Review: Full Spectrum Warrior

Full Spectrum Warrior

Platform: XBox
Developer: Pandemic Studios
Publisher: THQ
Players: 1-4

Full Spectrum Warrior is a squad based tactic military game. With an innovative control scheme, the player commands two different squads, four men in each. Rather than rely on ‘twitch’ shooting game play to take out enemies, the object here is tactical maneuvering and placement of the two fire teams. After a few missions, the game play boils down to mostly one team firing on an enemy to keep them engaged while the other team flanks or gets in close enough to lob in a grenade. The idea is grand, but the flat, linear environments with the limited options of objective completion soon make things very repetitive and obvious with no surprises. The saving grace is the rendering of the environments and execution of commands over your squads. The firefights sound authentic, even though once behind cover, neither you nor the enemy will ever score a hit, no matter how many rounds are fired. It’s always engage and flank. Engage and flank. The use of grenades (smoke, frag, rocket) gives the player some degree of combat control, but again its limited to the general placement of the team. The end result is playable for the engaging environments and fluid controls, even though it is repetitive gameplay.