guess i am a little disappointed that it was not as good as Hawx.

If you're looking for a fun, challenging PC FPS, this is the one. Much more fun than RSV2 and Battlefield 2142. There are still a lot of team versus matches going on, despite the game's age. Much more tactical single player than the console version and a lot less talking to teammates than the console version. I think the social aspect of playing this on the 360 makes it more fun, but PC gamers will love this title. The customizable single-player kits and weapons really add to the game as well, just wish there were more weapons. Worth it to download good weapon mods. High re playability to try different tactics, battlefields give a lot of options. No matter what, you can get it so cheap now you can't be disappointed.