Giving Ghost Recon Wildlands A Second Chance

A stealth game lives and dies by its AI.

And boy! are the enemy's in GR:WL stupid!

There's already a better 3rd person tactical espionage action game with stunning graphics in an open world.

MGSV.

Stop trying to "wanna like" this average dead beat game.

I enjoyed GRWL, it wasn't perfect, but it was decent!

What the **** was with the unbearable input lag in this game? Made aiming and driving such a pain in the ass

This is why and a typical example why reviewers reviews are useless on deciding to buy a game or not. Never trust reviewers, they don't have any real integrity or merit. Reviews are overrated and should mostly be dismissed or at best just be used as a reference point or basic information for a game you are interested in.

So this is the reason Wildlands wasn't properly reviewed by this guy in the first place. FFS these people get paid to do this job.

Really enjoyed your thoughts on this Mike. I loved Wildlands as a stealth sandbox where I make my own stories. I agree one way Devs could go to improve the game is by leqning into deeper, more complicated storytelling topics, like your example of questioming if they are doing more harm than good by being there.

But I actually long for it to go more Mount and Blade Warband, where it doesn’t focus on a deep narrative, but rather lean into a more sandbox experience with deeper options for the player to build and develop their character and have greater impact on the world. Your faction idea would be perfect for this.

Ghost Recon started off as a methodical tactical game,

Now you need to be level 10 to throw a flash grenade.

Gamespot ads are 20 mins long lmao. I know you can skip it but...20 min ad?

I played thru Ghostlands last winter, and loved it. All round excellent game. And challenging. Prolly the most challenging, and yet fun, of recent Ubi games. I rank it higher than both ACO and FC5, both of which I've played a lot.

Many say Ghostlands is repetitive, but thats just not true. During my playthru, I encoutered very little repetitiveness. The game is much more diverse than, say ACO (and ACO, imo, is way too repetitive...) or FC5. I never got tired of it, and was always looking forward to more action.

Also, the map in Ghostlands is huge and absolutely gorgeous. I loved exploring it. Just brill.

So, Ghostlands is a game everyone should play. If they are up to the stiff challenge, that is. This is not laughably easy ACO or FC5, which you can beat with your eyes closed.

All these second chance stories aren't sponsored, are they ?

love it, keep making these!

No thanks. I thought you would travel all over the globe like the original trailer told us.

I tried it when it was up for a free weekend and it was the most by-the-numbers game I think I remember playing at the time. Like I've played this shit before dozens of times within the last 5 years... enough already.

Two things I remember about the game. One of my squadmates stood behind "cover" and an enemy patrol literally walked right in front of him in the first mission of the game, both in plain sight of each other, and nobody reacted to anything. From a gameplay perspective I suppose that's fine because if I have to have AI, they better not fucking break cover because of shit AI... but the immersion is gone and the entire game as an experience takes a hit. The other is that I think cops take forever to go away... or maybe that's faulty memory. I remember something taking forever to go away so I could resume whatever it is that I'm doing.

Great game to begin with, so why this second chance BS?

~4:00 I hear this all the time about Ghost Recon. People need to stop asking for an ALL stealth Ghost Recon. That's not the point of stealth in Ghost Recon. You use stealth to conduct RECON on the enemy and then you make a plan and an ambush. If you want full stealth then play Splinter Cell!

Underrated game.

The game doesn't feel like it got the name "Ghost Recon" stamped on it for the sake of name recognition like they did with Siege. That makes me really happy. It plays like a sequel to all your favorite Ghost Recon games. A little from the original Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon2, Future Soldier and Advanced Warfighter all in an open world environment. The game comes packed with all the customization a pc gamer wants. If you don't like something, see if you can't change it in settings. Even things like enemy markers can be turned off. The gameplay gets as tactical or layed back as you want it to be. I really enjoy this game.

This game also gets really good updates.They added an entire pvp game as an update! And then they don't ignore their pve fans to focus on pvp.

I kinda get what Mike's saying in this, but I think it's overblown.

I'm wrapping up my 2nd full completion of The Witcher 3, and it has stressed in my mind the difference between these types of games.

Wildlands had done a pretty good job of balancing the "fun factor" with the dark side of the drug world. Honestly, if you say "Zelda BOTW has more HEART"... yeah, but it doesn't really address any heavy-hitting cultural issues either. Same with GTA5... its world is expertly fleshed out, but it addresses society's issues (racism, misogyny, drugs, alcoholism, crime, mental illness, etc.) with tongue in cheek, not seriously. And games that have successfully taken more serious approaches to such issues do so within the more conducive structure of a linear, cinematic framework (Last of Us, That Dragon Cancer, for example).

You could say Wildlands and Mafia 3 get the same criticism here. Both touch on serious societal issues, but leave it superficial enough that you can still have fun within the game world. In their defense, it's no easy task to mix in equal parts non-linear player agency, explosive fun, and serious social commentary into an action game (let alone, a shooter)... perhaps impossible. It's the trifecta, and is RARELY every achieved (I MIGHT argue Red Dead Redemption came close), but it gets even harder when you design in the possibility for pure stealth OR guns-blazing. It's virtually impossible to make a game that has both the emergent gameplay of a Metal Gear Solid 5 AND the impactful and realistic story beats of a Last Of Us.

RPGs get closer to what Mike's wanting. Games like The Witcher, Fallout, Skyrim, Horizon ZD, they tackle some serious issues, but their non-linear stories often get nonsensical as a result. And making any of them into a "tactical shooter" might have negated any progress toward Mike's end goal here.

End of the day, while it shares some elements with the genre, GR Wildlands ISN'T an RPG (just like Assassin's Creed Origins isn't an RPG), so it won't offer the depth that say a Witcher 3 does, in player agency, story beats, etc.

The gameplay aspect is fine but the writing and characters in Wildlands are actively and distractingly BAD!! Your squad is insufferable. They say the phrase "and baby makes three" hundreds of times throughout the game when you tag a third enemy. The villains in the game are also insufferable. It's like fan fiction from the movie Sicario.

Can you still enjoy the game? Yes of course, but it is really a missed opportunity, considering the Tom Clancy name used to be known for strong story. They guy was an author after all.

The meat of this game is on playing it with people?

The recent update has caused me to lose certain weapon parts and upgrades. Thanks Ubisoft. Thanks a lot.

Great game. PS4 Pro version with a 4k display runs and looks better than a high end PC. I know, i have both!