Lying prone at the edge of a cliff, I surveyed from across the precipice. Knowing fully well that the enemies outnumber us 10 to 1, my team and I decided that it’s best to take this on with discretion. My three teammates bide their time, scaling the make-shift fortress from the cliffs. At the same time, I look out for the patrols, sniping down anyone that manages to be attentive of their progress. Once the slow climb was done, they hastily secured the target, running away to meet me up with their stolen 4×4. The mission was a success. No alarm was raised and more importantly, it was fun.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is the latest game from Ubisoft. It is a tactical 4-man shooter that boasts an open-world with military tech powered with technology and traditional gunpowder. It veers between a rocky balance of realism and gameplay mechanics that don’t mix well together, but nonetheless, manages to still deliver.
War On Drugs
Bolivia, a country in South America, is a drug-ridden place in Ghost Recon Wildlands’ fictional timeline. El Sueño, leader of the drug cartel, Santa Blanca, has managed to carve a drug empire deep within the country. Santa Blanca’s world is bereft of the benefits of government, running and fueled only by the drug ambitions of El Sueño. In that place, hell is a reality as people are outright killed and justice is but a suggestion. Santa Blanca’s infamy would’ve been left unabated if it weren’t for a terrorist attack against a US embassy. And this is where Ghost Recon Wildlands start.
The player takes on the form of “Nomad”, a special forces operative assigned together with a 4-man team to take down El Sueño and Santa Blanca. Under the command and assistance of Bowman, a CIA agent, these “Ghosts” will give El Sueño the reckoning that he deserves.
The story itself sounds like complete bollocks if seen at a larger picture. Here, we have another specimen of USA saving the rest of the world with the power and awe of freedom. Ridiculous as it may be, there’s still that lingering thought that a powerful enough drug cartel can literally own and run a country. Sadly, I was expecting Ubisoft to play the gray morality line by making El Sueño a criminal mastermind that has a heart of gold. Instead the game paints a typical antagonist that’s bad to the core.
Character Creation and Santa Blanca
Prior to starting the main campaign, the player invited to create and shape his/her own Ghost. While the voice of Nomad remains the same, his physical appearance depends on the players’ imagination. The character creation is quite polished, adding in obvious options for a military operation. Sorry guys, no clown masks or anything ridiculous. Also, if you’re too involved in creating a protagonist, you’re out of luck as there’re no body part sliders similar to Bioware, FromSoftware, or Bethesda RPGs. One thing to note is that the physical appearance can’t be changed, but the clothing can be hot-swapped during the game. Once everything’s done, it’s time to take on Santa Blanca.
Santa Blanca is a large region complete with different biomes and locales. Each segment has its own environment and climate, giving an illusion of seamless transition. Dotting the landscape are settlements that range from remote towns to “bustling” cities. Roads are filled with 4×4 and aged cars, which while unimpressive, are pretty good escape vehicles on their own. The magic and magnitude of it all starts to materialize when the player rides a chopper to see everything (provided you have maxed the draw distance slider).
While the region is big and immense, there’s something lacking here. It feels dead. While there is no shortage of beautiful moments (again, depending on your machine), Santa Blanca manages to feel nil. Maybe it’s because that the people themselves are just like cattle grazing the fields. The civilian populace just wanders like they’ve been forced to walk and aren’t as alive as the ones in Witcher 3, GTA V, or even Ubisoft’s own Watch Dogs 2. For me, this takes a lot away from the immersion that the game tries to capture.
Guns, guns, lots of guns
Since the map is large, prepare to collect some things! Aside from collecting large swathes of documents and lore trinkets, guns and attachments have to be nabbed in order to be used. After that, it’s back to gunsmithing! To say, this is what Ghost Recon Wildlands did pretty well. The attention to detail is just sublime, and the variety itself offers a very considerable amount of choices. So much so that my friends and I couldn’t agree on the best gun of the game, opting to just equip one that we’re very comfortable with using.
For example, while we did get the most powerful bolt-action sniper rifle in the game, my friends opted to trade it for a weaker, semi-auto one in case of those occasional misses. The guns themselves emit a very satisfying crackle, suggesting that suppressors are wimpy. This kind of diversity is again, a point worth noting especially if you’re a digital gun nut.
