Comprehensive HUD, tough enemy A.I
The enemy A.I. has certainly been improved, but the friendly A.I. should also have been tweaked to compensate this fact. They’ll dart around looking for cover, flank you, and their shots seem far more accurate than the cross-eyed aiming of the bunch of buffoons that you control. The enhanced A.I ensures that you’ll need to think fast to get your troops out of a sticky situation, but the balance between friendly and enemy A.I. isn’t a balance at all; you can’t just be a few steps ahead of the opposition tactically, you’ll need to repeat and repeat the process again and again to progress. The enemy spawn points are a supposed enhancement to the game and appear as doorways. This means a steady stream of insurgents from these set points, often a carefully placed grenade still isn’t enough to take them all out but they’ll kill you with one carefully placed head shot, ahhhh!
Click for larger imageThe HUD (Heads Up Display) provides crucial information on your team mate’s location, equipment status and objectives, so it’s a good idea to get familiar with the numerous icons. There are three triangles that are clearly labelled to indicate the position of your current objective, any injured troops, and the direction of the Casevac (medical and supply area). Hovering over an injured teammate gives you the option of dragging his body to the area to revive him. It’s wise to clear the area of enemies before you even think of rescuing any comrade but, in this latest version, you no longer have to risk all your teammates to save one person; now you can send one soldier out to pick up the injured soul.
The bottom left hand corner of the screen displays the unit icons, with each of your soldiers represented by designated letters, for example ‘AR’ for Automatic Rifleman. The d-pad allows you to switch between the soldiers and the unit icons flash if a friendly soldier is under attack.
Click for larger imageAdjacent to the unit icons, you’ll find an ammo and weapon gauge that shows the amount of available ammunition. In addition to these basic items you’ll also come across various enemy indicators, that vary dependant on the situation, for example the colour will change yellow when they are pinned down.
There are plenty of other icons that you’ll need to understand that indicate when certain options are available, such as an air strike or a report. The numerous icons on the HUD does mean that you’ll constantly be scanning the screen trying to remember what the various items actually mean, but they are graphically clear and well presented and you should soon get to grips with them.
With numerous orders available and a comprehensive HUD, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers isn’t for the casual gamer looking for a quick thrill; you’ll need to use up some of those precious brain cells to play the game to its full potential and the Xbox controller doesn’t really help with the simplicity of things; playing the PC version on a keyboard will surely be a more enjoyable experience.
The influx of new additions also spills over into the scenery. The major change to the environment, if you played the original, is the fact that you can now enter buildings. This means you can now send a sniper into a building to take out other snipers in adjacent buildings. Entering buildings is simple, press towards a stairwell and you’ll bring up two options, Hot or Breach. Unfortunately your soldier will spend most of the time crouching underneath the window due to the accuracy of the enemy sniping so it’s a fairly difficult strategy, but if I’d still prefer this feature in all war games, as it adds to the realism of the battle.