Ghost Recon: Wildlands had its open beta over the weekend, so before the tidal wave made up of March releases comes crashing down on us, we decided to sink a fair few hours into it. This isn't the finished game of course, but Ubisoft's open world shooter definitely shows promise - particularly when enjoyed with friends.
Wildlands plays like a mix of Metal Gear Solid V and The Division, although it's not as detailed as the former, and it's not as much of a role-playing game as the latter. On the surface, it's another rather generic title that's been squeezed out by the Ubisoft open world-making machine, but once you get stuck in, you start to realise that it's actually got a decent amount of depth. And yes, this is coming from an author who's been wholly uninterested from the moment that the project was revealed.
Playing as a special forces Ghost agent, your mission is to hunt cartel leaders across Bolivia and put them down. The country's in chaos as various factions struggle for control, and while the nation serves as a solid setting, the core themes of rebels, revolutions, and dictators are things that we've seen way too many times before for the story to have any kind of impact. Perhaps the full release will fare better, but if we're being totally honest, we're not expecting it to.
Fortunately, you won't be paying much attention to the plot anyway - it's the gameplay that really holds Wildlands together. Again, it's certainly not the most original template, but it presents a satisfying mix of shooting, open world traversal, and stealth. Missions can be tackled any way that you like, and it always feels as though the game's throwing interesting opportunities at you. You could storm an enemy outpost with an armoured vehicle, parachute in from a helicopter, or completely map out the base with your scouting drone before sneaking in unseen.
As with past Ghost Recon titles, the military gadgets at your disposal open up a wealth of gameplay possibilities. As you complete missions and generally just play through the game, you level up and gain access to a wide array of useful equipment, and everything from explosives to your aforementioned drone can be upgraded to better suit your needs. By the end of the beta, we had unlocked quite a few perks, many of them giving us an amplified appreciation of the game's open-ended mission design.
Unsurprisingly, though, Wildlands truly shines when you play with friends. You and up to three buddies - or three strangers, if you like - can tackle the entire title cooperatively, and with a bit of communication, you can pull off some fist-pumping moments. For example, we stumbled across a dynamic cartel smuggling deal taking place in the middle of the Bolivian countryside. It was dark out so we switched to night vision view and quietly crawled through the surrounding woodland. Once we had the targets circled, we took aim and counted to three, and on three, we popped their heads before moving in and securing the goods. It was precision at its finest.
Obviously that was just a small encounter, but it was incredibly satisfying all the same. If you can imagine that on a larger scale - taking out an entire base full of enemies without making a sound - then you can glimpse the game's potential.
All in all, we had a surprising amount of fun with the Wildlands open beta. We went in expecting a standard Ubisoft open-worlder with an uninspired narrative - and to some extent that's what we got - but ultimately, the gameplay was easily engaging enough to keep us glued for hours at a time. The finished product launches on the 7th March in both North America and Europe, and despite our criticisms, we're genuinely looking forward to playing more.
Did you try the Ghost Recon: Wildlands open beta over the weekend? What did you think of it? Go ahead and spot some tangos in the comments section below.
Comments 21
I'm really enjoying it so far. I will definetely buy it after a moderate price drop.
I was really looking forward to this but I cancelled my pre order since the closed beta. I gave it a second chance and tried the open beta but I was really underwhelmed by it.
I don't know why though. I just can't get into it.
Nioh keeping me busy and with Horizon and Mass Effect coming I don't need this game and don't care about missing it now.
I gave it a whirl just because I had nothing else to play and I enjoyed it. I played solo with ai teammates and the synchronised takedowns were so satisfying, I could see it being even better with co-op buddies. The enemy ai was very suspect and the vehicle handling was a bit rubbish but its shooting felt pretty good, very reminiscent of The Division. I may pick it up later on this year.
I played the beta and I'm still 50/50 whether I'll get it or not, i really want to like the game because im a huge gr fan. The bad. Driving mechanics SUCK and is Unrealistic AF. Helicopter controls are the worst i ever played ina video game. Game is too easy, i had to bump up the difficulty and had way more fun n satisfaction. Im not really a co-op type of person because i rather play at my own pace n do my own things + having a 7month daughter requires my attention on n off throughout my playing time, so i need to take a lot of breaks n pauses. With that said, i really like gr franchise do you think its worth picking it up for the single player non co-op experience? Does the game get harder after doing more missions n progressing through the story? I only did a few main n side missions. If not i really would love if they have trophies for beating the game on the hardest difficulty, that'll force me to play on hard and enjoy the game a lot more... Sorry about the long post
Tried it with a couple friends and it was honestly the most fun I've had in a co op game in awhile. I think I'll end up picking this up after I finish the great March Trinity (Horizon, Zelda, Andromeda) so probably around June. Should get a price drop by then and will have some bugs patched out.
I played over the weekend and deleted it within 2 hours.
A standard ubisoft game for me. They try to do much but its just far too rough around the edges. shooting is fine, driving is poor, performances from the actors are wooden and its the usual travel all over the place to pad the game out.
No thanks.
I tried a couple of Ghost Recons on other systems but could never get into them.When they announced this game I was totally uninterested...until a work mate told me to try the Beta..and now I'm loving it.
