Full Spectrum Warrior
KungFuSquirrel
Basher of Muttons Join Date: 2002-01-26 Member: 103Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Basher of Muttons Join Date: 2002-01-26 Member: 103Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Any good?</div> Just wondering how many people have played this game and, of those people, how many liked it.
I had some considerably misconceptions going into it, which I now see are false. I originally had thought it was more an FPS than what it is. Would Freedom Fighters be an adequate comparison, just without the third person lead character? Or is that even too far off?
Might snag it after the price drops... whenever that might happen.
I had some considerably misconceptions going into it, which I now see are false. I originally had thought it was more an FPS than what it is. Would Freedom Fighters be an adequate comparison, just without the third person lead character? Or is that even too far off?
Might snag it after the price drops... whenever that might happen.
Comments
Personally, I'm going for it the moment it's out on PC. That and when I get something better than my GeForce2. <grumble>
Official Review
By: Fungus
Graphics 9
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 6
Online: 7
Overall: 8
Average Score: 7.6
Originally developed as a training tool for the US Army, this squad based, real time strategy shooter is striving to give gamers a taste of what it would be like on the front lines of a modern military conflict from the comfort of their living room. When Full Spectrum Warrior was first brought to my attention, I was intrigued to say the least. The prospect of a modern day combat simulator, sanctioned by the Army, seemed like the answer to all my video gaming dreams. In their quest for military realism, it is my opinion that they overlooked many gameplay possibilites needed to make the experience equally as engaging.
The game starts with a MOUT (Military Operations on Urban Terrain) training session that walks you through the basic controls of your squad, and teaches you some basic tactical procedures. You learn about the “fog of war,” you learn to use your GPS and call for air support or recon. The controls are at first very confusing, and it seems like you don’t have enough fingers to play the game properly. But after the hour or so it takes to complete the training, you’ve mastered the control over your squad.
Upon completion of the training mode, you are dropped into the fictitious country of Zekistan, which is modeled to resemble a war torn, Middle Eastern nation. The visuals in FSW are impressively detailed. Everything from the ornate mosques, to the dilapidated buildings that were on the receiving end of a massive shelling, draw you deep into the environment to the point where you forget that you aren’t watching CNN’s coverage of the war in Iraq. Even the “shaky-cam” perspective that you have over your squad gives you the feeling that you are watching the latest footage from a camera crew embedded into a combat unit. The character models, and even more so the character attitudes, are the final layer of realism that make this game what it is. Each member of the squad has a distinct attitude and appearance, which is backed by detailed biographies, which allows the player to relate to the soldiers on a more personal level. The voice acting is some of the best I’ve heard in a game, and truly adds to the identity of each squad member. After the first few missions you start to attach human emotion to these digital beings to the point where you feel sadness when your Grenadier takes a bullet, even though he may be a smart ****.
With the painstaking attention to detail in regards to proper military procedure and to the environments where these operations occur the core of the gameplay is severely lacking by comparison. By the time you get a few missions into the game you are a flanking pro. You’ve got every cover option down, whether it be suppression fire or a smoke grenade. You are guiding your squads through the streets with ease as you prepare for the intensity to increase, and that is the problem, it never does. The physical amount of opposition is somewhat laughable. For a team of 8 soldiers to encounter an average of two to three enemies at a time is hardly a challenge, not to mention the AI is seems to be much heavier on the “A” than it is on the “I.” There is never any variation on the placement or tactics of the hostile forces. Therefore the challenge comes from being in an unfamiliar location or the misplacement of your movement cursor. Once you know the positions of your enemies, the challenge is gone. This is not to say that the gameplay is dull by any means. When you are in the heat of a firefight, pinned down behind a couch that is quickly being blown to pieces, you hear the bullets whizzing by your team. You realize that you are soon to be a casualty unless you move your other squad around to lay down some supression fire so you can move to better cover. If you are a bit too slow making a decision for your team to act on, someone will taste some lead. Hesitation kills.
You need to be have a plan and execute it flawlessly. If one of your squad members should fall, your objective immediately changes to covering the area and rescuing the injured soldier and get him back to the medic, which is generally at point where your mission started. Sometimes it is not worth the time to retreat to the medic to have your teammate patched up. If you do decide to go back, you can proceed without caution, there will be no enemies trying to stop you.
After trudging through the streets, dodging bullets, and taking out a couple of “Zekes,” your objective is in sight. You check your corners, verify that all is clear and begin your advance. All of a sudden the game goes into letterbox mode and you are now watching a movie. These cut-scenes are an all too familiar occurrence in FSW. Every time something exciting is about to happen, you lose control of your squad, and have to sit back and watch. With the cut-scenes using actual in game graphics, you are left asking, “Why am I not playing here?” It makes you feel like you are doing all of the busy work with no real pay off.
