Man, oh man, oh man. Where do I start? Ghost Recon Wildlands is a huge, massive game with a lot (and I mean a lot) of shit to collect. For most people this isn’t a problem, they find what they find over the course of completing the missions, but I have a really hard time letting that go. When it’s broken down by zone and very clearly marked, it’s damn near impossible for me to ignore my OCD and not collect as much as possible before moving on to the next zone, or Province. But, as of tonight, I was able to finally call it a wrap and focus on other equally as demanding games.
After well over 100 hours poured into it, I could write a frickin’ book about my thoughts on the game. But I’m going to try to keep this relatively short, and just list some of the main thoughts I had while playing.
The game is gorgeous. Wildlands is a damn pretty game. And I don’t just mean the sweeping vistas and beautiful sunsets. The game is overflowing with detail. With a map this large it would’ve been very tempting for the developers to use some algorithms to procedurally populate the map. And while they probably did for things like rocks and trees out in the rural areas of the country, it’s clear that a lot of care went in to making these small villages and towns look lived in, and believable. I was constantly surprised that almost every single place I visited felt like it belonged there. It made sense. Occasionally there was an Unidad base that seemed to be in a very unlikely location, but for the most part it was logical. Speaking of…
Unidad was fucking irritating. I will not be sad to never see an antagonist like this in a game again, ever. I get that they were the authority figure, albeit a corrupt one, and that they had resources that the cartel did not, but holy fuck did they have the resources! If you were ever unfortunate enough to get all five ribbons on the alert meter, be prepared to shoot down an endless number of attack helicopters. At a certain point you can have no less than five helicopters circling over. If you were to shoot one or two down, they will be replaced within seconds. And it never lets up. Unidad apparently has an unlimited supply of attack helos and they all are hovering in the distance, waiting to hop into the frey the second another goes down. It’s all extremely frustrating, and I found myself just letting them kill me when shit went south. It was less of a headache than actually trying to escape.
The game lacked intensity. The transition to an open world meant very few scripted elements. While this isn’t inherently a bad thing, the developers relied on overwhelming opposition to create the tension. There are no tank encounters, no rocket launchers, no high end military presence that the Ghosts are used to dealing with. I understand that Wildlands was supposed to be “low tech” and I can appreciate that, but a Ghost Recon game without tanks and RPG’s is like a Baskin Robbins with no chocolate and vanilla ice cream. For them to rely solely on overwhelming numbers instead of truly formidable enemies, the stakes never really seemed high.
But it was still pretty fun. Granted, this game could’ve been named literally anything else and it wouldn’t have mattered, but the fact is, it was still a pretty fun game, and when all the elements came together, it made for a great time.
Co-op was a mixed bag for me. Having a living person who could think and act for themselves made the rebel ops and resource gathering much easier, but when it came to story missions, the wonky A.I. frequently worked to my advantage. For example, as long as you (the human player) aren’t spotted, the enemy isn’t alerted. That means your squad can line up for a sync shot by literally walking right through a sicario outpost, in front of everyone, to get into position. Thus, they can take out bad guys in places that a human player couldn’t get to. They also don’t miss, so long distance, questionable sniping can be left to the A.I. for a guaranteed kill.
Customizing the weapons was a great addition, but the game really needed character classes. Gunsmith was introduced in Ghost Recon Future Soldier, and it was awesome. So it’s great to see they leave it up to the player to decide how he or she wants to play. My only complaint is that an assault rifle/sniper rifle combo was all I ever needed. If I ever needed to snipe, I could. If I needed to close quarter, I could. If I needed to take out an armored truck, I could, all without ever needing to change my loadout. It would’ve been amazing if you really had to choose whether to leave all the sniping to someone else, or if you wanted to be an anti-tank, or a demo expert, you had to sacrifice. This simple change would’ve made co-op far more engaging because you would have to have your designated spotter/sniper, your close quarter fighters, and you demo expert. Just like in the old days.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game. Hell, I put enough time into it. But decidedly it felt more like a Mercenaries or Just Cause than it did a Ghost Recon game. The addition of vehicles was fine, I didn’t mind that so much, but I was disappointed by the lack of intensity we used to find in older GR games, back when if you or your squad mate died, your mission was FUBAR. As a re-imagining of the series, it’s great that it found a new audience, but it’s commercial success pretty much hammers in the final nail in the coffin for the Ghost Recon us old-timers knew and loved.
And that’s kind of a bummer.
