Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Phantoms

Classes and skills are well-balanced, and even though you’ll cycle through the small map selection quickly, they offer enough possibilities to stave off fatigue until Ubisoft adds more arenas. With more modes and maps, Phantoms would be a formidable offering, but it’s worth dipping into until then.

Considering this is completely free to play, Phantoms has a lot to offer in terms of tight controls, nifty cooperation and a neat ranking system. Given the fact that it will keep evolving, it looks like fans will have good reason to stay.

Ghost Recon Online is a great quality game, a fun multiplayer shooter with one problem: the lack of contents.

It's a fun, competitive multiplayer shooter that stands alongside its paid sibling. Now if only more people would learn to play the damn thing.

It's basically the same game as Ghost Recon Online but with not so many more maps: a third person shooter that aims to be tactical without being able to provide fun for more than a few hours. It deserves to be tried only because it's free and nothing else.

A well designed game totally let down by the software and structure supporting it. This could have been a must-play. [Nov 2012, p.100]

This free-to-play shooter from Ubisoft looks quite good, when compared to its competitors - Ghost Recon Online has great quality and a fresh, engrossing gameplay that is full of emotions. Unfortunately - good impression is damaged by a lack of polish. The game is imbalanced and clearly favors those choosing to pay, and these things can throw some players off. A few more months of testing would do this game good. In time it will probably be better, but right now it's a bit mediocre.

It's a small game which can be fun if you play with your friends. But other than that it offers nothing that will keep you playing. The different classes offer a nice change from your typical shooter but the poor balance during a match really spoils the fun. People won't stick around simply because it's free.

Ghost Recon Online has a great map design and matchmaking problem. Too many matches are ruined by the massive presence of snipers. Potentially it is a great game, but is ruined by its ambitions.

I’m torn. I really like the core gameplay of Ghost Recon: Phantoms and see it being even more fun with friends. But, there’s just not enough here and the frustrating micro-transactions only make it all the more disappointing.

Ghost Recon Online is and average free-to-play shooter. The game should be appropriate for those who want something that requires more tactics than Call of Duty, but do enjoy a high pace. Unfortunately the maps and classes don't fulfill the balance-requirements that many hardcore PC-gamers will have.

A perfectly decent game that lacks variety. It's worth a look now, but if we see some new maps and game modes in the coming months, those should buoy Ghost Recon Online up significantly.

The market for shooters is so saturated that issues such as those detailed above could be terminal and it is not enough just to rely on the Tom Clancy brand to pull people in. There are some great elements to this game and you can certainly see it engrossing players, particularly with the abilities and tactics. But overall, more work must be done and hopefully Ubisoft is treating this beta as a learning exercise before full launch.

Its designers have crafted a decent team shooter that, though small and imperfect, offers an alluring, dramatic kernel amid its see-sawing action beats. But the way it's been carved up and served doesn't inspire much appetite.