Full Spectrum Warrior

The realities of urban warfare are up-close and personal in what is arguably the best military strategy game to date.

For a moment, forget about the reasons why the United States sent its troops into a foreign country. When you?re knee deep in the engrossing gameplay of Full Spectrum Warrior, your job as a solider is not to ponder why you?re in an unfamiliar place. As you constantly exchange gunfire with neighborhood militia while leading a squad of infantrymen through mean mazelike streets, your tasks are to keep your men alive and complete objectives using military precision and decisiveness.

The Realities of Combat
Although you fire off plenty of bullets, Full Spectrum Warrior is not a shooter. Instead of giving you control of an individual, FSW puts you in command of an entire squad consisting of two four-man teams. As the squad leader, your strategy for success is taken right out of the pages of the MOUT (Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain) book?use one team to suppress enemy fire while the other flanks and eliminates the threat. It?s an updated cover-and-fire maneuver that every soldier learns. Putting this strategy into action, however, is no simple feat. You need to continuously check all angles, safety your guns with civilians around, consider that most cover can be destroyed by flying bullets in seconds, and be wary of snipers lurking everywhere?and you have to do all of this while under live fire. You?ll learn all this the hard way once one of your comrades is hit because you made the wrong call.

Are You Smart or Not?
Thankfully, controlling your men in the game doesn?t come with the same high level of stress as the real-life situation. Simple button presses enable your group to move from cover to cover without missing a step. You can direct your teams to point their weapons anywhere you want, and switching between groups, even during a heavy gun battle, requires little effort.

Early on, you might experience a FPS reflex?wanting to personally pull the trigger on an enemy because your troops just can?t hit him?but FSW?s innovative gameplay isn?t about marksmanship. Not everyone in uniform is as accurate with a rifle in real life as you are in a video game, so the core of the game reflects an authentic firefight, where outthinking an enemy is better than outgunning an enemy. In this case, skillfully maneuvering your squad to the right places wins the war.

The Spoils of War
Visual realism plays an important role in Full Spectrum Warrior, and the densely populated neighborhoods that make up the game?s urban shantytown setting look and feel genuine. Characters, too, bear an uncanny resemblance to actual people with distinct facial expressions and smoothly animated movements. The crude, bravado remarks that come from your men?s mouths only reinforce the mature theme of this game and drive the point home: Real war is ugly.

Without a doubt, this game shows that originality in gaming is very much alive and kicking, even if it is wrapped inside a sensitive subject. If you want a true military experience without going through boot camp, Full Spectrum Warrior is it.

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