Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

The Ghost Recon team must enter Mexico City and prevent a coup d'état led by rebel Mexican forces.

PlayStation Portable

PlayStation 2

Xbox 360

Xbox

Overview

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is the third installment of the Ghost Recon series. Various versions of this tactical shooter were released on Xbox 360, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and PC.

Plot

Mexico D.F. (Districto Federal). The Ghosts have been ordered to participate in a joint operation designed to capture Mexican military officials engaged in illegal technology sales to Columbia's FARC rebels.

The U.S. President has joined the Canadian Prime Minister and the Mexican President in the metropolis to sign the NAJSA (North American Joint Security Agreement), a policy to control illegal immigration and the movement of drugs and terrorists in the hemisphere. During the public signing of the document, the three leaders are attacked by Mexican soldiers. The Ghosts are ordered to meet up with Secret Service agents protecting the U.S. President and ensure his safety until he is extracted. While the U.S. President is on route to the Airport, the Ghosts secure the Mexican president. Thanks to the Ghosts actions, the Mexican president will "Green light" U.S. intervention on Mexican soil in order to bring back Democracy. Unfortunately, the U.S. President never reached the Airport and is now in enemy hands…

Gameplay

Squad-based combat plays a significant role in GRAW. The player controls the Ghost leader, who's responsible for directing the actions of the squad, such as whether to move out or take cover, though the player still does the majority of the fighting. While more forgiving than past Ghost Recon games, with the ability to take more than one shot before dying, the player is unable to recover health during an active mission.

Campaign Missions

Contact!
Coup D'etat
VIP 2 is Down
Strong Point
Mayday! Mayday!
Ready for Bear
Quarterback
Guardrail IX
Bulldog
Fierce Resistance
NORAD on the Line

Releases

Three versions of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter were released.

Xbox 360

Developed by UbiSoft Paris for the Xbox 360, this version of the game is played from a behind the shoulder third-person perspective similar to Gears of War, but the player still has an option to switch to a first-person perspective. The third-person perspective allowed for a unique cover mechanic, where players are able to hide behind cover and see around or over walls.

PC

The PC version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter was developed by GRIN, a Swedish game developer. This version is more attuned to the original Ghost Recon game by forcing a first-person perspective. The seemingly harder difficulty of this version was an effort to get fans of the original Ghost Recon games back into the series. The PC version also added more options for the player to issue commands to their squadmates by allowing the player to issue individual commands for each friendly AI.

PlayStation 2 & Xbox

The PlayStation 2 and Xbox version was developed by UbiSoft Shanghai. Unlike past Ghost Recon games on these consoles, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is played from a strictly first-person perspective. Also unlike the Xbox 360 and PC counterparts, the PS2 and Xbox version only featured one friendly AI as opposed to three.

Reception

When the Xbox 360 version of the game was released it reserved very high reviews. The game was praised for it's smart A.I., immersive atmosphere, wide variety of weapons and believable storyline. The Xbox 360 version was also noted for it's very realistic graphics. GameTrailers gave it 9.9 out of 10, which is the highest review score GT has ever given out. It has a 91% average from reviews while the versions for the Xbox has a 66% average and the PS2 has 60%. The versions for the PS2 and Xbox was criticized for being watered-down. The graphics and lack of content was also a complaint.

On October 5th, 2006, it won a BAFTA award for Game of The Year.

System Requirements

As written on the back cover of the box

Minimum System Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 2000/XP
Processor: Pentium 4 2Ghz (2.8 recommended)
Memory: 1GB recommended
3D Card: DirectX 9.0c compliant Video Card, 128MB Shader 2.0 (256MB Shader 2.0 recommended)
Direct X: DirectX 9.0c
DVD ROM DRIVE: 4x
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
Hard Disk: 5GB

Xbox 360 Game Installation

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter requires 5.2GB of space to install on an Xbox 360 HDD.

DLC

The only DLC for GRAW is the Chapter 2 expansion. This contains:

A new 4 mission co-op campaign set in Nicaragua and taking place after the main game's co-op campaign
12 new multiplayer maps (including the 4 from the co-op missions)
A new game mode called Team Battle
New weapons
New camouflage patterns