Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

Yesterday from my home, with my three month-old baby girl in my arms, I played through the cooperative build of Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. It was a first for me. To be honest, I’m still uncertain whether it was an exercise in skillful multitasking and athletic management, or just the most desperate example of game addiction and poor parenting ever.

It all started off well. With Genevieve asleep in her bassinette four feet from my side, I slipped on the Xbox Live headset and grabbed the controller, hoping and praying she wouldn’t wake up. I got in a few games, fully baby free. A host of guys were waiting to play, so I jumped in, heard the fuzzy, slightly delayed speech of several fellas, and we jumped right into a bunch of fights.

If you’re unfamiliar with GRAW 2’s co-op mode, it’s similar to the co-op modes in GRAW 1. GRAW 2’s co-op mode offers gamers distinct, objective-based missions against the game’s AI both offline and online. This year’s iteration brings six new co-op missions to the fray, which plays out through the Narcom (the screen in the upper right-hand corner) and fits into the single-player campaign narrative. The story is pretty basic and reads like a lot of Tom Clancy stories. Panamanian rebels, led by Gabriel Alvaro, an ex-military leader in the Panamanian Army, have begun disrupting official operations along the Panama Canal. Alvaro, who is supplying the Mexican rebels with short range missiles and looking to free the Panama Canal region from the political grip of the United States, is your primary target. US intelligence reports indicate Alvaro has planted insurgents in strategic points around the Canal, so you and your ghost team must infiltrate the area to stop the missiles from reaching Mexico, end Alvaro’s wily plans, and shutdown the Panama Canal altogether. Easy, right? It is for a ghost.

There are six co-op parts, starting with the Station and ending with the Hideout. The menu layout is simple enough: Pick Xbox Live, System Link or Local Play and then pick a mode. The basic Campaign mode follows the story, but there are other modes of play. Aside from Campaign, there is Co-op Elimination, Co-op Territory, and Co-op Objective. Co-op Elimination enables players to work together to eliminate enemies spread across the map. Co-op Territory gives players the chance to work together to prevent enemies from gaining control of various locations on the map. And Co-op Objective offers gamers the chance to recon various locations on the map without alerting the enemy.

Each time you pick a mode type, the game type offers a correlating set of game types. For instance, if you pick Campaign, you’ll play through co-op story. If you pick Co-op Elimination, which isn’t story based, three modes pop up, Firefight, Helicopter Hunt, and create custom type, which permits the ability to change customize re-spawns, enemy infantry numbers, enemy helicopter difficulty, and enemy infantry difficulty. On the other hand, if you pick Co-op Territory, you’ll only have two game options, Create Custom Type and defend, a game in which players must prevent enemies from capturing their base, and so on. Yesterday we played nearly all of the modes of play.

The co-op is substantial, if that hadn’t already been made clear. Ubisoft has created the most comprehensive clan support yet for the Xbox 360, enabling players to create, join, challenge, and compete against other clans. We didn’t play as a clan, but I’ll be writing a clan feature next week to give you a better sense of how it works. The seemingly obscure ability to heal another team mate comes to life in co-op and MP far better than it does in the single-player game, to be sure. While playing online, team mates appear with their name above their heads in aqua blue. If a team mate falls, the name color changes to orange-red, and lasts for about 15-20 seconds. During that time, if you stand over the team-mate press and hold Y you’ll heal him. If you just press Y, you’ll mistakenly take his gun! This feature encourages team work, plus there is an Achievement for obtaining a certain amount of heals while playing online.

GRAW 2 supports four-player-split-screen local play and 16-player System Link as well.

Just like the 16-player versus multiplayer games, GRAW 2’s co-op offers a far more compelling set of graphics, starting with the enhanced lighting effects. Players will experience several brand new maps in addition to a handful of re-lit and re-done maps from last year’s game. The texture maps pop with crisper textures, cleaner lines, and greater variety. The excellent lighting, introduced in GRAW 1, has returned in all of its HDR (high-dynamic range) loveliness. We experienced the sun setting in a few levels, providing a blinding effect that looked and felt realistic.

