Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers is the sequel to the very successful Full Spectrum Warrior (FSW) from Pandemic Studios. FSW essentially created its own genre by delivering a tactical military game where the player gave the orders but never fired a shot. Set in a fictitious current-day war zone, players controlled small squads of soldiers though an urban battlefield from a detached point of view. Players were not given direct control over the weapons of the soldiers and instead gave movement and fire orders that the squads followed as best they could. Based on a real US Army infantry training program, FSW shattered preconceptions of how tactical military games could be played. But its fresh approach alienated some gamers who yearned for first or third-person shooting control, yet it won plenty of fans with its attention to realism and focus on tactics over marksmanship.

Much has changed with the release of Ten Hammers, with many aspects of the game improved and a new multiplayer component added. However, some issues of the original title remain and the game is seriously hampered by a plethora of bugs that should have been rectified before commercial release.

The improvements in Ten Hammers over the original FSW are significant. Mission environments are greatly expanded and now include multi-storey buildings and interiors. There is no longer only one obvious way to tackle any given situation, and the game's difficulty and replayablity opportunities benefit from this. Enemies are smarter and will move to flank you if you don't fix them in place, unlike in FSW where once behind cover they refused to move until you killed them.

Fire teams can now be split into 'buddy teams' of two soldiers each, allowing for greater control when creating all-round defensive positions or fire and moving. Players can now control a maximum of four separate fire teams including vehicles and support weapons. Selecting Charlie and Delta teams is a pain however, as pressing the Y Button only cycles through Alpha and Bravo Teams, thus a few extra presses are required to select the others. Armoured Fighting Vehicles such as the M2 Bradley are a blast to use and make quick work of unprotected enemies. Annoyingly, if you order a vehicle to move when a fire team is using it for cover, the fire team does not move with it, leaving them out in the open. Equally frustrating is the inability to issue movement orders to other teams when controlling a vehicle, creating an unnecessary requirement to switch between teams.

The new ability to issue orders to a team from the perspective of any other team (except vehicles) is a revelation. This one feature increases the speed and fluidity of issuing orders immensely. Part of the reason for this is because the method for issuing orders is the same clunky system as used in FSW. To issue an order to move, players are required to move the cursor from the position of their unit to the desired location navigating it around any obstacle with the Left Thumbstick. This process can be very painful when moving long distances, such as back to a CASEVAC point or navigating through a complex environment. The time wasted fighting with the movement cursor can mean the difference between life and death.

As a result of new features such as the ability to breach buildings and upper/lower level rooms from stairways, additional orders have been created. You can no longer move a fire team in bounds with one order, although now you can do it using the 'Hot' movement command and splitting into buddy teams. This command causes the ordered unit to move cautiously at the ready and engage any enemies when they appear.

Another new feature worth mentioning is the Precision Shot which allows to the player to make an aimed first-person perspective shot at enemies but leaves the soldier exposed to enemy fire. This means that you can snipe an enemy hiding behind what in the original FSW would be impenetrable cover. Unfortunately, this same feature can be used against you in multiplayer games but more on that later.

Even with the many improvements over the original, Ten Hammers falls short of greatness due to extremely buggy code. There are just too many bugs to list here but they range from graphical glitches, to geometry clipping, to one level that on my copy of the game just failed to get past the opening cut scene. The friendly AI still does not react well when enemies appear in very close quarters and this has a follow on impact during multiplayer.

The multiplayer component of Ten Hammers is far more involved than in the original FSW although its implementation still leaves a lot to be desired. Players can choose between cooperative and adversarial missions but you can only play coop on those missions the host has completed in the single-player campaign. Hosts create a game and select the desired mission/game type and other players (when you can find any that is) join the hosts lobby. There is no option to change the mission/game type once the lobby is created however, except by the host closing the game and creating a new one. Not the most user friendly interface.

Cooperative missions are essentially the same as when played offline but with one other human player controlling half of the teams. Adversarial missions on the other hand showcase Ten Hammers new multipayer features. For the first time in a FSW game, human players can take control of the 'bad guys' and attack other human players controlling the 'good guys'. Normally, the 'good guys' mean the US but in some missions it can be insurgent faction against insurgent faction.

If controlling the US forces, the gameplay is almost the same as cooperative or offline play. If however, you choose to play as an insurgent faction, you will find yourself in control of up to four single units ranging from snipers to guerrillas to RPG fanatics to BMP armoured vehicles. If one of your soldiers dies, you can usually create another one from one of the spawn points throughout a map. Spawn points can be captured and when held by the US player serve a purpose that is unique to adversarial missions.

If a US player looses a soldier they can call in a CASEVAC. Instead of risking the life of one of your other soldiers, as you would in the other game types, an invulnerable Medic will appear from the closest friendly controlled spawn point and retrieve the soldier. Unfortunately, but perhaps realistically, the odds are stacked up against the US players as suicidal attacks from the insurgents tend to be the most effective. This would not be as bad if the friendly AI could just deal with enemies in close quarters. It is possible for a single human controlled insurgent to kill an entire US team from only metres away because the AI just can't keep up.

Another major annoyance of Ten Hammers, particularly during offline play, is the incredibly repetitive dialog. You will hear the words "Move to that corner" or similar so many times it will drive you insane. The dialogue is so repetitive that my significant other yelled at me from another room "Would you just moving him to the f****** corner already!" to which the game promptly replied as if on cue, "Move to that corner"...Triggering a hasty reach for the headphones. Once again, play testing for more than 30 seconds (especially by anyone who plays games in the presence of others) should have identified this problem.