full spectrum warrior

Earlier this year I had some pretty heavy comments for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, where I started to question my interest in realistic, war-based games. I think everyone should, to be honest, because there comes a time where you have to draw the line between entertainment and out-and-out morbid fascination, or at least realize there's a difference. War themed shooters are becoming increasingly realistic, and although realism is something these games should strive for, I'm not sure gamers should be accepting it so unconditionally.

When I initially heard about Full Spectrum Warrior, it was advertised as an officially sanctioned product from the U.S. Army and so I mentally filed it alongside the existing cleverly designed training simulator of America's Army. Having the support of the organization you're trying to emulate lends a truckload of credibility, but the screens made it look too close to reality. Indeed, you could say that about any war-based game, but with the war ongoing in Iraq my conscience couldn't take the perception of guilt for participating in a pantomime of current events. Nevertheless, reviews stating the unconventional approach to playing the game eventually won my interest, and I was curious just to see what Full Spectrum Warrior was all about.

Full Spectrum Warrior has an incredibly realistic feel despite its spartan feature set. You're in charge of two fire teams of four men, each equipped with a different weapon: an automatic rifle, M203 grenade rifle, and a standard assault rifle. The reviews were careful to make the distinction for this game, as it is not a first person shooter like Rainbow Six. Rather, it's more of a zoomed-in real time strategy game, where you issue commands that are executed in real-time. Although the game makes a good effort in integrating real-world military tactics and cover, the fact that you or the enemy are invincible behind the corner of a stone building or metal dumpster ruins the effect. It's all about suppressing and flanking the enemy - a very calculated approach to eliminating the few adversaries you are faced with.

And it's these adversaries that threw me off at first. The game may tell you you're in fictional Zekistan, fighting off rebel forces with the power of the U.S. Army, but you might as well be in Somalia or Iraq - the imagery is hauntingly familiar. I like the game, it's a refreshingly original approach and teaches you more about tactics than most military shooters that put a gun in your hand and smack you in the ass. I just find the content a little too timely, and though the game is infinitely more polished than KUMA/War, the effect is exactly the same.

The first time I played Rainbow Six, I didn't know what to expect. After laughing off the first few times I died, an overwhelming feeling of dread came over me. My squad is dying. Am I a terrible leader? I even began to fear the death of my avatar, and would occasionally just sit in corners mentally pissing myself while terrorists wandered by. This same feeling came back when I played the first three chapters of Full Spectrum Warrior before getting used to the game's mechanics, and later, its shortcomings.

Full Spectrum Warrior feels like a personal game. A movie-like opening cutscene sets up the backgrounds of the men in youir fireteams, and you learn to care for their well being through the natural-sounding dialogue, radio chatter and their reactions to combat. After a while it becomes too real, too familiar. You're in the heat of battle with them without even realizing it.

The overly simple interface takes a while to get used to, considering the game has no real standard to make a comparison with. The tutorials are excellent, but don't leave much to be discovered in the main game. In fact, the game overall is pretty basic in the sense that your sole purpose is to lead two squads through eleven missions and leave no man behind. You're in charge of moving them around, making sure they're under cover, and selecting targets to fire at or suppress as necessary. A seemingly simple task, but it becomes complicated once you're under fire for the first time.

The action primarily consists of leapfrogging your squads one over the other. One squad suppresses, the other moves. It's real-world tactics, but can be repetitive and boring when applied to a game. It should not be surprising, then, that the "game" behind Full Spectrum Warrior is used to train U.S. Army soldiers in urban assault tactics. These fire-and-suppress tactics are indeed the "correct" way to make your way through the game, but it seemed that a well placed frag grenade or M203 grenade launcher did just as well. Additionally, a sniper team is added in the last three levels, but the level design goes out of its way to accommodate these guys, and feels gimmicky instead of a natural extension of your existing fire teams. Knowing that this kind of assistance is available is also frustrating, because for the entire game up to that point you could have easily used this team.

Troop movement is smooth and very natural looking; all angles are covered while they are in motion. Most times the squad will think for themselves and open fire on an obvious target, take cover if it is available, or go prone. Shield icons show when your soldiers are under cover, and depending on what you're using, it will deteriorate under fire, so it's always best to think one move ahead for each squad. The camera is often a hinderance when trying to direct your teams to a very specific piece of cover. You have a fair amount of freedom, but will most likely end up approaching your cover in stages if it's far away. This is something you should be doing anyway, but when you quickly learn that opposition is few and far between it can be a hindrance.

The graphics in this game are extremely well done, as each new location is believably rendered and effectively emanates the suffocating desert heat. However, as I made my way through the game's missions I got the feeling that the game world was "flat"; that is, there are no stairs or anything that gives your team the ability to take the higher ground. I always found stairs challenging to navigate in Rainbow Six, as there isn't that much room to maneuver, and it's hard to predict what's above or below you. Furthermore, having one team above the other offers a serious tactical advantage, especially when navigating each mission location's many streets and alleyways. There are also invisible walls, giving obvious direction to the "right" path through each level. As a result, flanking maneuvers aren't as open to interpretation as you might think.

