Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (PC)

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was a big hit on the Xbox 360 and Ubisoft in association with developers: Grin decided they’d put this game onto the PC. Now where some companies and developers might just make a straight port and gain the scorn of the PC gamers out there, no, these guys made some impressive changes.

On the whole you can get the gist of the Xbox 360 game here:

360 GRAW review

The developers upped the ante for this game and transformed it, especially with the new patch that fixes several bugs and adds some new content. Read on if you’re interested in finding out how the PC version differs from the 360 game.

Gameplay

The PC has been the format for the tactical shooter for a long time, the console games until now had never really quite managed to get it right. The PC version of GRAW makes a few significant changes in the way the game plays and firmly sets it into the mould of the old Ghost Recon games, a seriously fun and frenetic tactical shooter that will have you pulling your hair out at times.

WASD players will find that the default layout is suitable, a few control customisations later and you can set things up how you want them. The control system is intuitive for the PC gamer that cut their teeth on shooters and you have all the options you’d expect for switching weapons, stances and so on. There’s a few here that however beg to be mentioned in their own right.

A quick tap of the down stance key whilst running will throw you onto your knees in a tactical slide, good for avoiding incoming fire and getting into cover quickly. There is also a front slide that throws you forwards again this is great for getting out of the line of fire and returning fire from a prone position.

The cross-com system functions in a different way as well. Direct control of your squad is impossible, you can order them via the quick orders menu using the mouse wheel and keys, you cannot however possess or jump to another character and control them directly – which is something that most games of the Ghost Recon series have had in common.

You can hit the tactical map through your cross-com and place waypoints and give out orders now however. This new system is easy to use and these orders can be stacked up to be executed individually by each team member or with a click of the ‘execute all’ button you can set up a nice little tactical movement.

The cross-com differs from the 360 version as well and with the G key and a squad member selected you can get a full screen greyscale view of what the soldier’s helmet camera is looking at.

At the end of each mission you are given a chance to pick your weapons and customise your team’s loadout, this includes adding silencers and various components – bear in mind that the weight of the equipment is taken into account and you will not be able to carry a ‘Quake style’ arsenal into combat.

The basics of the game remain the same as with the 360 version, execute a number of objectives and keep your team alive. If Mitchell dies its game over and unlike the console version you cannot bring injured or downed team members back to some kind of reasonable health. This is GRAW played for keeps and played hard.

Even on the easiest level of difficultly the game is still more than a challenge. You can only save after a mission is completed and the game works on a series of checkpoints – some of these are few and far between so prepare for some intense fire-fights and much reloading.

Load times are optimised and on a high spec machine it’s fairly quick. It’s worth the wait however as once everything’s loaded in that’s it, there’s no need for you to load anything else until the current mission’s done…and that can take quite a while since most of the maps have a fair few objectives and they are large.

Those people worrying that the title’s console roots might have made it a weaker experience only need remember this: this game isn’t a port and it’s been made from the ground up to support the PC.