BXB Ghost Recon Paintball Event

[L.M]

Played the latest version of GRAW and its awesome

this is easily living up to the hype

and its been confirmed by Ubisoft (UbiRazz) its out the 10th

heres what i thought and what i did

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Yesterday I managed to get my grubby little mitts on Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter while attending the BXB Ghost Recon paintballing event, it was of course a great day out where we got to shot the Frag Dolls while rolling around in the mud. I was paintballing first and it was one hell of a battle, where as Team Voodoo pretty much whitewashed Team Kitt our games where a lot more balanced.

First we were playing in arena the size of a small bathroom and as soon as the Marshal screamed 3, 2, 1, GO! Everyone kind off died. The second event was objective based where we had to hang up four discs in the centre of the field, there was a lot more cover and the game lasted a lot longer, I myself was doing well until some little git shot me in the finger and by god that stung, my finger just swelled up to the size of a grape. Despite the fact neither team got all four discs we came out on top as we got five extra points because someone on our team (who can only be described as a tank) ran out of bullets and just kamikazied it to the middle with a disc, sadly he did not survive, but at least we got 5 extra point and were in the lead.

The third and final round saw the defending team in a house and the attacking team bombarding it and trying to get through the front door. It didn’t start to well as the kamikaze hero of the first round tried to do just that again and he kind of fell and nearly broke his ankle so we had to stop. Once the game restarted we bombarded and bombarded and one of our team member blatantly got into the house, of course as soon as he got in he got shoot 25 times, but he still got in yet the Marshals said he didn’t so we had to defend for the win. Sure enough we defended valiantly, but this guy we called ‘Ninja’ made it in but again we were robbed as we shot him before he got in but the Marshals said he made it and thus Team Sarin won.



After a quick lunch we finally got to play Ghost Recons: AW. It is fair to say the game itself is the most anticipated title coming to the Xbox 360 but did it live up to the hype, I mean just look at Perfect Dark that was meant to be the ‘new’ Halo 2, but it turned out to be as fun as a bucket of horse manure. So will this game be worthy of your fifty quid, or will it just be another over hyped title sent to the back of the preowned box?

This of course will be the fifth game to hit a Microsoft console and it will also be the first next generation Tom Clancy’s game. The game was originally meant to be a release title, but after a couple of delays it has had to settle for March the 10th and I must admit I’m glad they delayed it. Just look at Project Gotham, it was rushed out for release and because of that the campaign was cut in half and there was not nearly enough tracks to race on. If Ghost Recon was pushed out for release we would probably only have three or four maps, the game wouldn’t look as polished as it does now and online would have been lag heaven.

Now onto the game, the first thing you will choose before starting out is your view, now after trying both I have to admit I was all for the third person view, granted first person makes you feel more like a true soldier, but with third person the game feels a lot quicker, the action is more intense and the game is just a lot more fun to play. You can of course change your view pretty much whenever you want so it’s not like you have to set your heart on third or first person.



When if first saw the cross com I was very sceptical, all those diamonds and highlighted players just looks to cartoony for a Ghost Recon game, but after playing it I realised that the cross com is probably more important than your weapon. Your team mates are marked with a blue or red diamond (of course when if first played it I thought anything highlighted I had to kill, I didn’t go down to well with my team after that) depending on which colour your playing for and as you’ve probably guessed the opposing team will have a diamond on them with the opposing colour. Also what I noticed is if the opposing player is behind a few walls and shoots, you will in fact see a faint diamond pop up of course the same will apply to you, but at least it will put a stop to kamikaze, spray and pray players.

The little screen in the top left of your cross com is pure magic, it lets you view either what the drone is looking at or what your friends are doing and the use of this became more apparent when one of my team mates did a kamikaze in the opposing base and because of the little TV screen we were able to pickup the position of pretty much everyone on the other team. The drone I never managed to fathom out, to be honest I never tried using it, but there was someone on our team who always managed to order it right where the enemy forces where, which of course gave us a huge advantage and again it showed me just how useful the drone will be once Ghost Recon is finally released.

A few of the controls have been slightly tinkered with, but Ghost veterans will still get used to the new settings pretty much instantly. To crouch you just have to single click the left thumbstick and press it in if you want to lye down. To reload you just have to press A and to switch weapons B, but beware this does take a few seconds so make sure your well hidden when switching weapons. There are two different zoom modes, if the gun has a scope you can zoom in using the right thumbstick, failing that you can use your weapons sights to get a better aim, sometimes choosing either scope or site will come down to how far away the enemy is.



