Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 Review - Tactical shooting at its finest.

By Sam Coles:

It’s hard to believe that back in the day we got sequels fairly quickly to critically acclaimed franchises, such as Rainbow Six Vegas 2 which the sequel came out a year later. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was no different as the second game came out in 2007 one year after the original game, and the quality is leaps in bounds compared to the first from the gameplay, visuals and content.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 takes place directly after the original where Captain Mitchel saved the Vice President of the US, it’s not long until he is redeployed in Mexico as Mexican rebels are trying to smuggle nukes across US border. What transpires is a nuclear catastrophe that almost wipes out all of El Paso Texas and Mitchel and his Ghost Team have to go in and take down the rebel leader while keeping a quiet presence. Again the story is not the best because it’s a Tom Clancy game where all the characters are militaristic clichés such as the angry general shouting at you down a radio.

The gameplay is where they tend to focus on in Tom Clancy games as the story is generally a side line, well it use to be the side line. Once again you take control of Captain Mitchel and his Ghost Team where you can give them basic orders such as move forward, regroup, attack, go quiet or you can tell them to shoot certain enemies or blow up vehicles. You’ll need your team especially on elevated risk difficulty which is the setting I would highly recommend you play on to get the full experience as it encourages you to use all your squad commands.

You don’t only get command of a squad of soldiers, but you also have access to airstrikes, APCs, tanks and helicopters to even the playing field and these can really help you get out of stick situations especially in the latter half of the game where it throws everything it’s got at you.

As said early I recommend that you play the game on the hardest difficulty that is because it really feels as if this game was catered for this difficulty, as it encourages you to utilise all the assets you have in your command rather than playing it as a generic third person shooter.

The visuals are fantastic for a 10 year old game with great effects from incoming fire from enemies, to the explosions which shake the screen every time one happens. Gun models look great however the animations for reloading are rather anaemic as you don’t see the magazine being removed, you just see Mitchel fiddle with his gun for a bit and presto the gun is reloaded. I know what you’re going to say “it was 2007 what do you expect”. Which I would then retort with Rainbow Six Vegas came out around the same time with decent reload animations where you actually see them take the magazine out of the gun.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 is a fantastic sequel and considering it came out one year later after the original game it managed to improve everything from the original. This game is insanely cheap these days as you can find it for around 50p to about £1 so it’s not going to dent your wallet that much.