Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers

"If this is supposed to be a sequel, why does it feel so much worse?"

In the current videogame industry climate, it's not often that a military-themed game tries something new. These types of projects have typically been shoehorned into the shooter genre, as game publishers and developers seem to believe that any game involving guns is required to conform to the precedents set by other companies. While this almost pathological fixation on one genre continues to cripple innovation in many quarters of the gaming medium, there are several developers who are attempting to break the mold.

One title to exhibit originality in its concept was 2004's Full Spectrum Warrior. Originally developed as a training simulation for the actual United States Army, the game was eventually transmogrified into a commercial game release, complete with an original storyline and online functionality. While it was by no means perfect, the game's entirely strategic handling of infantry combat garnered widespread praise from gamers and critics alike. Nearly two years after the original saw release, Pandemic Studios published a sequel, titled Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers. Although this follow-up features a handful of important additions to the original's gameplay, very few of the original's problems have been resolved, which ultimately leaves the game difficult to enjoy.


Visuals:

Full Spectrum Warrior looked quite good when it first came to market. The game placed a heavy emphasis on the more washed-out hues of its desert environments, and combined those aesthetics with a very strong technical backbone that included excellent particle effects and rag-doll physics. Ten Hammers largely recycles its predecessor's graphics engine, to mostly the same ends.

Once again, the stars of the game's visual presentation are the expansive, highly detailed environs. Each of the twelve levels in Ten Hammers presents a unique setting in the fictional country of Zekistan, replete with distinct architecture and terrain. As you're in a war zone, these levels all look appropriately torn up, and outdoor areas are littered with rubble and burned-out cars. Effects are modeled nicely as well – especially smoke, which deforms nicely as (for example) RPGs propel through it.

Character models are not nearly as remarkable. There aren't any more than sixteen variations for combatants on either side, which can be rather jarring when you have two or three similar-looking soldiers in the same infantry team. They don't look like much up close, either, as low-resolution textures and low-polygon features abound. Animation does remain a strong point, though, so at least they maneuver through their surroundings fluidly (and react nicely when hit, thanks again to those rag-doll physics).

Ten Hammers also contains several pre-rendered CG cutscenes that play out in between the different segments of the storyline. Although they do happen to improve upon the in-game engine's looks, they don't do so by much, and they feel very ugly when compared to other, comparable offerings out there.

Not much has changed in the visual department since the first FSW, and the results are rather mediocre.

Score: 6/10


Sound:

One area that Full Spectrum Warrior got exactly right was the chaotic din of gunfire and shouting that enveloped confrontations with enemy units. That feeling has made its way into Ten Hammers as well, and it once again replicates the sensation of battle to an excellent degree. The sound of bullets smacking into your cover while you bark out orders, or of the whiz and subsequent explosion of an RPG hitting a nearby car, all encompass you as you play, and the cacophony does a wonderful job of immersing you in the moment. There will always be plenty of ambient gunfire and distant explosions, too, to pass along the idea that you're only one group of soldiers in a bigger war.

For the most part, the voiceover performances in the game are strong as well. Ten Hammers features a much larger cast of soldiers under your control than in the original FSW, and each one has their own distinct voice and lines. Most of that diverse cast delivers their lines well – you'll hear a few sound bites that might cause you to groan, and there are some lines that tend to repeat a bit too often, but on the whole it all seems to work out smoothly. Of course, you'll get to hear the screaming of enemy fighters as well, which is handled just as solidly in their native language.

The game usually keeps its musical soundtrack subdued, only increasing its volume during combat. Most of the score consists of fairly generic military-themed orchestral tracks, and it fits in with the proceedings well enough that you shouldn't notice it very often as you're playing the game through.

As with its forerunner, the chorus of combat is the star of Ten Hammers' acoustic production, rounded out with a decent voiceover cast and passable music.

