E3 2004: Full Spectrum Warrior Hands-On

Graphics are better. Explosions are bigger. Battlefields are more immense. But when it comes to innovation, one could say the playing field has diminished.

Update: Video coverage added.

Pandemic is one developer seemingly hell-bent on bucking the trend of me-too first-person shooters and roster update sports reiterations. One of their standout titles is the enigmatic Full Spectrum Warrior.

What is it? First-person shooter? Real-time strategy? Third-person tactical combat cum Black Hawk Down simulator? Nobody really knows, least of all me, and I played through an entire level of the game. I will say this: it is quite unlike anything I've seen.

Visually, it's in the same family of games like Ghost Recon, only FSW is the much more attractive sibling that gets all the dates, and GR is the one that lounges around on Saturday nights and munches Cheetos.

Like the Tom Clancy games for the PC, FSW relies heavily on the strategic placement of two squads of troops. Unlike those games, the player doesn't actually aim and fire weapons, he directs his troops to fire and they handle the dirty work.

Where FSW makes up for the absence of user-controlled aiming and firing is in its stunning realism and faithfulness to bona fide tactics of war.

You might think a game like this would be less intense than a typical shooter such as Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six, but you would be wrong. In some respects, particularly in terms of the white-knuckle realism of engaging guerilla troops in a decimated urban environment, FSW is more intense than its brethren.

The camera bumps and jostles as it follows your troops from one location to the next. Superb particle effects perfectly convey the literal elements of war - smoke billows, shards of brick and stone spray the air, and blood squirts from wounds in brutally depicted slow-motion sequences. Havok physics ensure that rocket-propelled grenades turn cars into fiery hulks of scrap metal, and that wooden crates splinter to pieces under sustained gunfire.

The sounds are pitch perfect, and there is no melodramatic music to detract from the gritty experience of guiding two lightly-armed teams though a seriously hostile environment.

You control two teams of four soldiers each. You tell them where to move and when and how to fire. Pandemic stresses that these are not Special Forces troops or military heroes. They are recruits fresh out of boot camp who must rely on brains, fear and their meager arsenal of weapons to stay alive (M4 rifles, RPGs, and frag and smoke grenades). This is the real deal - there are no sticky cameras or thermal vision goggles, and you won't find anyone firing an M60 from the hip.

Your troops are dropped into a fictional urban environment that closely resembles the war-torn cities you see on the news about the Middle East (incidentally, development of the game for the Army began four years ago, before the events of 9/11. The Xbox version was put together in roughly a year).

The entire game takes place over the course of a single day. Pandemic tells us this should translate into about 12-16 hours of gameplay, depending on the skill of the gamer.

I played one of the first missions, which mainly orients the player and requires him to move through the first portion of a seemingly deserted city.

You move your squad with the placement of a four-point cursor (one point for each team member). A box in the lower right hand corner of the screen shows whether your selected location will provide adequate cover. For example, if you want to move behind an abandoned vehicle, a symbol of boxes representing solid cover will show up when the cursor is in the proper position.

Generally, it is best to stagger the movement of your two teams. For example, I moved alpha team to the nearest cover, had them draw a line of fire on the area ahead, and then moved team bravo past them to the next cover point.

In this fashion, with each team covering for the other, you are least likely to get your ass blown off by a guerilla fighter. If you are smart and cautious, it works. If you are me, you might as well place an advance order for extra-strength body bags.

If even one member of either team is killed, the mission is over. If a soldier is wounded, you must carry him to a safe location for medical attention. This slows the team down and limits their attacking prowess, but you never, ever leave a man behind.

I started my run through the game with the staggered movement described above. I had moved barely 50 yards - the only other movement the occasional bird taking flight against the backdrop of a softly glowing horizon - when the stillness was abruptly shattered by enemy fire. Fortunately, my troops were properly positioned and deftly neutralized the guerilla fighters.

The enemy AI seems fairly cunning. In one sequence, an enemy soldier opened fire with an RPG, narrowly missing with a strike that would have wasted an entire team. I quickly opened fire on his position, but he was already gone. A moment later he and another guerilla fighter opened fire from a different location.

I had alpha team pin down the guerillas with a heavy barrage of suppression fire, gradually wearing down their cover, while bravo team advanced to an adjacent position and silenced the unprotected enemy. Much of the mission consisted of these intense, strategic firefights, and words cannot properly convey how cool it was.

Full Spectrum Warrior also will come equipped with cooperative play over Xbox Live for two players. One player will control alpha team, the other bravo. The game is completely finished and should be expected in stores by June 8. Needless to say, my short time with the game has me eagerly awaiting the retail version.

Tony Scinta
Staff Writer, Kikizo.com