'Ghost Recon WildLands'
Lone wolves beware, you'll need a pack to enjoy the hunt in 'Ghost Recon Wildlands'
Ghost Recon Wildlands is promising, but forget about going it alone.
The Tom Clancy franchise of games — which includes Splinter Cell, The Division, and Ghost Recon — falls somewhere on the spectrum between stealth/tactical and high-action shooting. Ghost Recon Wildlands, a de facto reboot for the tactical shooter franchise, strives to encompass that entire spectrum in one title. A squad-based, third-person shooter, Wildlands drops special forces into a large, entirely hostile open world with one mandate: search and destroy. You can do it like a “Ghost,” with a series of discrete covert actions, or by blowing up an entire country one territory at a time.
A Four-man drug war
In Wildlands, players control a member of the covert “Ghost” team, dropped into Bolivia to secretly destroy the Santa Blanca drug cartel. You and your squad have to systematically dismantle Santa Blanca, destroying bases and taking out regional leaders to push the cartel back.
Wildlands fits into Ubisoft’s usual open-world mold. If you’ve played the recent Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed games, you’ll be very familiar with the structure. There’s a world map, sectioned off into different regions identified by their leader. The goal is to take him out.
Wildlands pushes you and your team to work in sync, like a real team of commandos.
Mechanically speaking, Wildlands is a standard cover-based third-person shooter, though your ghost doesn’t “snap” into cover the way you might expect. Rather, if your character is crouched, they will automatically conform to their cover when they get close. It feels uncomfortable at first — we worried we would be seen because we weren’t “locked in” — but you’ll adjust.
The game’s player progression systems are also standard fare. Your character gains experience, which allows you to unlock everything from extra health to skills, like the ability to use a parachute. You can find new guns and attachments, and change equipment on the fly, so having a large arsenal does work in your favor. You can also upgrade the local militia, which is allied with you, by bringing them supplies and completing side quests for them. That’s helpful if you call them in for back-up.
So far, so mundane. What distinguishes Wildlands from its open-world cousins, though, is the fact its missions are built to be completed by a team. More often than not, simply hiding in cover will not be enough to avoid detection. Players must cover for each other, or time their shots to take multiple enemies out at the same time.
In its best moments, Wildlands pushes you and your team to work in sync, like a real team of commandos. It feels like what Ubisoft promised with The Division’s early trailers, but never quite delivered.
You can’t take the “Ghost” out of “Ghost Recon”
If you’re a fan of Ghost Recon, you might be worried by what you’ve read so far. Past entries have focused more on realistic, tactile combat. But the series still retains some of the Ghost Recon series’ original DNA. The original Ghost Recon was conceived as a highly tactical squad-based shooter in the same vein as Rainbow Six and SOCOM. Wildlands is not so far off that path.
Whether you play alone or with others, you must always work as part of a team. Solo players can command their AI teammates, including the ability to set up an automated “sync shot” where all four Ghosts shoot marked targets at (Multiplayer squads can also set up sync shots, but must time and execute the shots the old-fashioned way; by talking to each other). However, given the range of nuanced abilities, and the limited tactical functionality of an AI team, there’s a definite incentive to play this game with friends.
That isn’t to say the AI is poor. In play-testing sessions, members of the Wildlands team said that some groups of players would often have more trouble completing missions as a team, than when playing alone. This brings us to primary issue — one that could make or break this game for everyone who tries it. Wildlands gives you all the tools you need to play out an incredible special ops power fantasy, but doing requires that players team up and match each other’s enthusiasm. When Wildlands was shown at Ubisoft’s E3 2016 press conference, the four players were talking constantly, using military jargon, and heavily invested in the game. After playing a few missions with developers from Ubisoft, I found that it wasn’t easy finding that rhythm with strangers.
Wildlands also recalls the original Ghost Recon by pushing players towards stealth and, when that fails, controlled chaos. While there’s nothing stopping your squad from running into an enemy camp, guns blazing, doing so will make thing much more difficult. When forced into a “loud” scenario right at the start of a mission, where we had to assassinate multiple targets in a Santa Blanca training facility, the squad had to fight a larger force with less than advantageous terrain. It was obvious that doing things the quiet way would let you bypass many of the things that made the mission difficult, including a wall of gunfire.
Ubisoft has been trying to build a tactical, open-world game for years. Mostly, those efforts turned away from that concept in their final form. Not so with Wildlands. This is a co-op game to the core. Lone wolves should approach with caution. But if you have a few buddies ready to scream “Bravo on your six!” – this could be your jam.
Highs
- Tactical gameplay in fun in a group
- Good progression systems
- Freedom to pick your missions
Lows
- Can feel derivative of other Ubisoft shooters
- May not be fun without a group
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