RB6:V vs. GRAW2

Let me start by saying that until 3 weeks ago I had never really played any of the Tom Clancy games. I never really liked the idea of having to keep track of and give orders to AI "team mates". I do well just to keep track of what I’m supposed to be doing much less baby-sit a bunch of mindless AI compadres.

Well after much prodding by Stryker and Castlemonster to get RB6:V I finally acquiesced and made the plunge. It’s been a (mostly) thoroughly enjoyable experience so far. In fact, it was so positive that I actually purchased GRAW2 despite the sub-par demo. I’ve learned to handle my AI team mates with some success and it’s even become a bit natural for me. The trick I’ve found is to just use them for bait. Kind of like I do with my online team mates  . Having spent the weekend spending 50/50 time with both games I’ve found some things I like and dislike about both titles.

Story - The story mode for RB6 is absolutely great! It’s difficult enough to be challenging yet not so hard that I want to throw my controller through the wall. I haven’t had a chance yet to try out the story mode for GRAW2 yet but I’ve heard it isn’t quite up to par with RB.

AI – Hands down RB’s AI system is the best I’ve ever played. The game play changes every time you play a map and the enemy has the ability to react to your movements and tactics. GRAW2 on the other hand seems to be more set in stone as to how they try to attack you. In a territory match for example, you can simply set up where they will come at you and rack up the kills since they won’t change routes. You can even spawn camp them to a certain extent. That’s not to say winning one of those matches is easy. We played probably a dozen times on Lagoon over the weekend and I only saw one win the entire time. The enemy may come at you from the same path every time but there are multiple paths to cover and an overwhelming number of enemies to kill.

Graphics – Graphics in both games are impressive. Seeing your character’s mouth “talk” in reaction to your voice over the mic is awesome and creepy at the same time. The maps look great in both games. I have noticed some times in RB that a player can sometimes merge with a wall. In fact, while completing a terrorist hunt yesterday I noticed as I was moving towards a door that there was an enemy elbow sticking through the wall around the corner. I carefully approached the door to make my move when suddenly he turned to me and shot me through the wall, a little frustrating. GRAW’s graphics are very impressive as well. The only problem I have so far is that it seems UbiSoft is so impressed with them that they’ve pulled the camera back a bit in order to show off the entire landscape. The only problem with that is that even on my 50” LCD screen the enemy looks like the size of an ant. I haven’t had to stare so intently at something since I was a 10 year old staring at the bras in the Sears catalogue. If it wasn’t for the drone lighting up the enemy location I might never find them. The lighting in GRAW is superb as well. It even changes as clouds move across the sun. Moving in and out of shadows or towards or away from the sunlight feels very natural.

Game Play – This is something that I think RB6 does better than GRAW imo. While you don’t have the option to run or jump in either game really, the way in which you walk around and have the ability to take cover in RB just plays better to me. In GRAW I feel like I’m running around on roller skates much of the time. The movement just doesn’t feel natural to me. I suppose with a little more time my brain would adjust to the speed boost but I’m a slow learner so I’m not sure how well that will go. Also the controls in RB seem more intuitive then do GRAW's. That may be because I started in RB first. Having never played Clancy games before I remember thinking the RB6 controls were fairly convoluted at the time. You have the ability to change your controls to a “B” configuration in GRAW that will more closely match the RB controls. The only problem is that when you’re new and you don’t know which button “heals” (for example) asking people in the room with you will only make things more confusing. The other thing is aim. In GRAW they have tried to make a more realistic experience by having the aim float a bit. If you crouch or lie prone that effect will diminish just as it would in real life. Again, maybe that’s just something I need to get used to but in my opinion if I’m supposed to be a trained warrior, I would think I could hold a gun steady.

Multiplayer – Here is where GRAW2 really takes the cake. There are an incredible amount of options here for GRAW players. As Tuefel once told me, “If you played every map once with every game type available and every option changed every round, it would take 2 months to play every map/type once.” I think he’s right. You can change the lighting for every map, there are more match options then I’ve had time to even investigate yet, and you can co-op numerous styles of matches. Not to mention that you can co-op up to 16 players. That last one is a bit of a misleading statement though. You can only host 16 players if you have the super duper dedicated server or T1 line. 8-12 seems to be the magic number for those in the 900-1000 upload range. Still, how many times have you played a co-op terrorist hunt on RB6 with 3 other friends and had 1-2 more buddies jump online. In RB6 you have to go to another game type. In GRAW you just invite them into whatever it is you are doing. Unfortunately in neither game can your friends jump in mid game. They’ll have to wait in the lobby for the round/match to end.

Speaking of lobbies, the GRAW2 lobby is probably the best I’ve seen on a 360 game to date. You have the option to go back and see the (limited) post game report, the host can change up any of the game options between each match, and players can view the setting for each match before the game begins. Also, when the match settings change, there isn’t the unbearably long load screen of RB6. I’m not sure why each time you change the map or game type on RB6 you have to wait 30 seconds to reload. To my recollection no other game requires this. Of course there’s a few *cough*GoW*cough* who won’t even let you change those options between games so maybe I’m just picky. GRAW2 also offers clan support. I’m not entirely sure how that implements itself as I’ve only played in 2o2p private matches to this point. It appears to be for clan vs. clan games ala Chrome Hounds.

Overall I’m very happy with both purchases. I’m happy that I was strong armed into trying a game genre that I had never been supportive of. I’ve always said that it really didn’t matter what type of game I was playing as long as I had good people to play it with. This experience has proven that to be true. There is no way I would have ever played either of those games on my own. Thanks to the great folks here at this site though I now have 2 new reasons to ignore my wife and daily house chores.