FSW is my new addiction

Friday June 18, 2004 at 1:34 pm | Filed under Gaming

Over the weekend Monique and I ran some errands and one of them was to Gamestop, the friendly neighborhood crack dealer for gamers. I brought in some older games that I wasn’t playing anymore to trade in and walked out with four “new to me” games. One of these was Full Spectrum Warrior for the Xbox.

I remember just having a conversation with Jon about me preferring fantasy to realistic shooter type games, and that’s true. Of course there’s been exceptions (MOH) because when a game is well done, there’s no denying it. But after seeing the videos of this Full Spectrum Warrior game from E3, I was excited about it. Not because it was a realistic shooter, because it’s not. It sure looks like one, but it doesn’t play that way at all. This piqued my interest and has brought many mixed reviews from the press. The game combines a couple of genres, the 3rd person shooter and real-time strategy. Some are disappointed with this because they expected it to be a shooter after seeing the video footage, but the result is something that I think is pretty unique and is turning out to be a great game.

Real quick on the gameplay… FSW is an urban warfare game that simulates the whole Iraq conflict, fighting in city streets, taking out enemies in the middle of a city where there are plenty of places to hide. You control two “fire teams” (Alpha and Bravo) which consist of four soldiers, each soldier has a unique role on the team and a pretty detailed back story, which really helps to identify them when you heard them yelling in battle. One guy’s a vegetarian, one’s a cop, one is a “gun enthusiast” (yikes!), etc. You use the two teams to take down the bad guys, more often than not this means you have to use supression fire from one team to make the enemy duck and cover while the other team sneaks around for a better angle to take the bad guy out. Sounds easy, but there’s a lot to it. The urban surroundings play a big part in the tactics you use when attempting to acheive an objective.

The game is actually based on the same interface and procedure that the US Army uses to tactically train their soldiers. The game even contains a hidden mode that is Army branded. I’ve heard this claim from games before, but after playing alot of the game, I believe it.

I highly recommend at least renting Full Spectrum Warrior. Read more about it here.

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No Responses to “FSW is my new addiction”

  1. Monique Says:
    June 22nd, 2004 at 11:51 am

    I like the game that we bought to play together, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II. I guess I just prefer RPG/Hack & Slash games because they’re easier for me with regard to moving my character. I also like a less military story and more of the fantasy. Maybe because my brother got me into LotR early in my life and I used to watch him and his friends play D&D.

    I was also surprised that I enjoyed the tennis game you got too. Maybe because I beat you? *wink*

  2. Arlen Says:
    June 22nd, 2004 at 7:17 pm

    That’s it–tennis can be played any time, but I can tell you from personal experience that beating Joe at a video game is a rare occurrence.