During this overcrowded quarter just before the deserted summer season, I found myself swimming in piles of sealed games waiting for me to dive in, and only one title managed to lure me to peel off that glorious plastic wrapping and take a whiff of those superb toxic fumes, and yes it is yet another shooter. Ghost Recon has to be one of the most renowned Tom Clancy series that has been in the shooter scene for quite a while now, and it's one of those few titles that really focuses on the comradery between tactical units. I have to be honest and admit that I never really liked the previous Ghost Recon titles, and they never really appealed to me, but Ubisoft seemed like they wanted to take the series to a whole new level and try to drift away from the stagnant mechanics from yesteryear.
Plot: The game is set in the near future and starts off with a Ghost team taking down a group of weapons smugglers in a secluded area in Central America. The team discovers a bomb in one the convoys which goes off upon its discovery and wipes out all the team leaving no survivors. A second Ghost team is assigned the task to discover who planted the dirty bomb and bring an end to their weapons trafficking.
Audio and Video: Let me start off this segment of the review by saying that just before jumping in ghost recon I played Max Payne and fell in love with the visual aspect of the game, so there is a tendency that after that experience my judgment is slightly impaired. The thing which pissed me off the most is having an extremely crappy intro to the video game, I mean Ubisoft invested a hefty amount of budget on the Live Action Trailer short movie, yet they failed to give half a rat’s ass about the intro to the game. The menus and cut scenes are heavily pixilated, with some screen tearing and crappy textures along the way during gameplay. The characters’ faces have a very creepy and unsettling look, which makes the game look really below standard, even though the equipment and uniforms are very well made. Although the weapon inspection and customization section is extremely cool, low resolution textures really spoil the crap out of it. When you decide to access the game you are asked to press the start button, wait for some loading, then asked to press the start button again, then wait for some more time before the main menu loads, what was the point of pressing start two times?! There is nothing much to say about the sound aspect of the game, I found nothing crappy in it, yet I found nothing spectacular about it either.
Gameplay: The game focuses heavily on team tactics and stealth take downs; you lead the team through several missions finding the best way to go through large numbers of enemies without drawing a lot of attention. You are equipped with several cool futuristic weapons which facilitate stealth moves and the pin pointing of enemy positions and fire power. When several opponents are grouped together, you can target several them at once and allocate one for every member of the team. The game does a good job when it comes to cover-based shooting, with smooth and flowing aiming and gun play, and also an improved cover system which allows shifting from one cover to another in a fast and smooth sweep.
Personal Experience: I thought this title would have excited me more, but to be honest I wasn’t amazed at any point, nor were my expectations met. After watching that high production trailer I would have imagined that they would have at least come back with this new installment in the series with a radical look that would at least match what other shooters have put on the table in the past year or so. All in all Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is just another shooter, with the same tired old story line, and a fair attempt to be unique with an innovative gameplay.
Overall Rating: 6/10
Written by Matthew C.