Full Spectrum Warrior Review

Contrary to the ridiculous rag doll physics, the 3D engine works beautifully. I love the soft heat haze effect that you can see in the distance, and the way that Pandemic has implemented shadows in each of the scenes is truly spectacular.

We'll have you patched up in no time, soldier.

Anyone have any tanning lotion, this desert sun is ruining my skin.

The musical score is just as good and very complementary to the visuals. When the firefights heat up, the accompanying music will provide a nail-biting atmosphere to the scene, seamlessly blending in with the events on screen. The voice acting is also very good and highly authentic at times. Bear in mind that this game has a lot of cussing, but that's how it goes in the field - when the bullets start flying around you, you tend to cuss a lot more.

Finally, the friendly AI works great, although looking at the AI as a whole, it is not without its faults. The good news is that the path finding works like a charm (which is very important for FSW's particular style of play) and also, the bad guys will sometimes react in the most convincing manner by either panicking or running away if things get too hairy. The game play in FSW is essentially governed by a set of rules, so if the enemy is behind a solid cover, he will stay there and put up a tough resistance. If you manage to flank him however, or if it sees a lot of troop movement, it might decide to retreat, which seems very realistic and in the spirit of actual urban warfare.

The things I didn't like about the AI is that sometimes, even though you've ordered them to shoot, your soldiers will just stare down the barrel of their gun at the hostile who's fully exposed and all primed for execution. Another thing is that the baddies would sometimes see the grenade that was tossed in front of them and decide not to back away a couple of steps or run like mad even though they have nearby cover available to them. Still, my overall impression was that the AI works very well, and the minor faults don't take away much from the game.

Looking back at my experience with FSW, I'm inclined to believe that this is probably one of the best tactical military shooters I've played. It's authentic, gritty and highly original in the way it was executed. And it requires you to use your brains for a change. I don't know what was wrong with this one on the Xbox, but there's not a lot of wrong with it on the PC. Aside from the wacky physics and some AI glitches, there are very little (if any) negative things that I could say about Full Spectrum Warrior. After you're done with the fairly lengthy single-player campaign, there's always the co-op and multiplayer, so there's plenty of replay value to be had too. I wholeheartedly recommend Full Spectrum Warrior to every single military shooter fan out there.