Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands offers an open world experience on a massive scale in a location that hasn’t be visited before. Ubisoft have taken the risk of taking the tactical shooter to an open-world scale comparable to Far Cry, Watch Dogs and Assassins Creed. Is the title as well crafted as those or does it fall flat? Sadly, Ghost Recon Wildlands does fall flat and it doesn’t just fall flat, in more than one factor it is a very disappointing Ghost Recon title and possibly one of the worst in the franchise. It is a playable game and does offer some nice experiences, but it is let down by numerous issues and with a general lack of any variation the game dries up very quickly.
The game puts you into the role of your own created player, may you be female or male, your character will appear in the Wildlands world and featured in the cut-scenes that play throughout. Your mission is to take down the Bolivian Santa Blanca Cartel, meaning you must venture around various areas on the map taking down each of the bosses/ring leaders of said areas. The country is ruled by corruption and the American Government are not satisfied with the amount of drug trafficking that is hitting their shores. Take out gang members and corrupt officials and continue to do so until you reach the big boss himself.
The story may be clear and sets the tone of the game, but even though there is a story this is just essentially a typical action game set in a South American nation, set to do immoral things and the characters you play as and interact with are essentially just expendable goons set to do the dirty work of the American government. It is just too stereotypical and too generic, too much politics to care about, especially for any of the characters or the world of the game. It is very limited with memorable moments and it is certainly one that I would not recommend. It is not like The Division, which does have its flaws but at least The Division offered a lot more to players in regards to character interaction and story progression and a better loot system.
Politics aside, Ghost Recon Wildlands is your standard third/first person shooter where you go around, clear a location collect the loot and move on. It is enjoyable in co-op as communicating together can work towards pulling of some nice takedowns. If you are playing with the AI however it becomes a mess. The AI is incredibly unresponsive at times and for the majority of the time end up ruining any stealthy approach you may be hoping to achieve. This is a 4 player game and works best when playing with 3 other people. If you are looking for a solo focused game, avoid this title. It does not work well at all without other online players.
The amount of bugs and glitches throughout the game is truly embarrassing. It’s as bad as the beta was, possibly worse. You will find at times you will spawn at least 4km away from your online friends, causing you to have to warp to them or travel across the terrain if the warp does not work, which does happen. You will experience all kinds of terrain issues as well and driving off road is nearly impossible. Especially for motorcycles. There are too many bug related issues to list but I have included a video below to show some of the issues we experienced whilst playing.
There are also some nice tools at your disposal, the drone being a key tool that will need to be used throughout the game if you want to keep track of enemies. The drone allows you mark enemies, giving you a massive advantage over the next infiltration. If you are playing with AI you can use the drone to mark enemies to set up sync shots, that is one positive for the AI in comparison to online players. The title is certainly one you can go all guns blazing with and can be incredibly unforgiving in some places. The world however is fantastic to look at and traveling across the terrain in helicopters, planes, and sports cars offer varied methods of getting to destinations, which keeps it fresh. The down side to this, though, is that the world in general is dull, lifeless and does not offer any “wow” moments other than the scale of the world.
Wildlands could have been a much better game if the bugs were minimal, but because they are so frequent it really does ruin the experience and at times makes it too frustrating to play. It does offer some great gunplay segments and scenarios where you take out enemy snipers in a sniper tower from quite a distance, which is satisfying. Successfully infiltrating enemy camps/bases can be satisfying as well because the general gun gameplay is actually the best part about the title.
There are also some nice tools at your disposal, the drone being a key tool that will need to be used throughout the game if you want to keep track of enemies. The drone allows you mark enemies, giving you a massive advantage over the next infiltration. If you are playing with AI you can use the drone to mark enemies to set up sync shots, that is one positive for the AI in comparison to online players. The title is certainly one you can go all guns blazing with and can be incredibly unforgiving in some places. The world however is fantastic to look at and traveling across the terrain in helicopters, planes, and sports cars offer varied methods of getting to destinations, which keeps it fresh. The down side to this, though, is that the world in general is dull, lifeless and does not offer any “wow” moments other than the scale of the world.
There are also some nice tools at your disposal, the drone being a key tool that will need to be used throughout the game if you want to keep track of enemies. The drone allows you mark enemies, giving you a massive advantage over the next infiltration. If you are playing with AI you can use the drone to mark enemies to set up sync shots, that is one positive for the AI in comparison to online players. The title is certainly one you can go all guns blazing with and can be incredibly unforgiving in some places. The world however is fantastic to look at and traveling across the terrain in helicopters, planes, and sports cars offer varied methods of getting to destinations, which keeps it fresh. The down side to this, though, is that the world in general is dull, lifeless and does not offer any “wow” moments other than the scale of the world.
Ghost Recon Wildlands does not feel like a Ghost Recon title and does not offer a great experience overall for it to be a recommend title at this moment in time. There are better open-world titles out there and if you were looking for a 4-player experience, I would stick with Ubisoft’s The Division. There are far too many bugs, texture issues, spawning issues to find this enjoyable to play. The story is forgettable, the characters are generic, and it all feels rushed. The guns and the shooting aspect is the strongest part of the game and thankfully you do a lot of shooting, but getting to those locations to take out enemies or the missions in general are lacklustre and wastes the massive open world that was created for Wildlands.