Laughing maniacally, Nathan Davis uses two to drop a tango.
In Full Spectrum Warrior, you control two teams of four soldiers - Alpha and Beta. Using these two battalions, you must carefully plan your path ahead using tactics not unlike that used in the Army. In fact, this game is based around a training simulation used by the US Army for the doctrine known as Modern Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT). And damn, it's exceptionally addictive. It's very realistic, so we're more inclined to call it a simulator - but a stupidly fun one at that.
It's based around team tactics. In training you discover you don't actually fire the weaponry yourself, but you are in full command of where the teams go, when to shoot, what stance to hold and so on. Sometimes even what to shoot, say, if you wish to peg a grenade at an enemy. Or to request some heavy, arse-pounding aerial support.
There's some character build up at the beginning of the game - with some army humour chucked in for good measure - showing who's who in the two teams you'll control throughout the game. But that's unfortunately about it - it would've been nice to see more character development and interaction between characters, but this is a moot point considering how much fun there is to be had.
If a team member is hurt due to your apparent incompetence, you can give medical assistance by picking the dogface up and hauling him to a medic van, if available. Once fixed, you can continue on your merry way with a fully functional division of dudes.
One of two minor annoyances we found was for multiplayer - co-op play. You simply must use Xbox Live. We would've liked to have seen a split screen version. The other niggling nuisance is the movement command controls - the pointer can't go through objects and sometimes is a little touchy, making some team arrangements, like a corner formation, more difficult than it should be.
If you're after a strategic, armybased fighting game that requires elite tactical skills, this is the one to holster up. It's full of hot damn goodness and quite simply, if you have an Xbox, dump your civvies, don your soup-bowl and grab this landmark strategy title.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012