Building a Ghost
Even with the super-soldier-esque Nomad, players must still manage a bit of RPG by leveling their career soldier. Completing missions and killing enemies reward the player with experience points. Once certain requirements are met, the player can open new skills or assign these points to provide passive benefits.
Some skills such as the grenade launcher and ammo capacity can only be obtained and enhanced via this system. One of the valuable ones is the drone. On the get-go the player can launch a drone for quick spotting. But after acquiring enough experience, the player can level this skill to feature more than just a normal peeping-tom gadget. Upgrades include being able to make it explode, disable electronics/vehicles using EMP, or even heal downed teammates (don’t ask how).
Alone or with a Friend?
I first booted-up Ghost Recon Wildlands alone and without anyone to play with. That, I can say, is my lowest point with the game. Why so? Well, first the teammate AI is incredibly unreliable. That and the fact that they stand-in for friends that you should’ve been playing with.
The only use for the AI mates is that they can be utilized for sync shots. Sync shot is a special skill with a cooldown that assigns each AI with a foe and commanding them to fire in quick succession. This is especially useful if there are guards that are hard to take down due them having a visual of each other. And that’s about it. Most of the time, they alert the guards, or they stand firing at the wrong target as the player gets whittled down with bullets. On the otherside of the spectrum, from time to time, they do become omnipotent killing machines, leaving nothing left for the player to do.
So what’s with playing with friends? That I can say is the only way to play this game, that and partnered extreme difficulty. Ghost Recon Wildlands has always been marketed as a co-op shooter. Which means that most of the features work when you’re in the presence of at least one other human being. The game does offer a cool scheme of suggesting random online Ghosts via playstyles and such, but that doesn’t even equal playing it with someone you’re familiar with.
I played Ghost Recon Wildlands with just one friend, and with some charm and coercion, that number managed to jump to 4. To put it plainly, the game was so enjoyable with people that inviting others to partake the excitement made it more fun. How so? Well, Ghost Recon Wildlands shows charm during unscripted events. Memorable ones include holding out against waves of enemies and mortar fire while steadily approaching the enemy’s encampment. Funny moments are also bound to happen.
For one, we were trying to escape an airport filled with goons. Instead of flying away in glory like what they do in action movies, my friend, the pilot, accidentally bumped a wing, thereby leaving us open to get fired at. We did die at that moment but it wasn’t a toxic blame game afterwards, just pure fun and some light-hearted promises to do better next time. That and some expletives.
Verdict
While Ghost Recon Wildlands is not a perfect game and the faults show, it does offer a substantial degree of enjoyment provided that the conditions are met. It’s not a good game when played alone, even to the point that I want to just pass it. There are some bugs here and there, such as being unable to launch a drone or getting nagged by the incessant beep of missile lock that doesn’t stop unless you restart. But that’s about it. Underneath all those blemishes, Ghost Recon still managed to be fun. Not just for me but for three other people as well.
Multiplayer is the bread and butter of this game and without it, well, just imagine. Social interaction ensures the success as timing and execution is important in this game. For me, each mission begins with small talk, discussions about life in the real-world, etc. During the mission proper, the atmosphere becomes tense and everyone puts on a game face, confirming shots and locating enemy positions for everyone to be aware of. Afterwards, everyone praises each other, commenting about wacky antics during the mission or laughing at failed attempts. All of these culminate into a shared experience that’s interesting while presenting a challenge, dishing out a reward or failure without being too overbearing to induce a toxic blame.
For those wanting to know, if you have a good team of friends, together and with some inkling of completing the game at 100%, the whole endeavor might take a good 50+ hours or so. I do recommend playing it on extreme difficulty as the large number of players can dilute the overall experience.
With that said, I can recommend this game for players who like to shoot things, tinker with their guns, and explore a wide-open world while they’re at it. This is also one for gamers who want to look for a new game to experience with their mates. It’s readily accessible and doesn’t require much time investment as opposed to an MMORPG. If you have just one of the above-mentioned, then Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is your game to go.
