Hunt the terrorists through the globe with Red Storm, Ubisoft Paris, and Ubisoft Bucharest's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
For more than a decade, Tom Clancy's have always been the name for authentic military games. One of their best is Ghost Recon series. In 2012, 5 years after Advanced Warfighter 2, Red Storm and Ubisoft release a new Ghost Recon game that share the same future theme as the previous game. Can this tactical 3rd person shooter continue the series tradition? or is it trying too hard to be a Gears of Wars competitor?
The Story (6/10)
+ engaging opening
+ badass new 4 Ghost characters with of course the typical cool as ice guy, angry guy (that also served as the comic relief), nice guy, and the wise leader guy.
- confusing storytelling that made me wondering what is the connection between taking down a general in Africa, capturing an arms dealer in Pakistan, and saving a president in Russia?
- some cutscenes exist only to show military cliche like the bad relationship between Ghosts and less special soldier or showing the human side of the Ghosts.
The Gameplay (8/10)
+ one of the best and complete cover based 3rd person shooter mechanics with sticky manual cover, lean and peak, shoulder swap, cover to cover sprint, iron sight/optic aim view, and blind fire.
+ pretty smooth control although there is somekind of sticky aim assist that can be a bit annoying.
+ realistic tone with pretty realistic character movement and realistic feel to the weapon. Don't expect a small recoil and super fast Call of Duty style reload in this game. You will die or downed easily too after a couple of bullets.
+ great weapon customization in Gunsmith where you can customize almost every parts of your weapon including the gas system, the barrel, and the muzzle which is not so often available in other games. All in cool UI and exploding gun parts animation.
+ useful future gadgets. Sensor and drone are useful for collecting intels while various optics like the xray magnetic and night vision will help you see through wall, smoke grenade, sand storm, and darkness.
+ cloak suit is essential in stealth especially in daylight which you will do often in story mode. You can move freely with it as long as you stay in chrouch position. The good thing is you are not completely invisible, if you move too close to the enemy, they will still see you.
+ the campaign have enough variety. There are some areas where you need absolute stealth (detected means autofail) and in other you can go guns blazing. Some maps are linier while other have many routes and flanking opportunities. There are also some vehicle sections
+ Guerrilla is a nice horde mode which in my opinion the only horde mode that can be as fun as Hordes in Gears of Wars 2.
- you are no longer the Ghost leader so you can't give order your team unless for the sync shoot and ask help to supress one enemy. That's why your team will always go in auto pilot. While they will never get detected by the enemies, more than often they will break the immersion by cheating. Their cloak will always on even when they are sprinting and they can move as close as possible to the enemy without getting noticed.
- there are some parts of the mission where the game will hold your hand so tight through an already a walk in the park mission. For example on the first mission, after you aquire the HVT, your character will go auto pilot and all you have to do is aim and shoot like an on-rail shooter, you don't even need to RELOAD! Another example is the annoying slow-mo breach and clear section which so out of place in a tactical shooter like Ghost Recon.
- for some reason the most advanced and high tier soldier like Ghost doesn't have access to all the weaponry in the world until he do some mission first.
- the HUD -while look so high tech- can be a bit crowded. Some of them like the weird blue retangle on other ghosts is extremely useless
The Graphic (8/10)
+ the YETI engine works pretty damn good for the ps3 version with cool dynamic lightning, high res textures, awesome particle effects, and probably one of the most realistic explosion effects
+ pretty smooth framerate altough it will heavily drop in 2 player split screen mode
+ nice animation and detailed character model especially the Ghosts
+ cool transition between scripted cutscene to in-game gameplay
- superbly ugly character facial animation with no lip sync at all
- on cover, your character can merge with other Ghosts
- pop up textures
The Sound (7/10)
+ nice weapon sound effect
+ pretty awesome dubstep score
- forgetable performances by the casts
Verdict (7.15/10)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a solid 3rd person shooter but it's pretty obvious that this game is geared even more toward action junkie with the absent of almost every tactical commands for your squad. It's a streamline version of the original Ghost Recon