FSW’s gameplay has a very definite path to it, and doesn’t allow you to deviate from it. There should be more decision making involved, and more area to explore. You should be able to cut through a house to take up position behind an enemy. You should have objectives that force you to clear out a multi-leveled building. The goal of the game is to put you in full control of a combat squad in realistic military missions, yet you don’t have full control, and the missions don’t seem that realistic.
The online cooperative mode doesn’t differ at all from the single player campaign, other than the fact that you only control one fire team, while your friend controls the other. I stress the word friend because this is the type of game that you can’t just jump into a random room with someone you don’t know. Communication is key when playing online. The more effective you can coordinate with your teammate the more successful you will be. When planning an attack you must use specific instructions, because your teammate can’t see your movement cursor. The compass is a great asset for proper planning because it gives a reference point that is consistent for both teams.
Overall I think that FSW is a good game, however I would not recommend it to all gamers. There is way more strategy than shooting, which is the intent, however I think that it is still a bit too ambiguous. Strategy fans will be wanting more strategy, and shooter fans will want more shooting. It is a great premise for a game, both in content and control, but I feel that it was not pushed to its full potential.
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I have it, and cant get enough.
I'm not the only poor wretch! we are partners in misery! It's a great card it just doesn't hold up to these new games. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
FSW looks really nice though. I've seen a few videos of gameplay and it seems like a better ghost recon. Ghost recon 2 looks pretty fun too for that matter. I'll wait till some demos come out.
The game is fairly easy on normal dificulty (Sergaent, sergaent major would probably be the better choice - although you might want to play one level on normal first, because on hard soldiers can die within 15 seconds of being shot). I'd say one of the better aspects of the Xbox version is that you can open up 'Authentic mode' with more realistic damage, and soldiers that have better aim (but they die easier).
The game starts, easily enough, with you putting in your name/profile; you then procede to a MOUT course, where you can...err, have to learn how to control your fireteams (these levels are mandatory, unless you jump onto X-box live with co-op (no deathmatch) - but I don't recommend that, as you'll have no idea what you're doing).
You'll then procede through the 11 levels that fill the game, which are all fairly routine. There is very little that changes with how you operate your squad (slight change up when you have a third [Charlie] fireteam, but that's about as much change as you get. <a href='http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2004-06-07' target='_blank'>Penny-Arcade explains it well...</a>
The game is pretty repetitive, but it does have a decent amount of replay value (especially on Xbox Live, where each person controls one fireteam - it might work with systemlink too, but unfortunately, I don't have the resources for that <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> ).
The soldiers act pretty good, they cover their fire sectors, they only shoot at the other squad if you order supressing fire on one another, and they usually follow orders well. I say "usually" because there are numerous times when you'll order point fire and then they'll stand-crouch-stand-crouch-etc. for 30 seconds before getting out of cover and shooting the man you're aiming for.
Infact, it's <i>really</i> annoying, when they're not underfire, and a 'zeke' is running across the street, ripe for the shooting and they do the 'crouch-n-stand' dance.
Slightly contrary to Marik's post, the 4 squad members do have slightly different roles:
The TL (Team Leader)issues commands to your squad with hand signals and vocal commands - they're the two soldiers you'll hear the most (especially Bravo's leader). They also command the GPS, with a slight touch of the black button you can open the GPS, which shows you your objective clearly on a map - along with allowing you to do recon flights, if available [but in reality, I flew about 1 of these, I found them pretty useless]. The TL also takes up the initial posistion at corners to look around the corner.
The AR (Automatic Rifleman) is your main source of suppresive fire with his M249, and in fact, if you need to cover two sectors (your rear and around a corner, perhaps), the M249 has the suppressive and point fire capabilities of the 3 other squad members (but suppressive fire has a definite lack of aim, but that's not the point). That is, your AR can cover one area, while your 3 other man cover another. I'm pretty sure he takes over for your TL if the TL is hit.
The G (Grenadier) is basically in command of your M203 grenade launcher [read: RPG - apparently gravity has no effect on these things, you can launch them over some buildings and you'll never see/hear it again). Consequently, the M203 is the only weapon you have direct fire controle with (hold x, press down on the d-pad, and there you go - each squad gets 3 M203 grenades per level).
The R (Rifleman) is the stock man, he's auxilary. He's an extra gun, pretty much. He'll refill your supplies at CASEVACs (unless he's injured), and doesn't really do much else that I could tell.
