
What Every FPS Should Strive to Be

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-launcher, 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!
Review ID: 10000000011185386

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