Genre: Tactical
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Pandemic
Release Date: March 27, 2006

In past reviews, I have expressed my discomfort with reenacting wars from the not-so-distant past. I haven't exactly condemned the practice but simply communicated the slight uneasiness I feel when realizing that there are people who just did what I'm pretending to do right now, and it has likely ruined their lives as wars often do for soldiers of all but the simplest or most urgent (World War II) conflicts. Conflict: Desert Storm was especially tough to digest, knowing that America's soldiers are sacrificing their lives in that very same country during the very same moments I was mimicking their heroism with simple movements of just three fingers on each hand. I was not risking my life to protect my squadmates, if not the nation I was fighting under; I was sitting in a comfortable chair, avoiding real human contact – real camaraderie – so I could spend my skills on preserving the fictional lives of very badly characterized soldiers.

Though its characterizations were only marginally better than those in Desert Storm, something about Full Spectrum Warrior has brought me much closer to my digitized squad, and therefore much more disturbed to be feeling such emotion in the setting of Ten Hammers: a fictional country that is so obviously supposed to be Iraq. Especially now, of all times, when our soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dying for the cause of keeping the country functioning, which it is not. If you haven't noticed yet, I do not support the war, but I do have an intense respect for our soldiers there, and what they do, and in a very small way, Full Spectrum Warrior has brought what they do a little closer to home, in an easy-to-digest package.

The tough subject of war has been done and done again so many times in gaming that emotion isn't really something to be considered. The action is either taking a page from "First Blood," or a dry military training program. Of course, Full Spectrum Warrior is a military program, so I can't knock the product for coming off as it does. This isn't an episode of Band of Brothers, and the developers know it; it's a very complex strategic system boiled down into a video game simple enough to operate with a Dual Shock 2.

Yet, this very dryness is what makes the soldier's point of view so much easier to digest. These men always do as they're told. Their agonizing screams are both quiet and rare. Nobody "loses it." Everything is supposed to be done by the book, and that's the only way it should be.

Of course, the punishments for bad commands are much worse than they would be in real life. Soldiers sent into the line of fire will stay that way until told otherwise or wiped out by "Jihadi" bullets. Real-life soldiers would immediately run for cover upon seeing their friends mowed down, wouldn't they? But then, these soldiers have much less to worry about this time around, now that they have the protection of player-controlled aiming.

When it's said and done, real war becomes a mundane, if meticulous thing. The best cover and the use of common sense seems to be the way to get ahead in Ten Hammers, just as in the original FSW. Even the toughest difficulties have the same strategies; you just have to spend even more time deciding which route is the best to cover so your boys aren't killed within a single horrible second.

I'm not entirely complaining. I'm glad to have had this taste of combat – ugly, slowdown-infused combat – in this realistic way. It was refreshing to set aside the lone gunman routine that dominates all shooters, even the Tom Clancy games. Sitting behind cover for far too long is what combat is, because a good soldier should be protecting not only his own life, but the lives of his squadmates, in as many ways as possible.

If one thing could be excised from this title to make for a better experience, it would be the inane chatter between soldiers. I know it's there to add warmth to the soldiers, but that really isn't needed in a game that is otherwise so incredibly dry. Had there been a way to include some sort of procedural rendering of conversation – something we won't be hearing for another decade, at least – I would have enjoyed this feature quite a bit. It might have gone a long way towards humanizing the soliders. Instead, hearing the same jokes and cutesy raps about "killin' jihadi" over and over remind me that I'm playing a bad PS2 version of a military simulation program, not the real thing.

There are other reminders: the expected freakish faux-Middle Eastern music that blares whenever contact with the enemy is made (shooters are required to have this now); the multiple, unintuitive functions for each button that scream out for keyboard or another specialized control method; the shoddy player-controlled aiming; and I could go on forever if I felt like nit-picking some more. But I won't, because many of these issues are the same issues plaguing every single military shooter out there, given the low technological benchmark set on these games. Realism over everything else is the mantra, I guess.

FSW: Ten Hammers is not a sequel for people who didn't enjoy the slow action of the original. The pace is exactly the same here, with slightly more player control and all of the same general ugliness you remember. This is not a title for anyone expecting a Tom Clancy game, or the SOCOM player looking for a new, equally blood-pumping online experience. It is definitely not for the PC strategy purist, because the control will frustrate that type of player indefinitely. The answer I have is unsatisfying: There is no specific "type" that Ten Hammers is for, and yet it is too generic in execution for a niche, "strange" game fan. This is for anyone who thinks, from what they've read here, that the title might be up their alley.

Score: 6.5/10