  Each soldier's name is stitched onto the back of their uniform, and their underwear.
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You know you're playing a great video game when:
- About a third of the way in, you start over from scratch just because you want to stretch the whole experience out as long as possible.
- You put the controller down after a particularly tense and exciting sequence and say, "I can't believe we pulled that off" -- and the "we" refers to yourself and three computer-controlled allies, with whom you feel genuine kinship.
- You try something that you don't think will work because the game designers would never have accounted for it, and it does. Spectacularly.
- You wish you could show it to your mom, because you think she'd be blown away by how far video games have come since the days of Space Invaders. And maybe she wouldn't question your career choices so harshly.
By those definitions, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is truly a great game. Except for the name, which is way too long and cumbersome.
As one of the most hotly anticipated titles for the Xbox 360, and coming from Ubisoft's long and storied Clancy game pedigree (which also includes the Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell franchises), GRAW has a lot to live up to.
And oh Nelly, does it. But first, some background: The year is 2013, and you're buckled into the combat boots of Capt. Scott Mitchell, leader of the elite U.S. military unit called the Ghosts. This time out you've been dropped into sun-baked Mexico City, where what begins as a military coup takes on much more sinister and threatening proportions.
(And bad news for Canucks -- while you're tasked with protecting the presidents of both the U.S. and Mexico at different points in the game, we learn that the Canadian prime minister was one of the first casualties in the rebel attack. D'oh!)
First and foremost, GRAW is a showcase for what the Xbox 360 hardware can do. From heat-hazed streets to bullet-riddled barrios to a majestic castle, the environments have been created with a level of detail never before seen in a console game, and Mitchell's animation as he lopes along deserted streets or dives for cover into deep grass is fluid and lifelike.
The firefights in the game are truly cinematic, with all the chaos and adrenaline you'd expect from a gritty ground war. At times your enemies will have you so thoroughly pinned down behind cover that you'll wonder how you're going to move, but then one carefully tossed grenade and a couple bursts from your automatic rifle, and the tide has shifted.
As you make your way through the 12-mission campaign, you'll ventilate enemy soldiers, defend VIPs, blow up bunkers, recon enemy positions with a flying drone, direct Blackhawk helicopters and APCs to attack dangerous targets, strafe rooftops with a chopper-mounted 50-cal, monitor your allies' actions through a nifty camera link, snipe targets hiding behind soft cover, bark orders to your capable A.I. squadmates and ultimately more or less save the world. The end.
Which is what you'd probably expect from a Ghost Recon game. But what GRAW does so well is tie all its elements together. The amazing graphics, the perfect audio, the intuitive controls, the diverse missions, the cool weaponry and hi-tech heads-up-display, the crafty enemy A.I., the complete lack of loading screens, the 16-player co-op (yeah, you read that right) and multiplayer modes ... it's hard to think of any way the game could have been made better than it is.
Hey, mom? I'm bringing the Xbox 360 out when I visit this summer.
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BOTTOM LINE
GRAW takes the basic Ghost Recon gameplay and then adds layer upon layer of features and enhancements and improvements, until the whole thing is one delicious honey-soaked baklava of gaming goodness.
TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON ADVANCED WARFIGHTER
Xbox 360
Ubisoft Montreal/
Red Storm Entertainment
Rating: Teen
Sun Rating: 5 out of 5