The only item on your HUD that you'll be monitoring is each team's ammo, that's based on a percentage of capacity. You can bring up a GPS locator to give you a map of your location and possible enemy positions, but for that to be up-to-date you'll have to call up your eye in the sky: a helicopter that flies overhead telling you where enemy soldiers are. There's no health bars for your team, because sometimes one hit will incapacitate them, making it important for your teams to be under cover at all times. Most often if a soldier is hit he'll only be wounded, but they don't act any differently. Their aim never waivers, and they don't limp when moving around. When a soldier is incapacitated, you must carry him back to a CASEVAC station to be fixed up, which slows the movement of your squad. What I find unbelievable is that only after a few short moments of medical attention the incapacitated soldier is up on his feet. It makes no sense, and essentially undermines the entire feel of the game. Instead, the developers were all too keen to end the mission as soon as two men are incapacitated. When Save points and re-loading are at your disposal, this hardly seems like a realistic trade-off.

Probably the most agonizing let down of the entire game was the enemy AI. They were really, really stupid, and offered nothing more than a static target. Indeed, they would shoot at you if they saw you, but they don't patrol, and they will almost never see you if you outflank them. Not exactly real world behavior, and it starts to feel more like a shooting gallery. They occasionally walked into the path of fire of my positioned team, not even looking where they were going. Furthermore, while my teams are en route, they are slow to react. This sounds weird, but there were many times where my team should have been cut down because I wasn't covering properly; instead, I simply used the lacking AI to my advantage.

Machine gun nests and entrenched rebels with rocket launchers are present in almost all of the missions. These enemies possessed a real tactical advantage, and should have decimated my entire squad under normal circumstances. Instead, as long as I was able to suppress and get both teams by their position, I had no worries about looking over my shoulder for him to reposition himself in another spot on the rooftop for a better angle. As far as my team was concerned, they were taken care of.

In the final mission objective, you're asked to visually confirm the dictator's location and order an airstrike on that position. You have to go through everything you've learned up to that point, checking corners and eliminating all resistance. In the endgame sequence you just see his SUV - recognizable from an earlier part of the game - but how can you be sure he's really in there? Are his minions stupid enough to use the same car? Inconsiderate of these facts, the game finally ends when you order in the calvary to take out the vehicle. Considering the feel of the game up to this final encounter it felt cumbersome, and almost comical - you simply watch as three gunships approach the SUV's location and blow it up.

Full Spectrum Warrior may not be game of the year material, but it definitely deserves recognition for the realistic execution of combat maneuvers, as well as a very streamlined and fluid design. This game isn't for everyone, but for fans of military-themed games Full Spectrum Warrior is not one you want to miss, if only to say that you've played it. Personally, I'd like to see more of these hybrid, heat-of-battle military strategy games, perhaps to carry on the mantle of Ghost Recon. It's a much more effective learning tool than giving the player free reign with an entire arsenal in their back pocket.

Deconstructing the Political Message

I thought I would include a brief review of the game's political undertones, because as you get to the later missions it becomes tougher to swallow the "fictional" setting. As I said, the game's ultimate objective is the takedown of an extremist dictator who is oppressing the people of Zekistan. During the game's missions you watch as the leader of this guerilla force guns down his lieutenant in cold blood, and you witness a squad member vomit at the sight of one of the city's mass graves. Clearly this man is evil, and we will stop at nothing to remove him from power. Right?

Right?

This is where I had a real problem with the game, because as the story closed in an unfortunate climax that involved blowing up the despot's car during an escape attempt, I felt like I was being persuaded to the developer's point of view. The evil man was killed, and the good guys won. Though this act is meant to imply closure, the game is sure to let you know in a final cinematic that the war to bring peace to Zekistan isn't over, and there will more than likely be a sequel to Full Spectrum Warrior. I just couldn't help feeling that they were making excuses for the U.S. occupation of Iraq - a topic that I would never attempt to tackle on this website - yet somehow found its way into one of my games and as a result I had to bring it up.

I don't expect a sanitized version of war, because that's not what the issue at hand is. What I take exception to is the obvious application of the old adage "History is always written by the winners." Maybe wanting a more objective viewpoint is a lot to ask from the U.S. Army, because as the popularity of military-themed games increases, there is no doubt they will continue this approach of stating a political agenda. I just hope that gamers are able to see through this thinly veiled message, and use this game as an example to judge future ones of this nature. Though realistically, I doubt this will change the mindset of those that are typically interested in these games in the first place; the message in them isn't one they'd disagree with.

such a cautious display