In some other levels the sun sat high in the mid-day summer sky, lighting everything and creating hot spots and sharp shadows under trees, buildings and bridges. The character models moved with workmanlike animations and were coupled with realistic sounds of heavy clinking metal and the rough friction created from heavy military clothing, and the lighting effects created nice shadows on the characters’ clothes, boots, helmets and HUDs. All of this online, mind you. Suffice to say, the online graphics were sharper and more attractive than they had been in the previous GRAW.

Getting into an actual co-op game was satisfying in its own right. After enjoying the two-player goodness of a certain crack-like game for the last two weeks, GRAW 2 was like a giant flood. GRAW 2 enables up to 16 players to jump on board and play in MP and co-op. Our game had at least 12 players, and in some games, 14. With this many guys in co-op, the kind of gameplay switched from personal, slow-paced, and tactical, to something more akin to managing a small platoon of hungry, skilled gamers champing at the bit for action. There was a little less tactical advantage to these games than a smaller group of players. People would just swarm onto the map and start shooting with little communication. It was a bit of a free-for-all. On the other hand, because of our healthy numbers, we were able to blast through some levels faster and with much greater force than with a smaller group of guys. We were all vying for kills, so we’d spread onto the field and with speed and numbers, and we just stomped all over the enemy AI.

About three games in, my co-op experience gained a new level of depth. My baby woke up and started crying. I had to quit out of a game, warm up a bottle of formula, and start feeding her. After about five minutes, the lobby filled up with guys again, and I was faced with a decision: Quit playing, or try playing while feeding Vivi. I was just about to quit when a Ubisoft PR player sent me an invitation to play. I bit. I crossed my legs, creating a pocket in which Vivi comfortably laid her body, with her head resting a little higher on my knee. I’d learned to play games while holding Vivi across my shoulder, but I’d never tried actually playing a game while feeding her. Instead of holding the bottle with my left hand, I put it in her mouth, and held it tightly there with the back of my left hand, which held the controller. My right hand was, of course, free, and it was just a balance game from there. I can’t say I played all that well from there on out, but the mission was successful on an entirely different level. I could actually play an online co-op game while feeding her. She didn’t seem to mind either. She dusted the bottle and never cried a single time. Once she finished, I put her over my shoulder to burp her and regained a better level of control.

Of course, with so many guys, not all of whom were listening, the instructions given by our North Carolina-based Red Storm host, some levels failed big time. For instance, when we tried the Co-op Objective, the game type in which, as a team, players must work in teams to grab five enemy zones without alerting the enemy. We tried this twice and failed miserably. The first time we failed because we weren’t familiar with the mode. A few guys just went in with loud rifles and tried to quiet the enemy with gunfire, but as soon as one set of enemies heard, another heard, and the chain reaction quickly ended the match. When the enemy hit the alarm button, it was all over. The second time we played, however, we all picked sniper rifles and made sure to pick the suppressed weapons, so little to no sound was made when we killed an enemy. But one dumb-ass wasn’t listening and he walked in and started shooting enemies with a grenade launcher. This proved to a little frustrating, but the situation was more funny than annoying. That second game ended in a matter of seconds. Such is the way of some Xbox Live games.

The Helicopter Hunt proved to be a far more fun experience. The best weapon for this is newly implemented Zeus rocket launcher, loaded with five pieces of ammo. The game works by sending out wave after wave of helicopters, which you must shoot down. The copters don’t hover in one spot, however, and their flight patterns are even a little wily; shooting them down takes a little practice. You’ll have to lead them a little, and watch their patterns. When the copters make a 180 turn, they hover a little providing just enough time to aim and shoot them down. If you happen to run out of rocket launcher ammo, unloading hundreds of rifle bullets will work too. Of course, the helicopters aren’t just flying around; they’re aiming to shoot you down too. The game goal is to knock out 15 or so copters in a given amount of time. This was good stuff.

GRAW 2 is a deep, satisfying single-player, co-op, and multiplayer experience. When the enemies felt too easy the host simply added more enemies or turned up their difficulty level. Plain and simple, this game is going to kick-ass, with or without a baby in your lap, though I recommend the former.