Only thing I found annoying was flying the helicopter..don't know if it's just me but I found it terrible to fly the damn thing.Other than that it's gone from a game I had zero interest in to a game I will be buying..after a price drop
@ApostateMage Yeah, I kinda liked how the weapons felt but not the vehicles. As for AIs, I got ran over three times (on separate occasions) by non-enemy NPCs in vehicles when I was on the road during a gun fight. lol
Kudos to Ubisoft for allowing a sneak play-through of an up coming release I played a couple of hours might of played more if it was not for free multiplayer weekend which incidentally had me marching to the nearest shop that had 12 months P.S.Plus to purchase.
That said I did enjoy Wastelands vast open world which you could figure out by the map.
It will not be a day 1 purchase it will have to wait just like the new Resi has to, Horizon Zero dawn payed way to that.
I only played a couple hours, but I felt like being 'open world' didn't do the game any favors. I was constantly driving back and forth between location (with terrible vehicle physics I might add). Did I miss a fast travel button somewhere?
I really enjoyed my time with it. I preordered the deluxe edition. I had fun dressing my guy up as Captain Mitchell from Advanced Warfighter 2 complete with UCP camo!
I downloaded the beta and was excited to play it. But I didn't end up having time.
The main thing I want to know... Can the blood and profanity be turned off?
playing the beta killed all interest in this game for me. i enjoyed ghost recon future soldier, but they've taken the ghost recon formula and then ubisoft-ed the hell out of it. just felt like a mish-mash of watch dogs, far cry, division... the open world doesn't help it at all, especially when the driving is rubbish, and the chopper/plane controls are mindboggling awful. i don't like most driving games, nor flying/flight games, so i don't want those mechanics crowbarred badly into a shooter. i think a more defined mission structure similar to future soldier would have suited it a lot more. it just felt like a waste of solid shooting mechanics.
@sketchturner Can't turn the blood off as far as I know. As for the swears, you could always turn the voice volume down to zero, but I know that's not ideal.
I tried it for the sake of trying a temporary demo it is; never paid much attention to this genre before. But where I assumed another linear shooter (I hadn't heard much of the game before that), the open world feature came as a nice surprise and having plenty of vehicles at my disposal... what can I say, scale and driving is what I love GTA series for, and it's naturally my cup of tea in other open world games on top of my general curiosity for the genre. Seriously, PS4 seems to have shaped into a platform of open world games, and I'm not one to complain. Spent most of the time just driving/flying around (again, wish it had first person camera for driving, but oh well), hunting down intel and skill points more than enemies, although I did engage in a number of fights. I expectedly suck at those, but the rifle did prove surprisingly effective at long range and I also like how tagged enemies are tracked on even while you're behind a cover. The plot is nothing shocking so far but the chats between the four Ghosts can be fun (like one of your teammates pleading for no spoilers about a sports game he's spent ages downloading and the others trolling him with all kinds of "final scores" spoiled) and discharging for the tension of the situation overall. The graphics are detailed... sometimes so detailed that I could barely see anything while crouching onward in the grass. Talk about graphics getting in the way of gameplay! XD
Overall, Ubisoft still has me more curious about Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs, but this is a game I'll keep in mind for the future and might actually buy someday, my usual lack of interest in the genre notwithstanding.
@NathanUC you might have, actually. I never used one (nor wanted to because I found driving actually fun), but IIRC there was something like "fast travel" popping up on the map screen at times.
@nhSnork I know I was able to fast travel to the safe houses or w/e, but usually those were still pretty far from objectives. Riding the dirt bike was laughably bad.. like Skyrim mountain horse bad. I'm certainly the minority, but I miss when Ghost Recon was proper difficult/'realistic'.
@NathanUC There was a fast travel option. I discovered it after playing 3 hours, but it's there
@NathanUC Dirt bike? Rough in scaling rocky obstacles but otherwise quite effective in my experience - to the point where I used it in some time-limit side quests with more success than a helicopter, all despite a very off-road terrain. If anything felt somewhat tedious to me, it's sedan cars which, while not unpredictably, could be quite a challenge to keep on the road in bad weather. If we start blatantly nitpicking, I suppose I could use more, hmm, compact u-turns and more responsive handbrake as well, but I'm beginning to sound rather fanbrained here already. And I've already mentioned first person camera for driving... man, did GTA 5 spoil me in a matter of weeks? XD
Tough luck if the game didn't meet your expectations, but I've never been into nor tried Tom Clancy's games before, so I have no franchise history experience to compare this game to. Perhaps that factors into my appreciation as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed this game, yes the driving is unrealistic, yes the helicopter takes a lot to get used to but if you can overlook this then overall it's a great game. I loved scouting out the bases and then working out how to pick off the enemy undetected using sync shoots which being fair was a different challenge in each location keeping the gameplay interesting. I completed both districts twice and I'm really looking forward till the full version comes out. I found the best way to explore/play is to find all the yellow information locations to open up the main missions, which most of the time reveals the white information locations on the map to pick up the locations of the weapon crates, weapon upgrades, rebel supply, rebel upgrades, skill points and specialised medals. I then completed all the main missions except for the final boss missions (leaving them for last). I then mopped up all the side missions and unexplored locations before finishing off the bosses, this saved me from having to visit any area more than once. Thanks Ubisoft
The beta sux end of and it's more like GTA5 than The Division When you start jump oin a vehicle and drive in a straight line to your objective ala GTA5 style, NO mountain No ravine No river not even a building will get in your way. It sux. And the AI is dumb throw in being able to fast travel at any time to your team mate's and we have a very casual affair on our hand's.
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