If you have played GRAW1 then the controls for GRAW 2 will fit like a charm and you will have no problem playing the game. For first time players the game works like this, you can run around and shoot and be merry until the enemy fires at you. If you run up to any nearby solid object Mitchell will automatically go into cover allowing you to peek around the corners or above the object that you are in cover on. The cover system, which felt awesome in GRAW, feels a little old with the recent cover perfectionists Gears of War and Rainbow 6 Vegas.

GRAW 2 gives you a plethora of guns and side arms to chose from via the new “reload stations.” (That’s my name for them) These can come from a caravan of allied vehicles, a M.U.L.E. (a small controllable robot vehicle), or an allied chopper. When you go to one of these stations a brief news update shows up telling you vital information on the battle ahead with information on what type of enemies and how armed they are to the details of the battle area. This is a welcome change and a nice one.

As in GRAW, GRAW 2 puts you in the command of a 3-man squad of Ghosts, or sometimes Mexican army soldiers. The squad commands are very basic and range from “move to” to “regroup.” You can also chose if you want your soldiers to go in to battle gunz-a-blazin or only fire when fired upon. The controls are basic and simple to use which makes commanding your squad easy. The allied A.I. has also vastly improved over the previous incarnation, as your teammates will actually want to stay alive this time. If left out in the open during enemy fire they will move to the nearest cover and start firing. While they are nowhere near as smart as Ghost Recons brother Rainbow 6 Vegas’ teammates, there is a substantial difference between the GRAW and GRAW 2’s allied A.I.

The biggest and best addition to GRAW 2 is the addition of the medic on your team. Your 3 teammates are now interchangeable and one of the teammates you can choose is a medic. This medic gives your whole team a certain number of medi-kits that can be used by the medic or yourself. In GRAW 1 if you had red health and you hit a checkpoint you would have to live like that for the rest of the level. Now in GRAW 2 you can get the medic to heal you and your good to go. This can make a winning difference in missions and is one of the greatest additions to GRAW 2.

The enemy A.I. has also improved somewhat, especially during the second half of the single player game. In the first GRAW the enemy would take cover but they didn’t show much coordination between each other. In GRAW 2 the enemy’s will work together to try to kill you and your teammates. When they started becoming equipped with heavy machine guns you HAVE to use your teammates to survive. The game often throws multiple enemies on you at once upping the ante on pressure.

Just as in GRAW 1 in GRAW 2 the advanced Cross-Com system is in place. This Cross-Com allows you to see through the eyes of your teammates, a UAV drone which allows you to mark targets away from the battlefield, and other support systems the army allows you. Those other support systems include tanks, air support, and helicopter support. The newest addition to the Cross-Com is that now, holding down the right bumper, the small Cross-Com screen pulls up to cover the full screen. This is one of the most helpful additions to the game, due to the fact that you can easily control your team through a whole mission without moving Mitchell a step.

There is no doubt that GRAW 1 was a stellar looking game but somehow Ubisoft went and made GRAW 2 even prettier. The single player graphics are absolutely breathtaking. The environment looks like you are in the midst of a terrible civil war with the highly improved smoke and particle effects. The smoke bellows from whatever random fire is going on. In helicopter rides before most levels have Mitchell flying over Juarez seeing the destruction can feel real. The weather effects for the single player campaign have also vastly improved, particularly noted in one helicopter rail gun sequence where the rain wisps from the gun creating some of the most believable rain effects in a video game. There are a handful of dull looking desert missions but once you get back to the metropolitan setting your socks will be blown off once again. The character models have improved slightly over GRAW 1, if that is even possible. The explosions, the meat and potatoes of the single player game, look even more visually and viscerally satisfying in GRAW 2. Even a random car in a parking lot will create a mini mushroom cloud when blown up, and when whole tanks blow up its even better. The single player game is one of the best looking things on the Xbox 360 and currently holds the title for best explosions in a videogame. Ever.

If one thing can be said about GRAW 2’s audio is that it kicks major butt. The voice-overs are average at best with a few spots of painfully bad dialogue strewn throughout the campaign. Despite these few lines of corny-osity the voice-overs can be helpful. The musical score that plays through the game provides GRAW 2 with a more cinematic feel to the whole package. One example of this is the Arabian-ish music that plays during the desert levels makes you feel like you are in Black Hawk Down, it works great. As imagined, the explosions sound almost as good as they look. With some explosions spanning multiple cars, or tanks, the sound can literally rattle your windows. (Provided you have a sound system that can dish out that kind of sound.) The gun sounds are very well done, not being too loud while also not being to quiet.