Full Spectrum Warrior

"A very unique game, worth of at least a rent."

First and foremost, this is not a shooter (though at first I was disappointed, it turned out not to be such a bad thing). It is a unique simulation in which you control two squads of soldiers and move through a fictional city taking out hostiles (I'm grossly oversimplifying). Basically, you command your squad using a cursor and always try to hide behind cover, while you are behind cover, you will see a silver shield over your head (or over the heads of anyone else who is behind cover) meaning you are invincible and cannot be killed (unless it's by an explosion, which aren't too common), if an enemy flanks you, the shield icon disappears. Usually enemies will hide behind cover as well, meaning you will have to find a way around them, usually by using suppression fire to make them keep their heads down so you can move to a better location, using your other team(s) (in some missions you get a third team), or by using a grenade (a frag, which obviously will kill them, or a smoke, to go from cover to cover). In order to attack enemies, you get this nice large circle that your in which your squad will shoot at any enemies in them (fire sectors, as they call them), unlike most other games, your squad doesn't have deadly accuracy so they can shoot through a little gap in a box to hit the enemies, which is more realistic.

Graphics: 10

Wow, these are amazing, not only are the soldiers and the environment highly detailed, the animations are one of the most fluid, realistic, and cool-looking in any game.

Sound: 9

Nothing wrong here, but nothing monumental, my only complaint is that the weapons sound not too convincing. Note that Bravo team leader sounds like Yogi the Bear.

Controls: 7

Here's where the game falters a bit. The controls are pretty smooth and commands are easy to order, however, if you accidentally run into an open area you thought was clear, you're screwed, it takes about a second to issue the order to run back which usually gets one of your guys incapacitated. My biggest problem is that it's extremely annoying to issue individual orders to your soldiers, this is especially a problem when helping downed team mates as they usually fall back a few feet which takes them out of cover, the problem is that although you can issue individual fire sectors to each of your soldiers, they have to move together as a squad, this means that when you tell one man to help the downed soldier, the other guys get up and move to his position as well, so they cease providing cover fire, now if you tell them to give cover fire, all of them (including the guy tending to your man) start shooting, this means that after you move, you must immediately give individual fire sectors to both your men, which you probably can't do in time so they all get killed. Generally when this happens, you try to get your other squad to your position to give cover fire.

Gameplay: 9

I pretty much summed up the game play in my opening but whatever. The game play is pretty realistic, although sometimes it may just seem ridiculous how formulaic this game is. Usually around corners and walls there are certain "position boxes" your soldiers can stand in, meaning it's not as flexible, also, sometimes it might seem absurd how your team can't hit someone using a car as cover when their entire upper body region is exposed, and in some cases, it might look like they're standing by a wall but they're protected behind cover. Other than that, the game play is fun as you rush from cover to cover (which is pretty linear, though it's not that bad), taking out enemies (or rather letting the AI do it for you). There's also the US Army training version built into the game (which I haven't tried) that's completely customizable

Replay Value: ??

Fun fact: I only rented the game and wasn't able to finish it, so I can't comment on this.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/20/04