GRAW 2 Demo Impressions: Short But Sweet

I was waiting on Heero the other night so we could join forces in tackling R6: Vegas' Calypso Casino in co-op story mode. That is one tough nut to crack with a 2-man crew! (I miss those single-player save points) So I had some time to kill before we fired up the game, so I thought what better use of my Xbox time than to test drive the GRAW 2 demo?

Whatever you may have heard about this demo is true. I played through this thing and it feels like it was cribbed from the tutorial segment from the full game. I couldn't have played it for more than 15 minutes before it very abruptly ended. They used a typical cliffhanger gimmick, right in the thick of battle. I won't lie; it left me wanting more... in more ways than you might think.

Allow me to explain: this is the same damn game as GRAW 1. I say this with much certainty, even based on my experience off a 15-minute demo-slash-tutorial. If you haven't yet figured it out from the teaser videos and screenshots, the Ghost Recon brand hasn't gone through a giant leap forward, play or technology-wise. You are still Scott Mitchell and you are still a badass elite light infantry unit with amazing technology at his fingertips. The setting from all appearances is familiar; it is again another Latin American dustbowl. Against this backdrop you are again blowing away all manner of tangos belonging to yet another terrorist or rebel militia faction. It all smacks of incremental upgrades and quick cash-in -- a GRAW 1.5 if you will.

And I still wanted to play more. Fancy that.

Two features really stood out while the whining critic in me was actively dismissing the demo. The first were the production values -- they were as impressive as ever. Everything looked crisper, from the environmental effects and Mitchell's new combat fatigues, to the gut-wrenchingly luscious explosions. Extra care had been lavished on the soundtrack. Whereas in the original GRAW it was a rather sporadic presence, the GRAW 2 demo featured a rousing score full of urgency and foreboding.

The second standout were the controls. Mitchell felt at once more solid and more sure-footed as I maneuvered him around. Every action, from attaching and unattaching from cover, to firing your weapon, has been considerably "tightened up". Sticking to cover, which sometimes felt unreliable in GRAW 1, felt very definitive and responsive in the demo.

There was also some icing on the cake, in the form of slightly smarter teammates, a "mule" mobile ammo supply vehicle and the enhanced UAV 3 Cypher. The UAV is a controllable airborne drone that you can send ahead to scan for hidden tangos before planning your approach. The demo allowed much more control this time around, allowing me to hold down the right bumper to get a full-screen view of what the UAV was seeing. Even better, I could use the thumb sticks to maneuver the drone with even more precision and get a more detailed view of the battlefield at the same time.

So this demo, by virtue of continuing to deliver its gorgeous presentation and hard-hitting action, has me very interested in playing the final, full game. I wouldn't call it a must-buy at this point, simply because the demo showed little else but the flash and bang, with no multiplayer samplings and really no real innovation beyond the core gamplay established by GRAW 1. I checked into Xbox 360 Fanboy today and was disheartened by their Game Trailers multiplayer video

That's right kids: a lengthy video extolling the awesomeness that will be the GRAW 2 multiplayer modes and not one single mention of a cover system. Chances are very good history will repeat itself. GRAW 2 may very well have full-featured gameplay in single-player and lose the cover system in multi. Why that is, well that is beyond me. At least the graphical quality looks to be intact. The GRAW 1 multi, with it's stripped down graphics and twitch-gameplay bias was a novelty act for me: worth a few plays but nothing to keep me around.

Somebody out there please educate me. Rainbow Six: Vegas and Gears of War have proven that you can have uniform play mechanics work for both single and multiplayer experiences. What would be Red Storm Entertainment's excuse for nixing the cover system in GRAW for the second time in a row?