Full Spectrum Warrior set for X03

Having picked up awards at E3 and danced its crazy war dance behind closed doors at ECTS, Pandemic Studios' Full Spectrum Warrior is now set to make its overt playable debut at Microsoft's X03 event tomorrow. A THQ person reckons "X03 is the perfect opportunity to give game industry opinion leaders their first hands-on experience with Full Spectrum Warrior." But then they would say that.

Nevertheless, we are keen to play it. Unlike America's Army, Pandemic's squad-based tactical action title was originally developed for real troops, and not just for cajoling patriotic youngsters into service, calling on the expertise of the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. As such, although FSW makes some concessions in the name of entertainment, it demands a very real appreciation of combat situations and strategic thinking.

Pandemic certainly have form for making strategic war games. Although Star Wars: The Clone Wars was a bit vacuous, their previous titles included Battlezone II and Dark Reign 2, games which strategy aficionado Rob swears by.

We'll be checking out Full Spectrum Warrior from the bottom of our beer bottles sometime this week. It's due out in early 2004 on Xbox, with a PC version also on the drawing board.