September 7, 2005 - Gamers disillusioned with frenetic twitch war shooters like the
Call of Duty and
Medal of Honor series will find a much more realistic, tension-soaked experience in
Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers. While other games like
Brothers in Arms try to simulate a squad based experience, it's still essentially a first-person shooter with squad elements. With the Full Spectrum Warrior series, and especially with Ten Hammers, players will be given the opportunity to orchestrate a more detailed type of squad based coordinated attacks and maneuvers.
Players should be warned, placing your squad in even the most remotely dangerous position could be catastrophic. It's not like your squad members in FSW:TH have big green life bars and access to health packs conveniently scattered around the game maps. If you move your squad into a precarious position, it's pretty much lights out unless you're providing some serious cover fire or using a heavy smoke screen. If one of your guys gets shot, he's going down almost immediately. This game is not for those who like to run and gun.
However, for those fans of the first game and who favor a more tactical approach to their combat shooters, FSW:TH offers quite a bit, including an improved and streamlined control scheme, expanded squad options, vehicles, and the ability to go indoors and fire out of windows as well as calling down air strikes.
How you control your squads has definitely been enhanced since the first game. FSW:TH allows players to control up to four squads, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta. Instead of having to manually switch between squads to give move commands, players can now order around all their squads while retaining control of just a single one. For example, if a player was in control of Alpha squad, they could issue move commands to Bravo and Charlie without actually having to switch over to Bravo and Charlie. If Alpha squad happened to be providing cover fire across an open market area, players could tell Bravo unit to move up on the right and take cover behind some boxes. This way, players would be able to maintain Alpha squad's perspective and more effectively manage team positions from the best possible vantage point.
The control system goes even further by allowing your squads to actually break themselves up into mini-squads of one or two troops. These mini-squads can be told to move out as a scouting patrol or to move as a "hot" unit, meaning they'll return fire as they run for the next position. Once broken apart, two-man groups can be told to either regroup with the rest of the main squad or remain on their own, allowing players to move one unit as two while still commanding their other squads.
To give your squads orders outside of just moving, players will have access to radial menus that pop up when certain face buttons on your control pad are held, or in the PC version's case when certain keyboard keys and mouse buttons are pressed. Through the radial menus players are able to lob grenades, reload, reorient the direction your team is facing, perform context sensitive actions, take cover, and fall back among others.
Part of the level we played, entitled The Tien Hamir Bridge, showed us that players will have to become quickly familiar with how to bring up radial commands and move their squad around the battlefield to avoid catching too many bullets in the face. Right from the beginning we split Alpha squad in two and sent one two man team forward to scout enemy positions. As we suspected, there were a lot of enemies, and our small team barely made it through without getting a few new holes punched in their chests.
We sat our team behind a cluster of boxes and briefly contemplated our position as the enemy fired away at our cover and slowly began to creep forward. Obviously, we needed more manpower and some covering fire, so we brought up a radial menu and tossed out a smoke grenade. After a few seconds the small open market was filled with a thick, white smoke, and we felt it safe to bring the rest of Alpha squad up to our position. As Alpha regrouped, we tossed a frag grenade out into the smoke and hoped for the best. In the meantime, while still controlling Alpha, we brought Bravo squad up on our right behind a different cluster of boxes.
The smoke began to clear, and we were finally able to provide some cover fire. With the enemy somewhat suppressed, we took one member of Alpha and stood him up, zoomed in his gun and fired an aimed shot at an enemy who'd popped up to blast at us. We missed. Figuring we were too far away for accurate shooting, we lobbed another frag grenade behind the enemy's position. Sensing danger, the enemy popped out of its cover to avoid the blast, and luckily our Bravo squad was in a perfect position to pick a few of them off. We were now in a commanding position with our superior numbers, so we slowly advanced our teams using a combination of short-range squad moves and two-man hot moves until the rest of the enemies were dispatched.
Eventually our squad made it to our objective building where we met up with a stranded officer. To get to the officer, our squad actually had to go inside a building and navigate stairwells and crumbling hallways. The building proved very useful for taking our unsuspecting enemy teams still outside, especially when we positioned troops at second story windows.
Once our squads cleared the immediate area outside of the house, we took to the ground again, and were greeted with a nice surprise: a tank. Charlie squad was designated as the controlling members of the lumbering Bradley and could be switched to at any time, just like any other squad.
Of course, we immediately switched to the tank and started issuing movement commands to Alpha and Bravo so they could suppress the enemy and keep our machine protected from enemy grenades. Seeing a large concentration of troops guarding a bridge ahead, we switched to Alpha squad and issued an air strike command. Within moments, an Apache attack chopper was absolutely annihilating the designated area with a massive peppering of huge ammo shells. As the chopper finished its assault, we switched back to the Charlie tank squad and moved everyone up towards the bridge.
Just for the hell of it, we entered into the tank's targeting mode and fired a shell behind some cover ahead. To our delight, an enemy went flying up into the air, and there was much rejoicing as we safely moved our three squads across the bridge to continue the mission.
Graphically the game featured some nice sun glare effects, though some of the textures were a bit muddy. Troops animated well, displaying the guarded sorts of movements one would expect of people trying to not get stuffed with lead. There were also some impressive rag doll physics at work, which were most apparent during the slow motion death animations of your squad mates and whenever you managed to blow an enemy up with explosives. The soundtrack was filled with gunfire and screaming, both appropriate for the setting, though some of the voice acting bordered on cheesy (but to be fair, it was placeholder).
There is certainly some work to be done on this title as it had various graphical glitches yet to be ironed out and features such as context sensitive actions to be implemented. Stay tuned to IGN for all the updates before the title is slated to ship in March 2006.
Originally Posted by Charles Onyett
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