The PS3 version of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 is five months late, but let’s recall the moment in which we were able to forget that. We were squatted behind a broken wall, and gunfire was raging overhead. Glancing out from behind the wall reveals troops everywhere… ten, at least. Then, you hear the rumble of a tank; their reinforcements have arrived. As you order your men to stay in cover, you force some gunfire into the morass, but are quickly rebutted by a hail of bullets. More tanks arrive, but a meter appears on your HUD… air support arriving in ten seconds… the tanks begin firing… six seconds… there are at least 16 enemies out there, all showering your broken wall with ammunition... one second...

As red targets fill your screen, the pilot’s calm voice reassures you of the turning tables. You pop your head out of cover for a microsecond, ordering the airstrike to attack every enemy tank. As you and your men sit there, expectantly, you come out of cover and see the airstrike total everything in one, swift hellfire of oblivion. Every enemy is drowned in a monster of an explosion, as the 16 soldiers dissolve and the tanks crumble. Gone. Time for the next mission.

We’re not exaggerating, either; GRAW 2 is a game that distinguishes these moments all by itself. None of this craziness is accidental, with the over-the-top military madness making for a more chucklesome experience throughout. Tactical shooters are a hard genre to love, we’ll agree, but it’s these situations that’ll make it viable to the most FIFA-loving gamer. GRAW 2 is a very simple version of a complex genre, and for that alone it’s worth owning.

Set in a near-future Mexico, GRAW 2 is a tense and engaging game from the start. The tutorial tees the experience off nicely, allowing you to sample all of the great aspects of the game. Moving against any structure triggers the beautiful cover system. From here, you can pop up from behind any object and give the enemy a spray of gunfire, lob a grenade, or deceive the enemy into presuming your position. Headshots feel great, the weapons feel meaty and the sandy fields of Mexico are gorgeous. The weather effects are unrealistic, but impressive. Midway through a night mission, dawn can emerge within the space of ten seconds, bathing you in a golden ray of sunlight before you move on to the next mission objective.

Although the storyline – involving Mexican rebels and US ‘heroes’ – borders on racism, the swagger of it all is too entertaining to ignore. Clearly, Ubisoft was thinking only of fun when designing GRAW 2, be it the obscene power of your vehicles, or your idiotic Rumsfeldian general. The game is littered with clichés – there’s the silent-but-deadly protagonist, of course, but this is eminently likeable. The heavy focus on a cinematic tone is fun, but don’t try to see the game as a dramatic venture.

The soundtrack is a very melodramatic, but effective tool of the game. Although the graphics capture the whole ‘Mexican wasteland’ vibe, it’s the impressive score that takes you right there. In the more frantic moments of the game – one, for example, leaves you helpless in the desert without your team – it echoes the big Hollywood scores. For this reason and many more, GRAW 2 feels like a blockbuster version of a fairly understated genre, and this shift to a more sensationalist tone makes it the most complete-feeling Ghost Recon yet. It really feels like Ubisoft has hit its stride with this instalment.

The gameplay is simple enough to get to grips with, but the difficulty spikes a little bit once you enter the city of Juarez. For the first quarter of the game, you become almost complacent with the ease of it all: go there, kill rebels, move on. The cover system makes every battle a cinch, and only the weakest gamers would be hard-pushed by this initial section. Before you know it, however, the game kicks off in a big way. As soon as we were landed in the bright, dusty ciudad of Juarez, we were immediately under fire from numerous rebels. Crouching behind a car, we were suddenly handed several objectives: recover a Mule (an ammo-carrying buggy) from enemy hands, secure a distant location from enemy presence and find cover for your Ghost team.

We’ll admit it: one of our men was downed in the initial ruckus, but that’s because our expectations were toppled. The Juarez level is a sort of turning point for the game, because almost everything develops from that piece of frantic, quick-paced action. Cue skilled, trash-talking mercenaries, obscene plots about nicking nuclear missiles, and references to Mexicans “all looking the same”. The game is remarkably accessible, with the R1 button used for fire, X to reload, and the R3 button enabled for close-ranged aiming.

