G.R.A.W. online

Last night we powered GRAW up for a little co-op goodness. We’ve been playing through the single player somewhat slowly, not because the game isn’t a hoot, but more because it’s something like a French pastry; incredibly rich, sweet, and harmful if taken in large doses. The game just simply requires a lot of focus for extended periods, more than say the digestible chunks of Burnout Revenge, which can give you an instant 6 minutes of fun with no further thoughts.

Anyhow, last night was the first time we took the game online to get together with three other intrepid 21^st century warriors. It really was a hoot. The pacing of the game and the essentially one-shot kills, lent itself ideally to human squad tactics, although occasionally, not naming any names, someone forgot to cover our rear.

I would definitely recommend this game for exactly this kind of play, but I wish there were more co-op boards, and that they didn’t tune the different play modes of this game so differently. For example, not being able to hug a wall, not having to hold your breath with a scoped rifle (which really makes scoped rifles completely unbalanced in the hands of the marginally accurate with the right stick), and a few other eccentricities take away from the rich experience online. I’d like for these to be settings, I’d also like to be able to have my over-the-shoulder cam when playing split-screen, but mostly, I’m just a picky guy like that, because I’m sure I won’t be griping about that on the PC version when they give me mouse and keyboard control.

Of course, if all of these are adjustable settings, that my n00b self missed, then please flame away.

All that being said, this game is a must have for the live enabled living room. It’s interesting, I always thought that Halo was the xbox world’s socom. I know they’re different games, but when you think about hardcore online warriors, those are the two titles that pop up for their respective consoles. If GRAW can continue to deliver, it might just be the one to beat for the time being.