Cross-com & Drone - so that's where the bugger's hiding
The variety of maps in GRAW 2 are excellent, from the ‘Hydrodam’ map which offers long sight lines for snipers and underground pathways for some close up battles to the likes of ‘Aftermath’ with offers plenty of hiding places amongst the war-torn debris filled streets of a village. We were very excited to see a map called ‘Embassy’ which we dived into straight away hoping that it would be a graphical improvement on the original Ghost Recon. Unfortunately it wasn’t, but it still had plenty of alleyways to hide in and cars to lie next to whilst you snipe down the streets.
An excellent addition to GRAW 2 allows players to change the time of day on each map. There are two options for each map, allowing you to amend the settings from daytime to night-time or sunrise to sunset, meaning that effectively you’ll have to adopt two different set of tactics for each map
Click for larger imageCROSS COM & DRONE
The Ghosts have always had the latest high-tech equipment, so it’s not surprise that Ubisoft has upped the ante and improved the cross-com feature.
On the downside, this does mean that there’s even more to think of as you trawl through a mission, but it does make for a more immersive experience. Using the cross-com you can switch to the viewpoints of each of your team-mates in full screen mode and move the camera around. This does add a new tactical dimension to the gameplay, but also means that it’s easy to get caught out when using it because you’re not watching your own back. But, we found it to a be an excellent tool once we had found a safe position to hide and it meant that our team-mate effectively had two pairs of eyes to survey the area. (We used this function when a team-mate was being fired at and he couldn’t work out where it was coming from - two heads are better than one!).
Click for larger imageIn single player you’ll also be able to issue commands to your team-mates whilst viewing the action through their eyes.