Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter shows the future soldier and introduces a new military technology called the Cross-Com, a communications device integrated into a soldier's monocle that allows players to view images of enemy positions, target locations, and other information gathered by recon drones flying overhead. The single-player campaign takes place in one of the world’s largest cities, Mexico City. The single-player levels are built for urban combat.

A multiplayer part has many game modes including co-op elimination, co-op territory, co-op objective, team elimination, team territory, team objective, solo elimination, solo territory and solo objective. It also allows creating custom game types in addition to predefined ones, with kit restrictions, respawn timers, class modifiers and many more. In this version, gamers can create their own character for multiplayer games.