Score: 8/10


Gameplay:

Full Spectrum Warrior's main gameplay innovation stems from how it handles control over your squads of soldiers. In lieu of allowing you to directly control the men under your command, you are instead tasked with giving them orders, which they will then execute themselves. While this twist is certainly novel, in practice it doesn't work as well as it should, ultimately holding Ten Hammers back from achieving its full potential.

Although the game does feature some light first-person shooting elements, typically you'll be tasked with eliminating enemies and achieving your objectives through tactical maneuvering of your teams. Ideally, your job is to utilize your two (and occasional third or fourth) squads to cover one another, suppress and flank enemies, and advance through the very linear paths the game lays out for you. Most of your time with the game will be spent using one squad to distract any visible opponents, while your other team ducks from cover to cover in search of a more advantageous firing position to eliminate the pinned opposition. The game features a ‘combat effectiveness meter,' which indicates how much fire your team is under – if the meter is full, at least one man of yours is fully exposed to gunfire, and after a few seconds that man will likely be hit and incapacitated.

You'll lose quite a number of soldiers, too, thanks to the flaws inherent in the game's movement system. The XBox controller never really felt well-suited to handling the strategic style of gameplay in the original FSW – and unfortunately, those same controls have found their way into Ten Hammers as well. Movement orders are still about as simple as getting toothpaste back into its tube, thanks to the analog-stick-controlled movement cursor's penchant for sticking to every surface in its path. In effect, what this does is relegate issuing movement orders on the fly impractical, so that if, perchance, your squad finds itself stuck in the line of fire as the result of an insurgent's sudden appearance, you're unlikely to be able to order them to get out of harm's way quickly enough to save them.

Perhaps partly to appeal more to the shooter crowd, Ten Hammers includes a ‘Precision Fire' option that was not in the first FSW. This mode allows you to have one of your soldiers peek out from cover – exposing himself to gunfire – to attempt a shot at an entrenched foe. The implementation of this facet is not as you would expect, though; instead of simply looking out and firing, you must wait a few moments as the soldier orients himself, and then order him to fire once he is ready, at which point he will kill his target if they are exposed. It feels awkward to use at first, but this tool does ultimately grow to be an important piece of your repertoire. In fact, once you learn how to effectively employ it, it often becomes the easiest method of dispatching individual enemy fighters, which in practice tends to play down the tactical aspect of the game.

Despite the addition of a quasi-shooting aspect, the gameplay still has trial-and-error overtones that grate after a little while. On the lowest difficulty setting, you're afforded a bit more of a margin for error, but on the higher challenge levels the game can become very frustrating. You'll inch your squad forward bit by bit, only to suddenly come under fire from around a corner and lose half of your squad before you can reach cover again; then, upon restarting from your last checkpoint, you'll overcome the ambush due to your hard-earned knowledge of it, only to encounter another fatal trap a block past the last one. Even utilizing all of the tactics at your disposal, you simply can't avoid many of these instances without being aware of their locations ahead of time.

Of course, it would help if your soldiers had an ounce of self-preservation in their artificial intellignce. Much like in the original game, the A.I. in Ten Hammers acts erratically at times, and nonexistent at others. Your foes will move between cover more often now, but oftentimes they will do so for no good reason, leaving a safe spot behind defilade seemingly just to taunt you (or provide you with a shot at them). Luckily for those enemies, though, your soldiers couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with their weapons fire, as these highly trained men apparently still have poorer aim than their insurgent counterparts. Your soldiers also never seem to act in self-defense, either; if, for example, an enemy foolishly runs right at them, they forgo any manner of defense mechanisms, choosing to simply ignoring the attacker until he finds cover behind them, and picks them off one-by-one. Most egregious of all the A.I. problems, though, is the fact that every once in a while one of your soldiers will freeze in place, unable to move unless killed. Needless to say, this can severely impair your team's effectiveness.

