Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Ubisoft gives us streamlined solutions for most of the problems any third-person shooter would encounter. But a nonsensical storyline, monotonous missions, daft tactics, and a dozen other unpolished edges together makes Future Soldier a not all too impressive package.

Without a breadth of tactical options longstanding fans of the series will be disappointed in its change of approach, and while action fans will get some enjoyment out of its expansive arsenal and competent combat they'll surely find something more worthwhile and noteworthy elsewhere.

There were a few spots that I truly did enjoy, like the on-rails sections where you're escorting a VIP and shooting anyone you see with your pistol. These moments, though infrequent, were the highlights for me, though I'm not sure if that's just because the rest was mostly unmemorable. I was expecting many new mechanics or something to wow me, and aside from Gunsmith, nothing really did.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is far from broken or even being a bad game. It feels more disappointing than anything considering the pedigree of the franchise. Weird design choices and lack of polish really stick out in the single-player game, while the online will likely continue to thrive for months to come.

It's blunt and silly, and that really describes the entire game. A popcorn flick of a Tom Clancy game if ever there was one.

Not quite the sum of its parts thanks to awkward level design and a reliance on repetition. Technically sound, but the overall experience fails to hit the high notes.

Future Soldier suffers from a sense of split-personality. It tries to follow in the footsteps of the popular crowd, employing predictable set-pieces and hopelessly manufactured scenes of controversy that lack any intelligence.

Something of a disappointment then, consisting of a half-baked story that suffers from a lack of context or character, some pretty poor mission checkpoints, samey objectives and a surprising dearth of futuristic technology.

Occasionally ambitious but ultimately too afraid to deviate from the genre's well-worn formulas, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier feels like it's stuck in the past.

While the last half hour doesn't ruin Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, it is a disappointing coda to a game struggling to find a reason to exist. There are glimmers of Red Storm's previous dedication to authenticity and feel, but in a quest for a wider audience, Future Soldier loses sight of the series' earlier appeal, and struggles to find a new role.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier seems to suffer the CoD syndrome. In the main Campaign most of the events are clones of various situations already played with the Modern Warfare trilogy. The good multiplayer experience, anyway, is fair enough to grant a good amount of fun, both with friends or against perfect strangers.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier is not bad game; it's simply a bad Ghost Recon game.

While Ghost Recon Future Soldier is enjoyable enough, in a genre as heavily populated as modern tactical shooters 'enjoyable enough' no longer cuts it.