It's great to see a game so refreshingly different that you finish it feeling not only pleased with the entire duration and the outcome, but changed and improved as a gamer by the whole experience. Sounds unbelievable? Well read on.

Full Spectrum Warrior is a squad-based tactical war game, in which you play the part of a squad leader. The crucial difference is that, rather than directly controlling a character or characters (like in Rainbow Six), you are simply issuing orders and commands to your troops. Stick with me here, because this is a lot less boring than it sounds. For a start, the game engine was originally created as a training simulator for the U.S. Army and, as such, offers some extremely realistic landscapes to cover and intense situations to overcome.

The presentation of FSW achieves an extremely high standard and is complemented by easy to follow menus and an intuitive control system. It takes the whole squad idea and adds in far more detail than we've seen before, eclipsing games like Ghost Recon while managing to be a lot more accessible and much more fun to play. If you've ever played the original Ghost Recon, where you had to use the map screen to issue orders to the other team, you'll know exactly what I mean. It was clumsy, awkward, time consuming and you never actually knew the outcome of your actions until it was too late. So, how does it all work here?

At the start of each level you are greeted with a well directed and presented cut scene, which positions the story so far and outlines your next mission objectives. Then you're thrown into the game to complete the task at hand. The first level teaches you the basics of controlling your men and to look at the game it appears exactly like an extremely well polished third person shooter. In reality however, it's quite different. Your men are positioned on the screen directly in front of you and when you move the analogue pad, a marker on the floor moves. Putting this marker near certain objects, such as abandoned cars or crates, causes it to change shape, representing that you can use these items as cover. Simply click on the automatic formation and your men automatically run to the area, organising themselves intelligently behind cover. Once they get to this point, you may need to take out an enemy, which is done simply by clicking on the enemy and choosing to attack. However, you must bear in mind that these enemies have cover too, so you may have to use different strategies to succeed. For example, an enemy behind strong cover might need suppressing, where a couple of men fire round after round of suppressing fire at the enemy, forcing him to keep his head down, whilst you move the others into a position with a clear line of sight past the cover to take him out. Each game map is broken up into several objectives, these may include rescuing hostages or destroying targets and you simply work your way around, ticking all the mission boxes until you've finished. You can also at certain points call air strikes, reinforcements or throw grenades, although all these options are limited depending on the level, so you can't just go blasting your way through everything like some sort of arcade shooter.

So how will this change you as a gamer? Well, it's certainly changed both myself and all of my friends who have played Full Spectrum Warrior; if we decide to venture out onto Rainbow Six on Xbox Live, people better watch their ass. No longer do we wonder around waiting for our opponents to pop up so we can fire a few slugs at them; we're organised. We look around the room and assess cover points. We work as team to ensure we're safe from each angle and we only use our grenades when we have to. This goes for playing first person shooters in single player as well. Whereas before I'd just run around all over the place to avoid being hit, now I seek cover and, provided you're playing a FPS with good AI it improves your game. As you progress through Full Spectrum Warrior and the levels become more difficult, you are forced and conditioned to think tactically at each and every juncture. You're no longer just steaming in, but analysing and weighing up the pros and cons of every possible outcome before you decide to make your move. It's without doubt a thinking man's shooter.

Each of the levels looks excellent; they're all war torn urban maps with destroyed buildings and blown out cars dotted around, complemented by a very subtle but detailed audio that really adds to creating an intense and realistic atmosphere. The wind howls, you can hear gunfire and your enemies in the distance - even the chatter between your squad doesn't get repetitive. To put the cherry on this cake of realism, the enemy AI is outstanding; they all find good cover and they're all sharpshooters. You really need to keep your wits about you, especially later on in the game when the snipers start taking a pop. By the time you're a few missions in, you start to really care about your men too. You constantly feel concerned for the safety of your squad and if someone is wounded badly, then one of your team may have to carry him around, slowing you down and leaving you even more vulnerable to attack. It may be necessary to backtrack to get him fixed up, or even worse, rush onward to find help. Later on you'll be controlling more than one squad, which makes for an even more intense and open playing experience.

Although this game is fantastic, it could have benefited from being able to command vehicles and tanks; you would have had a lot more options and it would have offered more variety in the way you execute your orders and tackle the objectives. However, I'm not complaining too much, as the whole experience is a fulfilling one and this is one of the few games once finished, I immediately started again to try and improve my tactics. I wanted to take a different route through the levels to see what I'd missed and finish with my entire team alive and well. This is a good job really, because the single player game is a little on the short side if you were to play through it just the once.

Thankfully to aid its lifespan, Full Spectrum Warrior boasts co-operative online play and it's handled excellently. Pandemic are making some great games at the moment, these are the folks who brought us the excellent online action of Star Wars: Battlefront and the fantastic offline experience of Mercenaries. If they keep up the quality they're knocking out at the minute, they're definitely going to be one of the key developers to keep an eye on for future releases.

Full Spectrum Warrior is excellent in almost every way; it dares to do something different by taking an otherwise pretty stale genre and cramming it with innovation and creativity. Any self-respecting gamer should have this in their collection; it will appeal to pretty much everyone. RTS fans will appreciate it, FPS fans will enjoy it and because it challenges your brain, even people who prefer puzzle games will find something here to keep them interested. I don't give away 10 scores lightly, in fact, this is the first game I've given a perfect score since I began reviewing. But when something pushes the boundaries of its genre and sets a new standard in gaming, it wholeheartedly deserves it. See you on the battlefield, soldier.

Reviewed by Mark Hayhurst for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).