Full Spectrum Warrior

"Unfortunately its not the best game ever, but its ANYTHING but bad :)"

I'm a Strategy and Tactics nut, so when I first heard about Full Spectrum Warrior last year, I was intrigued...

When I saw the E3 demo I was BLOWN AWAY!

If you haven't seen it, go watch it, NOW! It's at IGN for insiders and i think gametrailers.com has it for free. When I first watched it I had no idea what I was getting into. This was easily the most innovative design I had seen since maybe Mario 64 first conqured the 3rd dimension. Seriously, instead of me going into detail about what it contains, just go find it and watch it...

Sadly, however, that is not the Full Spectrum Warrior we ended up getting. The game featured in the demo was the version Pandemic developed for use in the army for soldiers to play on down time, sort of a training aid to keep there tactics sharp. The retail version is based on that game, but there are some major design differences that while possibly make it more accessable to the mainstream, end up just making the game less engaging and believable (this will be a positive review, stick with me.

Gameplay

For purposes of the review, I'm going to break this catagory down further:

Game design: The design and implementation of the mechanics in this game are pretty revelutionary. Hopefully you downloaded that e3 demo and already have a feel of what I'm talking about but incase you hate me and decided NOT to watch it, here is a very brief, clumsy break down of the gameplay.

You command a squad of army light infantry in a conflict set in the middle east. Your squad is broken down into 2 fire teams wich you can switch between by pressing the B button. When contolling a fire team you can move the Left Thumb Stick to move the "Cursor". This shows where you want your men to move to. place in where you want and press A and your guys ran to that position. Cool thing is, the cursor is contex sensitive. Move it into a street and the cursor make a wedge formation, but move it against a wall and the cursor creats a wall formation, where your men line up agaisnt the wall and cover all sides. Move the cursor to a corner of a wall and you get a corner formation, where your "team leader" peaks around to look for enemies. I'm probably not explaining this well (PLEASE go watch the video) but believe me, it works amazingly well.

Once your in position and have an enemy in view, you can give the order to fire. You do this by pressing Y which bring up a big circle on the screen. This is a fire sector. move he fire sector in the direction you want them to fire and they will fire on enemies in their fire sector.

These are the basics. There are other things you can do too like throw grnades, smoke, order supressive fire, etc

Now if you watched the demo, there are some design differences in the retail version. Mainly, when an enemy is fireing at you and you are behind cover, a shield icon appears over each of your soldiers heads. When you have this icon, you CAN NOT DIE. You're bullet proof. This goes for you're enemies as well. Anyone behind cover is completely in vulnerable, which means that your fire team and the enemy simply fire back an forth at eachother until someone runs out of ammo (and they don't run out of ammo).

I see the reasoning here. This puts the focus on tactical manuvering over fire power. Becuase you can't kill them you keep them engaged with one team and flank them with another team who can attck from an angle where the enemy does not have cover. Ok, cool, I understand, but for a game that was being boasted as the most realistic combat simulation ever released to the public, these abstractions are a dissapointment. However, my expectations aside, all games are abstractions to one degree or another and although you're subtracting realism, the gameplay still works amazingly. So let me reiterate. Most Innovative design in several years, you've never played anything like it: *-10-*

Level design: Ok, here's where thing get sticky, although the gamplay mechanics and controls are amazing, the level design rarely lets you use these tools. All the levels are gorgeous and well constructed, but they're also EXTREMELY linear. Even though you're in a huge city, you'll notice a lack of allys and side street, as if everything was just one huge building, or most of the allyways you do see are blocked by rubble. This give you very little choice on how to face you're enemy. And lets say you encounter two paths, you send your alpha team into one, and they encounter an enemy. Alpha engages that enemy and you're left with Bravo who uses that only other path you conviniently come out the other end positioned to take that enemy out. Is that REALLY teo paths? No, you got one choice. Most of the game is like this which ultimatly creates a far less satifting experience than one would hope would come from a game like this. *-4-*

Now, I would probably round this to a 7, GREAT mechanic s ALMOST ruined (but not quite) but sloppy, repetative level design and lousy enemy AI that simply shoots at you until they die...

HOWEVER!!!! As was discovered withing 24 hours of the release date by some hackers on the gamefaqs boards, THE ARMY TRAINING VERSION of Full Spectrum Warrior is INCLUDED in the retail release. By entering a cheat code, you can play the very same version the troops play on the base. The version I have been eagerly awaiting for 1 year. And let me tell you, this version ROCKS.

If you wanna see how it works, again, please go watch the demo video. Not only is cover helpful but not sanctuary, but the levels havor more streets and allys than you can think of. Plus, Enemies are randomly placed and more aggressive. This version is HARD! This downside is that the army version isnt nearly as polished. The environments aren't as pretty (although I could swear the player models are more detailed), you'll occasionally find a glitch, and you only get two levels to play in (3 mission for each). This is alliviated someone by all the options the army mode has like how large the enemy force, how many civilians, wind direction, what equipment ur soldiers take, and victory conditions to name a few. Hey, the army goes for practicality.

Between the AWESOME (but small) Army mode and the fun (if flawed) retail campaign, this is a top rate game. Here's to hopeping for an AMAZING franchise:

*-8-*

(There is also LIVE functionality, but I don't have live so can't tell you about it from experience, please see another review if interested in that)

GRAPHICS: GREAT! Terrific amimations, great looking environments, effective lighting and shadows, and cool smoke effects and physics.

*-9-*

SOUND: GREAT! Excellent sound effects presented in glorious 5.1! This game features a LOT of voice acting for all the soldiers in your squad, giving them each a personality and flavor, and it's overall quite good. The music has great production value and is interesting and unique. I'm playing the game for a second time now trying to beat it on the "authentic" difficulty setting and have found the game more intense and engageing without the music though, but if you want tunes, these are topnotch.

*-9-*

OVERALL: The game is still great but I can't help but feel dissapointed from my expectations.The inclusion of the Army version satifies many of the hardcore guys on the boards (my self included) but we all wanted the main game to play and feel like the army version does. But we'll enjoy this high quality release anyway and hope Pandemic hears that they underestimated there audience and really delivers the goods in a following release.

*-8-*

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/04