Best shooting experience the Xbox 360 has to offer.
The plot takes you, Captain Scott Mitchell to Mexico City to ensure the security of world leaders in signing a North American Security Agreement. The city goes to hell when Mexican Rebels take control of the city and kill the Canadian Prime Minister.
This throws you and your Ghost team members into a struggle that pits you against copious amounts of insurgents throughout the city. You will escort VIP's, defend embassies, siege buildings, and go street to street to restore order in Mexico City.
The campaign gives you a lot of variety in the gameplay and where you will be fighting. You will be taking defensive and offensive positions throughout the game as twist after twist is sent at you. The campaign is probably the most visceral and intense Xbox 360 experience since Call of Duty 2. You are constantly on your toes because one well placed shot could send you back to your last checkpoint.
The HUD is also a big part of the gameplay. It allows you to search for targets and outlines them in red so you know what you are up against, and also outlines your Ghost team in blue, and allied members in green. Some might find the outlining of foes cheap, but it is needed because at times the amount of fighters you encounter can be overwhelming, even at the normal difficulty setting, which should give every gamer a good challenge.
Controlling your Ghosts via the Cross-Com and your various air/ground support is fairly simple. Right or left on the D-Pad switches to air or ground support or switches to your Ghosts. You push up on the D-Pad to move the plane/tank/soldiers to the desired positions, or if your recticle is on an enemy and you push up on the D-Pad, it will attack. Pressing down will tell them to regroup on your position.
One problem though is that for the most part, the soldiers are not really that smart and tend to just be there to give you some limited support and get shot. You will encounter many times where they will not take cover effectively, and will die, or will blankly run in front of you while you are shooting. However, I found that the tanks and planes were very helpful in the campaign in taking out rebel soldiers and tanks.
Graphically, one could argue that this is the best looking 360 game on the system. Helicopter rides in between missions are probably the most memorable parts graphically. You get a breathtaking view of Mexico City. The character models are nice and detailed. You can see the creases in the clothes of Captain Mitchell and his ghosts. The buildings look very nice close up as well as far away, and the monuments are very true to real life.
The game also features some very solid sound. The soundtrack is varied from epic classical music in certain fighting situations, while the helicopter rides often have rock music. The sound of shooting the gun feels spot on, and feels and sounds like you are doing some damage when you shoot.
Personally, though, one of the flaws is value. The campaign will take you 8-12 hours, depending on if you get stuck in certain areas for a while, and it does have co-op missions, which are nice. However, the online seems to be somewhat lackluster.
The online pits a blue team against a red team. When you are on the red team, it just seems odd to see the red diamonds around friendlies that seems to be counter-intuitive, after playing the single-player.
Another problem that I encountered was the pacing of the multiplayer was entirely different from the single player experience. The speed of the game was ramped up to give it more of a run-and-gun style, and oddly, you can't take cover up against the wall like you could in the single-player campaign, which I also found strange.
Online does have some nice things about it though. You will never have a problem finding a game on Xbox Live and I have not encountered any lag. The multiplayer also does have a tremendous amount of customization , and there is a lot of fun to be had if you are a hardcore Ghost Recon fan.
Overall, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is just a tremendous achievement. The folks at Ubisoft should be very proud of this game. The combination of an awesome presentation, stellar and intense gameplay, awe-inspiring graphics makes Advanced Warfighter a must have in every Xbox 360 owners collection.