The controls are simple with simple button presses allowing to you switch teams, move your squad, cancel orders or order your team to take cover. The right stick controls the camera while the Left shoulder button zooms. The right shoulder button displays the 3D 'fog of war', which blurs the area your team is not covering at that particular moment. This means should enemies appear in this blurred area, they aren't visible to your squad. Your GPS is a valuable tool. It shows a top down map of your surroundings, the position of any known enemies and your mission objectives. The square button will bring up your firing cursor. This is a yellow circle that you can move over your target and then instruct your squad by pressing X to fire upon anything that falls within your present target. Holding the square button will allow you to bring up grenades which include frag, M203 grenade launcher and smoke grenades which can be selected between using the D pad.
In addition to simple squad control, there are also more advanced commands you can issue such as 'bounding', which is the safest way to move through unknown enemy territory. This is where one solider provides covering fire while one other moves into another position, and then vice versa. Ordering suppression fire is simple. You just simply need to put the firing cursor over the enemies to be suppressed and then hold down the X button. This allows your team to fire constantly on the enemy meaning that they stay ducked with their heads down. This allows you to move your other team in safety and is one of the most important tactics that you need to learn in Full Spectrum Warrior and proper use is key to success, especially as suppression fire burns through your ammo at a much faster rate than anything else.
Watch out, GRENADE!
Gameplay is essentially about moving from one protected location to the next, alternating between your teams as one moves and the other provides covering fire. Full Spectrum Warrior was originally a piece of software developed as a training aid, so it is designed to reinforce the use of proper tactics through repetition. Each mission boils down to a series of enemy encounters designed to make you use cover as you advance and to force you to use your squads to protect each other until one of them can maneuver and flank the enemy so that you're in a position to attack successfully. If one of your teams or the enemy is in a covered position, they are marked with shield icons over their heads and they are completely and utterly safe from direct fire. You can't take shots at bobbing heads or hope for lucky shots in this game, being under cover really does mean you're under cover as far as the game is concerned and your job is to work out the best course of action for each tactical situation. Because of this, the game is more like a playing through a series of tactical based puzzles rather than the shooter many may expect from this. Play too aggressively or play to risky and your squad will end up dead. While this is an important fact to drum into the heads of soldiers, alot of gamers may find this rather limiting to the gameplay. While you can occasionally get within range to drop a frag grenade onto the enemy, 9 out of 10 times you simply have to find a way to flank them.
There are two difficulty levels in Full Spectrum Warrior. The first difficulty is pretty easy and it shouldn’t take you longer than 5-8 hours to beat the game. The second difficulty is thankfully a good deal tougher as the amount of enemies is increased and the game is less forgiving of your mistakes. As an added bonus for PS2 owners, the PS2 version of Full Spectrum Warrior has some extra missions the Xbox version doesn't have. Unfortunately it seems they have removed the original Army version which could be unlocked in the Xbox version by using a cheat code. The Army version added some much needed replay value to Full Spectrum Warrior as the campaign mode is over a little too quickly. The Army version played much differently from the console version with the controls being changed around a bit and the overall speed of the game seems much slower. Rather than controlling two teams of four soldiers you’d actually control over nine soldiers in total, with an extra soldier at your disposal that you can move between your alpha and bravo team. The Army version was more customizable than the console version as you could alter enemy aggression, civilian aggression, wind speed, troop skill levels and even the numbers of enemies you’ll face. The Army version also had a greater number of civilians roaming the streets. The Army version was a much more difficult game than the console version is and is what I feel what the game should have been like.
Taking cover behind the car
Full Spectrum Warrior is also online compatible with a pretty standard co-op mode. Here you and another person can play through the entire single player campaign. Each person controls one fire team so basically your work load is cut in half and is a better game for it I feel. It's in co-op where Full Spectrum Warrior is best. But while the co-op mode is fun for a while, there are only so many times you can play the same single player missions.
Graphically the game is pretty solid, and while not on par with the Xbox version, everything looks pretty much as it should do. The textures as always suffer the most, but the levels in shape and design are of equal standard. The animations of your squad members are lifelike and believable. Admittedly, the environments throughout the game don't have a great deal of variety to them, but they are certainly authentic to the setting and feature some impressive atmospheric effects like the swirling winds of a sandstorm found on one of the later levels. Full Spectrum Warrior's audio is arguably the strongest area of the game. Voice acting fills the game and always sounds believable be it from officer commands at the start of a mission or banter from your squad during the game. Gunfire and explosions all sound suitably meaty while a great music score runs throughout the game (even if it does get a little repetitive after a while).
Despite my complaints, Full Spectrum Warrior is actually a decent little game. While the game is overly linear, pulling off a successful maneuver is a very rewarding experience. It's just the fact that Full Spectrum Warrior has wasted its potential that saddens me. It promises tactical warfare but due to its strict rules it actually delivers a puzzle game dressed up in guns and grenades. It has some thrills and fun gaming moments, especially in online co-op, but they don't last sadly. The game gets repetitive so it isn't likely you will want to play it through more than once. The rules of Full Spectrum Warrior are strict, so expect a good amount of trial and error. There's also a delay between telling your men to do something and them actually doing the bloody thing. This pause often means the difference between life and death when you're trying to reorganize which can become annoying. The difficulty level is way too low, even the harder setting is below what it should have been set at. Random enemy spawning in the single player campaign could have spiced things up in this respect but it's little more than a exercise for learning where people are and dealing with them accordingly. A multiplayer versus mode could have been good though it's hard to see how it could work under such strict rules. It's worth picking up cheap as it's fun at least once through in co-op online and it's nice to see a game try something a little different. It's just a shame the actual game isn't more like the deeper, more realistic 'Army Mode' extra found in the Xbox version and not the limited, linear one we have here.
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