Ghost Recon: Wildlands Impressions (PS4)

Opinion Piece

Introduction

Ghost Recon: Wildlands is the newest open world, tactical, third-person shooter from publisher Ubisoft. The game was released on March 7, 2017, and since then we have played roughly 5 hours of it, on the PlayStation 4. Our experience with the game so far has been something we felt like discussing so decided we should write a quick article describing the time we have spent with the game.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands can be purchased on Amazon for $59.99

Opinion

Our entire play experience with Ghost Recon: Wildlands was with a teammate, my brother, so we have to start off by saying that playing with him could have slanted our view of the game. Although our impression of the game will still be valid as long as you have at least one close friend to play with. Now with that caveat out of the way let's get into what we think about the game so far.

After playing a handful of hours of Ghost Recon: Wildlands we have come to two conclusions.First, the gameplay is tremendously fun and dynamic which allows for many random funny and exciting moments to occur. Second, the story is almost nonexistent and only serves the purpose of stringing together the high octane moments of gameplay. With that being said, however, we are only a little while into the game and cannot commit to the quality of the story in the later hours. What we can commit on, though, is that even with this lack of story, we found the hours that we spent with the game to be incredibly enjoyable, and that's coming from someone who had no interest in the game at all when it was being previewed. The only reason we got the game was because my brother is a big Tom Clancy fan and brought the game for me so we could play together.

So with all that being said, we would now like to take the time and describe, in brief, the 5 or so hours of gameplay experience we have had with the game. When we loaded up the game for the first time we got to create our character and to Ubisoft's credit there were a decent amount of options available, and we were able to make a fairly robust custom character. Then we joined my brothers' party, loaded into his world, and this is when we encountered our first problem with the game. When we loaded in we found that we could not see each other's characters, so we had to exit the game and load back it to get it to work. This bug has occurred three times during our five hours of gameplay, and while not game breaking, this bug is more than a minor inconvenience, and really takes you out of the experience of playing the game.

After we got everything working we were off to the races, and soon discovered the magic of Ghost Recon: Wildlands, its gameplay. Each moment in the game feels unique and full of adrenaline, and most of these moments are unscripted and come from just how you and your friends interact with each other in the game world. From blowing up cars to crashing helicopters to getting into massive gun fights, the moment to moment intensity of the games insanely addictive gameplay is what keeps drawing me back for more.

We think the key word to take out of that last paragraph is friends because that is the secret to what makes this game enjoyable. Without at least one person to play with, this game could easily become a mind-numbing chore, especially given the idiotic mumblings of your AI companions. Luckily for me, as well as anyone who plays this game with a friend, if you play with a friend all the AI companions will disappear and only spew their ramblings through a headset, which can thankfully be disabled in the options menu under volume, you're welcome. Without a friend, however, this game would definitely not be worth playing, as it doesn't offer enough on its own to keep the player engaged, without the assistance from the shenanigans performed by your buddies.

Conclusion