Now, in spite of all of these flaws, Ten Hammers can still be a fun game when it's going right. There is, after all, an inherent satisfaction in successfully navigating your men through stretches of enemy encounters that you don't get from most shooters. It's just a shame that so many negative aspects found their way into the final product, and that these problems suffocate the small bits of fun that pop up throughout the entire fifteen or twenty hours it takes to complete the main storyline.

From poor A.I. to awkward controls, a myriad of problems conspire to keep the overall experience in Ten Hammers from being a fun one.

Score: 5/10


Story:

Ten Hammers is a continuation of the storyline initiated in the original Full Spectrum Warrior. It involves a fictional Iraq stand-in by the name of Zekistan, where a United States-led coalition toppled an oppressive government in the first game, and now rival insurgencies are threatening stability as the invading forces struggle to set up a viable new infrastructure.

This time, the main character is Sergeant Charlie Daniels, whose efforts to befriend the civilian population end up precipitating the events of the game. You learn Daniels' ultimate fate in the first chapter of the game, and unravel the story behind it as you progress through the remainder of the campaign. The game does a nice job of integrating the various soldiers in your unit into the script – impressive when you consider the many possible permutations – but on the whole it accomplishes little more than giving you a reason to take out bad guys.

Overall, the plot in Ten Hammers is little more than a basic war story, and it does its job without ever really pretending it matters much.

Score: 6/10


Features/Modes:

Of the supplementary features Ten Hammers adds to Full Spectrum Warrior, the most fascinating is that of a full-fledged competitive multiplayer component. This new mode allows up to eight players at once to battle in several loosely mission-based setups, and is playable either via system link or XBox Live. The game is also XBox Live Aware, so you can track your Friends List even while you play the game's single-player portions.

Beyond the multiplayer section, the game once again returns cooperative play for its storyline campaign. Playing the game cooperatively alleviates a bit of its hassle, as you no longer have to worry about two squads at once, but it still can't fix the A.I. or control problems, so its value is limited. There are also three difficulty settings to play the campaign on, each more exasperating than the last; however, there is little reason to replay the game once you've completed it, unless you're a masochist.

For those who can stand the controls and A.I., there is a fair amount of value in Ten Hammers, most of which is tied up in its new multiplayer gametype.

Score: 8/10


Online Play:

The new multiplayer style presented in Ten Hammers draws its inspiration from the single-player game. At the game lobby, players are divided between teams of insurgents and coalition forces, and from there they enter into one of eight different mission setups.

Most of the missions involve some type of capture-the-flag-esque search for an objective, such as hostages or valuables. The sides are not balanced, though, as the insurgents control as individual units and outnumber their opponents, whereas the coalition function in the eight-man teams present in the solo game and possess greater firepower. Both sides can replenish their ranks if they take casualties, as the insurgents can spawn more fighters, while the coalition has access to medical units.

While the premise here is genuinely interesting, the game does not play very strategically in practice. A majority of the games typically revolve around one team spotting the other first, and subsequently killing them off before they have an opportunity to collect themselves. The terrible movement controls once again limit the appeal of the game significantly, as does the virtually nonexistent online community for the game; still, as with the single-player game, this mode does have its moments, if you can find a solid group to play it with.

There isn't a whole lot to Ten Hammers' online multiplayer play, and it's hampered by the game's poor controls, but it offers a decent competitive option to the mix.

Score: 6/10


Total Score:

It's safe to say that there have been better tactical games released than Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers. The game features awful A.I., stubborn controls, and a penchant for annoying gameplay situations, all of which coalesce to render its inventive and unique design as little more than a footnote. Still, the developers at Pandemic Studios are at least trying to bring something original to the table – an act worthy of commendation, regardless of its outcome.

If you enjoyed the original Full Spectrum Warrior, you should rent Ten Hammers, to see if it can satisfy your gaming needs again. If, on the other hand, you haven't spent time with the series before, then you should definitely give the first game a try before even attempting to play this one.

Score: 6/10 (not an average)


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Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/07

Game Release: Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers (US, 03/28/06)