/ Previews / Shooters / Spec Ops 2 / Page 3
	Travel to far away lands and kill people. Maybe I really should join the army.

You really shouldn't start a paragraph off the way I am about to, because it doesn't really give the reader time to adapt... there isn't any 'transition' as we in the biz call them. I am not going to use an effective transition because I need to show you how not to do things. It isn't because I am lazy and uncreative, trust me, you'll thank me for teaching you valuable life lessons.

Spec Ops 2 gives the player better control over a soldier with the ability to switch between first and third person view, and the ability to switch freely between each soldier. If you like your buddy's gun more than yours, you just hit the 'presto-chango' button and you are suddenly him. You could just shoot him too, but that isn't highly recommended if you want to pass the mission. For added realism, Auto-aiming has been taken out of SO2 so players can choose their targets instead of one being assigned to them. Your teammates have improved AI and can be controlled much easier, with the ability to move them anywhere that you can see to have them defend something, or destroy enemies and objects. Squad control will be a mix between mouse commands and function keys on the keyboard. There will be NPC's that you must rescue, and civilians in many levels, but killing too many of them will result in mission failure. Sadly, there won't be any vehicles to zoom around in or air support to help you out of jams, as SO2 is meant as more of a small team operations game.

Don't just dump your squad off at the nearest day-care to make it an even smaller team operations game. You will want to utilize each soldier to carry equipment and as fire support. Getting your Berets killed in a mission isn't something that is highly suggested either, so switching between them when one is wounded in order to keep him alive is a good idea. I guess there is a moral to the story: Don't be Rambo, because in reality, Rambo would die. Unless it was Rambo from the first movie, because I found it acceptable that a Special Forces member could take on a hick-town police force, but that's just me.

The ability to customize each soldier of the four-man team's equipment list is something that will come in handy if you want something the game doesn't give you by default. Don't go too overboard though, because soldiers can only carry so much equipment before their encumbrance limit is reached. You won't get to change their appearances though, and will have to settle for changing their names. As each soldier advances in rank, they will become better at certain things such as aiming. As they advance, the spread of bullets will decrease until it is almost non-existent, making automatic weapons especially fun. I wondered if genetically altering soldiers was possible for variations such as camouflage skin, but Eric Johnsen, a Producer for Ripcord Games, informed me that they were saving that feature for "Green Berets of the New Jersey wastelands product where you get to kill millionaire industrialists in the toxic waste dumps of New Jersey."

And now, the moment you have all been waiting for... GUNS! There will be 19 different weapons to choose from in SO2, ranging from the M82 .50 caliber sniper rifle to the OICW experimental army weapon featuring a 5.56 MM assault rifle mounted over a 20 MM grenade launcher, definitely something to put highly on your 'must have' list. I was hoping for magic spells, and I got them… just not in the manner I expected. Johnsen informed me that the grenade launcher itself was a magic spell, and that the sniper rifle was just a bigger, noisier version of 'Power Word: Kill.' It looks like we get to keep the realism, yet still have the added bonus of magic.

Weapons will also play a vital role in stealth matters. You can shoot out lights with your guns or grenade blasts, but you will be giving your position away to every enemy in the area. Using silenced weapons to take out lights and enemies will let you remain hidden in the shadows a little longer, unfortunately, it also cuts down on the amount of firepower your squad can carry. Ultimately, it is a matter of whether you want power or stealth, a decision that will be unique to every mission.

When that enemy soldier does find you though, just what are you going to do? Can you utilize trickery such as exposing yourself to the enemy? How about the good old monkey tactic of flinging dung? Johnsen said that the monkey dung feature turned out to be too frame rate intensive and had to be yanked from the game. As for trickery, you can try tricking the enemies until you're blue in the face, but they are going to shoot you anyway. It looks like the Berets will have to utilize flak jackets and smoke grenades, and the policy of 'shoot them before they shoot you.' Sounds like good advice to me.