You can also peep around corners using the LB button, with the lone wolfs the LB of course is the button which switches it into hands off mode. The D-Pad is great for single player modes as you can send out orders to your team, but in multiplayer it doesn’t have such a huge effect mainly because no one listens to the orders. If you have a set team leader I’m sure it will be very useful but if you join a party of people you’ve never played with the D-Pad will mean nothing. Of course literally every control can be changed to your liking so if you just don’t feel right with the default controls you can tinker with them until you feel comfortable playing.

The weapons list is long and full of absolute beauties. The lone wolfs are back much to the dismay of a few players, you will be able to use pretty much any weapon from GR2, but they have added a few more just to keep the average joe happy. What really impressed me was how cool it looked when you actually fired your weapon, when shooting your gun it actually kicks back and it will kick back harder or softer depending on the gun you use. It really does look good and things like reloading and switching weapons looks perfect, no glitches or hands going through weapons it just looked absolutely perfect.

The locations all looked stunning, my personal favourite was Rocky Cove despite the fact it’s a snipers heaven, also Desert Gulch and Nowhere will be very popular online. Generally the settings looked stunning and where big enough to fit 160,000 players let alone 16, but I did notice that on Temple the grass seemed very…..2D. Granted it moved with the sounds of the wind but it just didn’t look as nice as what I thought it would be, ok so I’m nitpicking a bit, but I don’t see why they couldn’t have made it look as good as the grass in games like Fifa 06. Luckily they did say that little bugs like that were being fixed so on release I think Temple will look just as stunning as the other maps.



There were in total ten maps to play and they where; Fishing Village, Boneyard, Dry Dock, Rocky Cove, Treasury, Old Town, Nowhere, Temple, Dwarf and Desert Gulch. The ten maps will most definitely keep you occupied for a few months, but no doubt they have already started creating newer maps which will be available on the marketplace. Oh and don’t be fooled by the name ‘Dry Dock’ the map involves you playing across two tankers in pitch black and its also pouring with rain, it was in fact probably the hardest map to play. Apart from the grass in Temple ever other aspect of every other map looked awesome.

Graphically the game looked stunning, it doesn’t actually look like the videos you see on IGN or Gamespot mainly because they have had filters added to them so that they enhance the games looks, but I actually think it looked far better without the filters from the videos. Jaggies are nowhere to be seen and the actual character looks pretty much perfect, you can of course change you character’s looks but for some reason we were all this Rambo style red neck. The explosions are monumental; there is nothing better than watching a car explode with the opposing team member being burnt alive behind it. Also smoke grenades and frags look just like the real thing, I mean before now smoke grenades looked like something out of care bears, but Ghost Recon has made them look absolutely perfect. Overall the game looked beautiful, Ghost Recon 2 when it was released again looked great but the players seemed stretched kind off anorexic, you won’t be seeing the same effect with this version, everyone and everything looks divine.

So will it be worth your money? Hell yes. This will be the new game of Xbox Live no longer will you have to play an old generation Halo 2 on your beautiful white console as this most certainly lives up to the hype. The achievements of course are going to be impossible but that doesn’t matter as the game itself will be a joy to play. The game looks absolutely stunning, everything from the characters to the animation look perfect. The cross com is easily the best addition to the game and will be the most important aspect of the game. Overall the game was easily worth the wait, I am so glad they didn’t rush it out on release and ruin what has been a great gaming series. Long live the Ghosts!!!

[Don_Rico]

Great post L.M. I'm happy to hear that the game lives up to the hype.

[Molneze]

Damn Dude!! Cool story, thanks for sharing.

[Glock 19]

Awesome find Now I know I getting this one as one of the 2 games I get in March release. Great find.

[Muthas]

Originally Posted by Recon73

Awesome find Now I know I getting this one as one of the 2 games I get in March release. Great find.

The other one must oblivion, right?

[DimitriC2982]

dude great story
but now i really cant wait for this game
im constantly thinking about it
let alone dreaming about it

march 10th cant wait

[paymon]

i wish i could play it now

[DimitriC2982]

same cant wait

[GamePlaya4Life]

Nice story. It sounds like it lives up to its hype.

[Confuuscious]

nice story, i bought the help book, to calm my patience, i didnt read through the walk through didnt want to ruin the game, just read about the types of guns and this sorta thing. my EB Store says it comes out today 3/08/06 not the tenth as described above. I hope EB is right i cant stand it any longer............................................ ..............................