Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (PC)

I was really excited about getting my hands on GRAW 2 for the PC, since I’ve grown weary of shooters that are too easy and require no tact. GRAW 1 was pleasantly challenging at times, and really tough at others (which wasn’t such a bad thing, or so I thought), but it became a little boring after I got half way through the game; needless to say, I expected more from GRAW 2. After I played a preview build of the game, I was pretty disappointed with the performance issues and the erratic AI – the good news is that the performance issues have been solved; the bad news is that although it isn’t as bad as the preview build, the AI still sucks.

In a tactical shooter such as GRAW 2, timing and execution are the most crucial factors of success, in which case you need your teammates to be quick, lethal (at least as lethal as the enemy) and precise. Instead, what I got was a bunch of lazy morons who’d take ages to traverse even a straight road with no enemies, leaving me alone in the heat of battle tones of times – this affected my experience pretty badly, since it forced me to wait for my dumbf**k AI controlled teammates, slowing down the pace of the game like hell and making me lose the feel of recon warfare.

Another disappointment was that the control system wasn’t as robust as the Xbox 360 version of the game. Now I haven’t played too much of the 360 version, but the short while I spent with the game really kept me craving for more. The control system there was very well designed, responsive and most importantly easy to pickup (with a little practice). In the PC version however, the squad commands and the CrossCom felt pretty awkward and left a lot to be desired. In its console counterpart the CrossCom (the system that connects the Ghosts) was an integral part of the gameplay, while on the PC it just felt like another feature that was shoved into the game at the last minute, since it lacked the functionality and polish of the 360 version.