Another cool facet of the game is your soldier's chatter (aside from the 'move out' commands given by squad leaders). Although, there didn't seem to be an overly large number of them. Usually you're too busy moving around to hear an entire soldier's quip, but some of them are pretty good...most of them also have swearing in them, so I can't really quote many here. Their tone changes when they're under fire too, so they don't talk about the heat of the desert, or food when they're being shot at.
Cover degradation is another cool feature of the game, the corners of buildings can get slowly chipped away (but they still provide full cover, and it's hard for soldiers to ever get shot, unless they're flanked or shooting back). This happens mostly with cars and trucks in the street, or dumpsters, or even sofas (although, I don't think a sofa would really stop any AK bullets).
The game incorporates the Havok physics engine, although it doesn't see much use - and bodies seem to fly around a bit much when shot. One of the cooler moments I saw was when I accidently left my squad out to far from a corner, an RPG hit my squad leader who proceded to fly down the street, along with two of the men who were behind him (which is mission over).
Speaking of mission over, it works like this: Your soldier will get shot, you have to help him before an icon in his D-pad direction (lower left hand corner, you've seen it in screen shots) does...something, I can't remember, I think it's a skull and crossbones that slowly becomes blank. Either way, you have to help him before his time is up (the afforementioned 15 seconds in Sergaent Major and Authentic). This is one of the only major sources of variety in the game, because it is actually presents a cool feeling in the game of "We have to take out the guy who shot him and get him off the street, quick." Which can be tense if there's a bunch of RPGs and .50 cals covering him. That said, to actually lose: 2 of your squad members need to be injured - shot; or one dies (you let him sit in the road too long).
Once injured you carry them to a CASEVAC, which is probably one of the more annoying parts in the game, since if you get shot far away from one, it's generally a pain to move back through the level to get a guy healed. You also refill your ammo at CASEVACs.
A scene would generally play out like this: start in the middle of a street, move alpha to a corner, with a 'zeke' (Zekistani terrorist person) down the alley. You check the GPS, and see there's a flanking posistion agains the Zeke (and there usually are).
You actually have two major options: move Bravo across the alley with supressing fire, or move Bravo across the alley with a smoke grenade [there's also: M203 him out of there, but hey, there's only 6 total per level].
You can procede with suppresing fire, which will make your squad unload continuously on a fire sector (cone of fire extending out from your squad), which will make the 'zeke' duck down, allowing you to move Bravo across the alley and around the corner to shoot him from a flanking posistion.
Most of the game's value comes in making tactical decisions, opposed to actually choosing a different path through the level (those are kindof common, and they're nice too).
The game is kindof predictable, but that's not really the point, it's all about the tactical decisions and keeping your squad alive...and then there's the additional coolness of Xbox Live co-op, where you don't know where the other team is, and it adds some cool tension.
I haven't touched on the replay system, which is nice, but not extremely useful. Generally, you just use it when you die to get back to a set posistion before you screwed anything up. The fastforward is extremely slow (in comparison that it's only around 2x speed of the original, and during a 10 minute replay, that's a bit of waiting). There's also the 'swapping replays' on Xbox live, which has some cool stuff [get in a bad spot and see if your friend can get out]...but I don't see too much thrill in it.
Overall, it's a very nice game, but I think I'm going to wait until it goes down in price/becomes a hit before I buy it.
[also of note: the original US Army version is hidden on the disc. If you have a modded Xbox or do a bit of searching for the code (if I remember, it's like 'ha2p1py9tur5tle' or something, you can unlock it - it is very user unfriendly though, you can get a basic gist if you've played through the normal game]
So...it's a slightly biased opinion based on how it played for me...but hopefully it can impact your decision without setting some generic numbered score to the game <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
The Co-op missions are the same as single player, only one person commands alpha, and the other commands bravo. It's supposed to be very nice because the only clue to what the other fire team is doing is through voice comm (or through visual contact). So, if you get a good friend, or someone that knows what they're doing in the least, it should be pretty good.
Not to mention, on sergeant dificulty, one fireteam can basically handle whatever they need too (if you need a flanking posistion you can use bounding (a type of movement, where the team can cover a fire sector while they move in 2s), or smoke grenades to flank...although it's much easier with 2 teams).
The host machine gets control of Charlie team (if there is one).
There are some people who don't go through the MOUT tutorial and have no idea what they're doing though, apparently, that'd be the major hamper.
I'd think it would add a significant replay value - as does any human interaction with co-op or deathmatch...but I don't have Live.
I'm not the only poor wretch! we are partners in misery! It's a great card it just doesn't hold up to these new games. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes! Let's pool our money and create a machine that will pull time into the future!
A <b>time machine</b>...
Then, we can get the Radeon 40,000 and then come back, and then play games like Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow on full settings!
h4x tbh l0l