My only complaint about the controls over your tactical squad is that their AI isn't always as balanced as it should be. You'll direct soldiers over to your location just fine, but sometimes they'll leave themselves in the wide open, susceptible to gunfire and soon laying from their crucial bullet wounds. This means you have to put yourself in harm's way in an attempt to get them healed, which means you take those two to three bullet hits and bite the big one as a result. You can call upon others to help, but the same sort of thinking AI gets in the way at times, and forces you to either give up a man or try to hide from gunfire while simultaneously attempting to heal them.

But past that, the game plays just fine. Control over your soldier is well-refined on the Xbox 360 controller, and your choosing of weapons, from grenades to a sniper rifle to a mighty big bazooka, comes off easy after going through the training missions. The difficulty level may not be everyone's cup of java, but it'll be best suited for those who can handle military operations or for those who are no stranger to the Ghost Recon games. The ability to dive from gunfire and give yourself a tactical position to lean out and prep yourself for an enemy takedown is nice, especially when you're able to switch between left and right shoulder view for a better look.

The graphics don't exactly have the 60-FPS zest that Call of Duty 2 provided on launch day, but they still look fantastic. The loading time is very quick and efficient, and the environments are staggering, representing an actual city instead of just slapping together bits and chunks of a local neighborhood. Ubisoft has done well with tactical level layout, complete with places to hide, enemy placement, and even the placement of Mexican artifacts and locales, including the Capultepec and Angel Plaza. The game moves along nicely at 30 FPS and has all sorts of lighting details, with nary a chug anywhere in the proceedings, and the HUD clearly tells you not only your next location on the mission, but also the location of your fellow squad mates and where you can find weapon and health power-ups. My big complaint, though, is the city itself seems rather lifeless. There's you, the enemies, and...that's really about it. No screaming townsfolk scattered about, no outbursts from windows, it's just drawn out between the military. I suppose some kind of alert may have been called to keep everyone inside, but come on, you can't tell me that some kind of mild city life couldn't have been installed here.

The game's sound is about as good as it gets, mind a couple of small things. The voicework in the game is purely on a military level, and keeps things realistic enough, complete with commands to your squadron and the briefings you get from members of your team. However, I couldn't help but notice that the commentary got slightly repetitive over time. The sound effects are superb, especially the gun effects, when you're sitting behind your Vulcan cannon in the chopper and letting all sorts of ground targets have it. It's simply brilliant in stereo. As for music, most of it's true to the theme of war and well thought out, but, really, we could've done without the "trendy" remake of "All Along the Watchtower". The original sufficed just fine, thank you very much.

And then there's longevity, in which there's plenty. The game's single player campaign lasts a long while, at least a good ten hours, and then there's the multiplayer to consider. You can go split-screen with multiple players offline, and even engage in some system link play, but, of course, a game such as this was built for Xbox Live capability. Up to sixteen players can join in on a number of typical shooter matches, including deathmatch and capture the flag. However, a real nice option here are the co-op missions, where you can work through a series of missions with other players for completion. It's nice to see Ubisoft offer both ends of the spectrum here, as some players I know would rather work on the cooperative side than the competitive. Of course, frags are really what this game is all about, so there you go.

I did notice, though, that the environments tend to look a little less detailed in multiplayer. Not really a heavy complaint, as they still look pretty solid and move just fine, but you probably will notice. Ah, well, Ubisoft probably had to push them down to that level to keep the game running fine on the 360. It's all good.

And finally, I gotta give Advanced Warfighter some props for its awesome virtual map system. Like I said, it can be accessed with the select button, and not only does it give you a better idea of your terrain, but you can actually set up the locations for your soldiers and the scanning device with ease here. It looks great and has plenty of options to make you that much better of a soldier...that is, if you can stay alive long enough.

The bottom line is this. Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter offers more than enough push to justify adding it to your library, period. It may be a bit too hard to take at first, but give it time and imply a little patience into the picture, and you'll find a rewarding experience that pushes the technical boundaries of the system while still providing a satisfying, brutal gaming experience. Get online and the world opens that much more for you. Advanced Warfighter lives up to its name, advancing the series and your expectations aplenty.

Oh, my friend called me back after I typed this. "So, I assume Warfighter is going to get the 4.5 out of 5 nod?"

"Yeah," I smiled. "And it's not even a first-person shooter."

"Eh, close enough," he replied. "See you online."