I have a soft spot in my gaming soul for the Ghost Recon series. At the advent of Xbox Live, GR was the golden example of how to do multiplayer right. They had cooperative missions, coop firefights, last man standing, deathmatch, capture the flag, king of the mountain, and a host of other unofficial game modes that we were able to make up ourselves due to the numerous settings we could adjust. Want to play match with only pistols? Done. Want to take away all explosive devices? Yep, you could do that too. We used to call “No boom-booms.” Ghost Recon was the game we booted up at night and played till the wee hours, when our group of 10 or 12 regulars would slowly start dropping off one-by-one, like barflies heading home after last call, until only a few remained. There was no party chat back then, so the private lobby was our social space. We spent almost as much time chatting in the lobby as we did shooting each other. Friendships were born in that lobby that still exist today. So yeah, Ghost Recon will always be an important one for me.
But the game has had a bit of an identity crisis over the past two generations of consoles. While each release in the series has been good in its own right, most fans agree that it reached the peak of its multiplayer goodness way back in Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike, on the original Xbox. The Advanced Warfighter series on Xbox 360 was still very good, and GRAW2’s map selection was the largest offering of any game before or since (I believe it finally topped out over 40). But GRAW made some changes to the multiplayer formula that removed a lot of the tension that made the series great. A game that was once slow and methodical and “sim” was now faster with almost a run ‘n gun mentality. The last game of that generation, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, turned multiplayer into a Gears of War -style arena shooter than removed pretty much everything resembling a Ghost Recon game. It was awful.
To be completely honest, I thought Ghost Recon was dead and gone. When Ubisoft released The Division, I thought that was it. The new Ghost Recon. It even kinda resembled it in a way. So believe me when I say that I was overjoyed when Wildlands was announced, and I prayed it would be good. Thankfully, it was, and I played the ever-loving crap out of it. It brought something new to the series, and at the same time managed to feel like Ghost Recon. All the while we were playing the campaign with the promise of an upcoming PvP mode. Well it’s finally here, and I finally got up enough willpower to hop in with (ugh) randoms and play a few rounds.
My opinions are.. mixed.
First off, the game mode is a best of 3 team deathmatch on a medium-sized map, and while there are about six or seven maps, I somehow kept getting stuck on the same two. Both of these consisted of a compound of some kind surrounded by high ground. The map was large enough to flank this central zone, and it’s a good thing too; In every match I played, the central compound was a death trap. It all of my rounds of playing, no one ever stepped foot in them, except me of course. I was quickly disposed of each time I tried to “use” this area of the map. The area, as it turns out, is useless. It makes me wonder why it’s even there, if no one will ever step foot in it. I hate dead parts of a map.
See, I remember the old Ghost Recon maps. They were huge, and most of them had multiple points of interest. We had nicknames for a lot of the features on the maps. For example, one map we played had the northern side bordered by a large overhanging cliff, and the southern side was the bank of a large river. So naturally we had “cliffside” and “waterside” when calling out enemies. If I shouted out that I’m drawing fire from the Cliffside Powerlines, my teammates new exactly where I was talking about, and how to get there without being detected. I could even continue to be a decoy and draw their attention long enough for my friends to sneak up. It was wonderful, and damn we were good at it.
But maps nowadays never seem to have a purpose, and from what I’ve played so far, neither do these. It’s just a meaningless plot of land with some assets scattered around to make it look interesting. In the case of these areas, they’re just a trap for sniper fire. Because it’s surrounded by high ground covered in bushes and trees, there’s no doubt you’ll have at least two of your four team members will be snipers. And the other two (including you) will probably just slink around in the bushes the entire match and maybe, if you’re lucky, prove yourself useful.
There are ways you can be useful in Ghost War. You can scout with a drone or binoculars, marking enemies that you have a clear line of sight on. You can heal your buddies if they get taken down, or if you’ve leveled up enough, you can call in mortar strikes. But if you’re a grunt like me, you want to contribute by getting your hands dirty. This is frustrating if all of your teammates are snipers. There’s nothing more of a buzzkill than pushing forward and taking the offensive only to realize you’re the only fucking one that did, and congrats, you’re now surrounded by three hostiles and any hope of being bailed out is as dead as you are. This of course may not be a problem with a team of four friends communicating with each other, but with three randoms and me, we were doing well to just get a bad guy tagged and hope someone shot him.
There was a flash of white knuckled, exhilarating brilliance as I single-handedly defeated a three person squad by flanking them and taking them out one at a time to win the round. And while we ultimately lost the match, it was a moment where I thought I could actually get into this thing.
Unfortunately the downtime between rounds is a bit too long, and the game holds your XP progress hostage until the end of the match, so if anyone bails during the downtime, you’re forced to either sit and wait to see if anyone else joins, or back out and forfeit your progress. That sucks.
So far the PvP mode has some promise, but they need to bring back some options. Either that or introduce some new game modes (which I do think they plan on doing eventually). But for right now the game mode they have needs a bit of a shake-up. Or at least stop making me play the same two maps. What’s up with that?