There’s a handy chest of weapons available too, which is part of what makes GRAW 2 so entertaining. The best firearms in the game are some immensely powerful machine guns, which shoot through thin walls and can also be shot from around corners thanks to a device known as ‘Guncam’. Using Guncam, you can shoot from behind cover without ever being hit. Features like this characterise the game, so even when you do end up with a piece of piddly weaponry, you hold out for the next great sniper rifle, or the shotgun that has a miraculous range on it. Some real thought has gone into the way that each of them works, so you’ll never begrudge the game for the choice of weapons you’re privy to. You earn new ones as you complete more levels, which suggests an impressive level of planning by the developer. Clearly, they designed a level, and questioned how the gamer would complete it, before developing the answer into a weapon within the game.

Actually, this articulate level design feels like the most complete part of GRAW 2. The cities of Mexico are vast, multi-tiered environments. While some of the objectives require a specific route to be taken, most of them are gifted with multiple entrances, or back routes. With the right tactics and skill, you can almost always get the drop on the enemy, providing you with a quicker opportunity to win. Actions like cover-fire come in handy, while the lack of explosive barrels is a pleasant step away from gaming clichés.

On top of this, almost every level is crafted with breathtaking graphics. Some of the early levels maintain ugly, PS2-quality mountains, but in general the level of detail is consistent and exciting. Each area of the game has its own identity, so you can tell which level you’re on by looking at the screen. That, in itself, is an achievement for a series that used to get away with lesser level design. After all, this was one of the problems we had with the PS2 Ghost Recon games, so the solution to that really makes GRAW 2 a cut above.

Of course, if this was a perfect PS3 tactical shooter, then we would have told you that by now. GRAW 2 is hampered by some dull missions. One, in particular, sees you rescuing a hostage from the rebels to avoid an international incident. As exciting as the stakes are, the mission itself is flaccid. It’s set at night time, which is promising. Unfortunately, this ‘rescue’ mission is just a dull march through a poorly designed ruin, puncturing the tone of this previously hectic joyride. This doesn’t happen very often in GRAW 2, but the efforts of the developer to create more varied styles of levels fail, leaving you in a pit of boredom while you wait for the next big set piece, or the chance to wage war in a massive battlefield.

The boring bits are only occasional, however. The gameplay is tremendously varied for the most part, with some on-rails helicopter gunning adding a little more spice to the mix. There are some further issues with the game, such as the often-jerky frame rate, as well as some pretty ugly character models, but they’re not an awful hindrance to GRAW 2. A factor that does rather large damage to it all, however, is the length of the game. It ends, suddenly, after around eight hours of solid gameplay, which does lend the game a ‘short but sweet’ moniker, but it also makes us a bit angry. The last mission feels like a build-up to some kind of final battle, but this never occurs unfortunately.

The good guys win in the end. We’re spoiling the story, but you won’t really care. Captain Scott Mitchell, the protagonist, is as interesting as sawdust and the story is sub-Roger Corman pants. Honestly, if we were any less interested in the fate of the characters, we’d just start chewing our own elbows. The music does a great job of overdoing everything, as well as creating a bit of tension, but this doesn’t make the story any better. Instead of a grand, climactic battle, you order in an airstrike to destroy two nuclear missile launchers in the most beautiful explosion ever seen on the PS3. This ending is a double-edged sword: while the interactivity is disappointing, the denouement is perfect for such an overblown game. Still, you’re underwhelmed once it’s done, no matter how cool you believe the ending was.

As well as this, Ubisoft’s continued mentality towards the PS3 is a shambles. You get a few extra multiplayer maps here and there, but wouldn’t you rather have had the game at launch, or at least at a cheaper price given its lateness? Certainly, but fortune doesn’t seem to be on the PS3’s side with multiformat releases. GRAW 2 is full of overblown, brilliant moments with only a sporadic dose of boring levels. We still recommend it, but we’re at odds with the circumstances of its release. Approach GRAW 2 with rationality.

Samuel Roberts