Like Rainbow Six: Vegas, your squaddies can be set to one of two modes; kill-anything-that-moves, taken-too-many-'roids aggressive; or shy-as-a-kitten, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly, stealth mode. And it works - keep them in recon mode and they'll make less noise than a ninja mosquito farting. They seem to pick the best cover points available, as do your enemies.
Speaking of those dastardly enemies, they seem to have had their Dastard-Bix for breakfast this time around. As we cut them down, we noticed that they were more likely to move between bits of cover. Unfortunately we didn't notice as much flanking as we'd have liked. Then again, that could be because we'd shot most of them between the eyes before they had time to realise that flanking might save their butts.
3. The Scenic Route
Blasting the crap out of endless Mexican shanties got a little tiring in the first game, so it's nice to see a bit of added variety in the levels in GRAW2. Once again things kick off in the Mexican Outback, but the fight comes back to Uncle Sam's backyard, as the fight spills over the US border. The US area is in Texas, which bares an unholy resemblance to Mexico, but at least the signage will be readable to those who flunked out of High School Spanish.
While we're more than happy about the scenery change, another nice change that was immediately apparent in our preview session is the opening up of the maps. While GRAW's maps were large and seemingly open, they still funnelled the player through singular death alleys. GRAW2 now offers multiple routes through the levels, prompting the player to make the most of the increased power of Cross Com 2.0. Thanks to the ability to more accurately move your team using this network of magic, invisible cameras, exploiting the new level design via flanking moves is more of a focus than previously.
4. More friends at the party
Some of the finest moments in the original were when your armoured and flying friends dropped by to lend a helping hellfire. One level in particular stands out as a hallowed "Gaming Moment", where you were forced to manage a tank, an Apache, squad-mates and a UAV all at once. It was easy to freak out at the increased responsibility of this mission, but watching your bigger buddies rain death from above was a most satisfying experience. It was also a rare experience, with this co-dependence on vehicles taking a back seat most of the time.
That's all about to change. An increased emphasis has now been placed on vehicles, and while we still don't get to directly drive them, the full screen camera is almost as good. You'll be able to see exactly what that tank is seeing - which hopefully isn't a car load of civilians on the receiving end of a Ghost-shot shell. The skies will be filled with the roaring afterburners of your ground-pounders, and it seems as if the designers have a strange fetish for cramming as many choppers into a level as possible.
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As well as the UAV, the MULE now makes an appearance. It's a rather rugged remote-controlled storage locker, and as you can read four million paragraphs about it elsewhere on the Net, we'll say no more. Helping to make those nasty fire-fights a little more friendly is the addition of a medic class, who can heal the player as well as other squad-mates.
5. War is a beautiful thing
We deliberately left this comment until last, for fear that we'd be labelled graphics whores. But after playing our session, there's simply no denying that GRAW2 is to the first game as Jessica Simpson is to Ashlee. Much, much, much hotter. At first glance the differences aren't huge, but it doesn't take long for them to shine through. The devs have dived into the 360's hardware to crank up the anti-aliasing, leading to much fewer jaggies than the first game. It's crystal clear as far as the eye can see, yet performance remains smoother than a polished 7.62mm cartridge.
Dust and debris effects have been pumped through the roof, and watching the smoke from a burning truck getting shifted by the downwash of an incoming chopper is a subtle, yet very realistic effect. In fact, all smoke effects are now subject to wind change, be it from a gentle North Easterly or a slightly more immediate explosion.
Heat rippling in the distance has been exaggerated greatly, and objects seem to cast a strange shadow, even while floating through the air. We've never seen this strange shadow in real life (except after rather heavy partying), but it looks cool in the game. Even the character animations look smoother, with better blending and less jerky time between different moves.
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But where the graphics have improved most are the explosions, which now punch you in the retina like no game before. Instead of just the standard flamey, smokey components to a bomb blast, explosions are comprised of multiple graphical elements. First there's the rapidly expanding shockwave, flinging a shower of smoke-trailing debris through the air. This is then followed by the usual smokey, flamey bits.
We had minutes of fun slowly destroying cars with our machine guns. Fire a few rounds into a tire and it'll deflate, tilting the entire car. A few more rounds and the wheel falls off. Aiming at the windows resulted in the expected shattering, and even the doors could be shot off. After a good magazine or two, the car starts to smoulder, and then "Whump", she's in flames. Finish it off with another clip and the car explodes end over end. If we were to review GRAW2 from the perspective of a demolition derby driver, it'd get at least a nine.
GRAW is still one of the most enjoyable shooters on the 360, an astonishing feat considering it was a launch title, created on a brand new piece of hardware that was still a mystery to the developers. Eighteen months of playing with Microsoft's little white powerhouse has allowed the developers to delve deeper into the hardware's bag of tricks, and it appears they've used all of these in developing this highly anticipated sequel.
