War is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get, but you can be pretty sure some despot will have nicked all the good ones and you’ll have to fight to get them back. Plus, some of them will have bullets in. And possibly a grenade. It’s a messy business and no mistake, but then we’re lucky in that most of us will never even have to find that out; the closest we’ll ever get is through a television screen, be it from the news or a videogame. But even then, it’s hard to get a feel for what war’s actually like if only because nothing yet has come close to replicating the tension, fear and knowledge that at any moment a bullet could come whizzing through the ether and bring it all to a sudden end. Call Of Duty 2 came close, certainly, but as much as the frantic scrambling from cover to cover and taking shots whenever you could was enjoyable, there are only so many World War II games you can play before they all start merging into one another. Plus, the online mode was pump. No, what we need right now is something that's a little bit fresher, a little more up-to-date and a little more… well, awesome really. Yes, definitely awesome.

Not surprisingly then, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is that game, despite many people expecting the opposite to be true. It’s interesting to see how the once fairly shy and retiring Ghost Recon series has gone from being a secondbest to Ubisoft’s more accessible Rainbow Six series to becoming the game that it is today – namely, one hell of a kick-ass ride. In fact, we remember seeing the first videos of it last April and, in our usual cynical hack manner, suggesting that we wouldn’t be holding our collective breaths for the finished game to look or play as awesome as it looked like it would, simply because it was Ghost Recon. Oh, how wrong we were… can you ever forgive us for doubting you, Ubisoft? We’ll beg if you ask us to. Really, we will.

Of course, while the moniker of Advanced Warfighter might suggest that massive strides have been made in the art of war (especially given that the game is set in the ‘near future’ of 2013), little has changed as far as terrorism goes; seems that no matter how hi tech the combat gets, bad guys still do bad things. Cue one power-mad dictator rising up on the streets of Mexico City (including kidnapping the President and his Mexican counterpart, no less) leaving you as Captain Scott Mitchell to move in with your Ghost squad and clean up the mess. And believe us, it’s one hell of a mess involving embassy shootouts, night-time drops into enemy encampments, forest infiltrations, city sweeps and explosions. Lots and lots of explosions.

How you actually go about approaching each of these situations is entirely up to you, but before you go storming in like a gung-ho idiot, you should be warned that Ghost Recon is far from your average war game. You see, in real life there’s no lone hero winning the whole war on his own; no solitary soldier battling his way through the entire enemy army to emerge standing victorious on a pile of dead bodies, bloody flag in hand. Sadly, this is the approach that most games take and while we can understand it from a game design point of view, it’s just not quite realistic enough to create the tense atmosphere that a game like this requires. By contrast, Advanced Warfighter’s emphasis on tactical planning, careful movement and massive amounts of teamwork has got to be commended simply because it adds a sharper edge to the action when it does all finally kick off. Just a couple of bullets to your person (or even a single shot to the head, if the enemy is a marksman) is enough to put you out of your misery, rendering the usually prevalent tactic of running forward, pumping bullets into anything that moves and then surveying the carnage as completely useless. Love Quake 4? Condemned? Black? Then we doubt you’ll love Advanced Warfighter, if only because it’s got more depth in its little finger than all of those games combined.

But you should love it. Why? Probably because it’s a game that deserves every ounce of affection that it gets. Naturally, a hefty portion of this affection (though certainly not all of it) stems from the game looking so damn gorgeous, we want to take it out for a nice steak dinner and then perhaps some sex. A huge amount of effort has gone into making Advanced Warfighter’s locales as believable as possible, along with the movement of the soldiers and, ultimately, the destruction that results from armed combat. That’s not to say you’ll be experiencing The Outfit levels of carnage with buildings falling down just because you happen to brush against them; it just means that men move how you’d expect them to move when dodging for cover, fall how you’d expect them to fall when shot in the face and explode how you’d expect them to explode when hidden inside a tank or other such vehicle. The impressive detail on Captain Mitchell and his team in particular (the people you’ll be seeing for most of the game) is especially well done, with your soldiers diving for the nearest bit of cover, stepping out to take tactical shots and generally acting how soldiers should act in the heat of battle. It’s genuinely a sight to see, especially when cranked up to highdefinition level. Well done, Ubisoft... very well done.

Thankfully though, the action behind the sheen more than matches the quality of the visuals, and it’s here that Advanced Warfighter really proves itself. As we already said, the game’s emphasis comes as much from the need to utilise teamwork and forwardplanning as it does from actually shooting people; however, it only takes a few simple button presses to get the job done. Simplifying all the commands you could ever need from your team in three buttons – D-pad up for move forward/attack, D-pad down to recall them to your side and the left bumper to switch between stealthy Recon and aggressive Assault modes – sending your men ahead to scout any potential danger before heading into the breach yourself really is as easy as it has to be.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can get them to do everything for you – although some of the more advanced artillery you get access to later, such as helicopters and tanks, can be abused slightly to cut a swathe through the opposition, which is a bit of an oversight on Ubisoft’s part. Nevertheless, consideration for your fellow soldiers is as much a priority as looking after your own well-being; sending your team-mates to an early grave leaves you prone to being taken down yourself, so it’s a balancing act between scouting ahead and making moves yourself. Certainly, the IWS (Integrated Warfighter System) elements of the game make this somewhat easier – support such as the UAV drone allows you to pinpoint enemy positions, while the targeting system that gives you all the information about each hostile (distance, health and position) allows you to plan your next move with extreme care.

And it’s this concept specifically that gives Advanced Warfighter the edge over any other game out there; you actually have to think about what you’re doing in order to succeed and you actually have to care about your companions rather than just knowing that they’re scripted AI waiting for you to make the final kill. Few other games require such effort but rather than seeming like a chore packed with menus and other mundane elements, Advanced Warfighter implements it in such a way that it flows perfectly into the obviously gung-ho action. That it’s all been put together so well as to create what is undoubtedly a finely polished package is merely the icing on a particularly delicious cake – it’s the tightness of the gameplay and the overall tension it creates that stands out as the real pleasure here. Are we surprised at this? Just a little, yes. Are we pleased? Hell, yes… war may not always be justifiable but when it’s this much fun, we’ll happily put our lives on the line sir, yes sir.