The whole package plays well and is very realistic. When firing, soldiers only have a limited arc of fire. If an enemy appears from another quarter than where your soldier is looking, it can all be over before your man knows what happened. Cover is not absolute and things like wooden boxes cease to be effective cover once an enemy puts a few dozen rounds into it. The soldiers in your command are not superhuman. They are fragile things that must be constantly watched and protected or they get killed with one well-placed shot. It gives players about as good an idea as they’ll ever want to have of what the combat infantryman must live with as he goes about his very dangerous job on the modern battlefield.

Full Spectrum Warrior is not going to be for everyone. It is a pretty unforgiving game. In many ways it is very hands off, which can be quite frustrating to many gamers. You can shout, “No, you dumb ass, shoot the guy on the other side of the concrete block first.” at a member of a team all you want and it is not going to do any good. At the same time, it is very satisfying to successfully maneuver your squad through some seriously hostile territory while kicking ass and taking names – and not losing a man in the process – because you had the tactical talent to pull it off.

Whether there will be more games like Full Spectrum Warrior remains to be seen. It may be that it will be a genre unto itself. Somehow I think we have not seen the last of the eye-level command interface though. It is way too cool not to get used again.