Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Ghost Recon: Wildlands doesn’t feel like a sequel, although it goes a step forward and brings us a humongous open world full of options and a really attractive cooperative mode.

Repetitive gameplay loops aside, the cooperative tactical variety and vast open world make Ghost Recon Wildlands a singular experience unlike any other shooter on the market. Wildlands may not succeed with all its ambitions, but it’s a compelling direction for the series that points to a fertile future.

A huge open world and an addictive co-op gameplay with great player freedom are amongst the highlights in Ubisoft's new game, but the single-player experience feels under-developed and unsatisfying. Mainly recommended to gamers willing to play online with friends.

Gorgeous and impressively focused for its scale. Ubi's best open-world in years. [May 2017, p.83]

Despite the noted flaws and imperfections that permeate some facets of this game, I can easily see this title draining many months and moons from one's life, and you'll be smiling most of the way. If Ubisoft can improve on the quality that is Ghost Recon Wildlands, the future looks incredibly bright. That being said, our focus is on the current game, and overall it is one that can be very enjoyable, and if you find the right online players to play with, the game can be even better. Tom Clancy fans owe themselves the time to check this game out, as it is good enough to satisfy a gamer's craving for action, stealth, and a very large world to explore.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands gives you all the tools needed to have a lot of fun with friends, despite some design flaws, minor bugs, an inconsistent narrative and a somewhat repetitive structure. As a solo experience, it is solid but too big to keep you interested, and with random people it can be too chaotic to enjoy. It all comes down to how are you going to play and who are you going to play it with.

But if you’re looking for a really big, extravagant sandbox game that’s great fun solo and hilarious in co-op, don’t be shy. Wildlands isn’t Ghost Recon as we know it, but it’s the wildest party in town.

As expected, Wildlands is at its best when players are on voice chat with a group of friends and the team is coming up with creative ways to take down cartel bosses by crashing planes into their mansions or picking off their guards with the help of drone intel. Although the game does stand-up in solo mode with fairly reliable AI partners, the massive world to explore becomes a little lonely and boring without some actual friends along for the ride.

Ghost Recon Wildlands brings us to an immense open world set in Bolivia, where we can explore and make the operative proud of our Ghost Squad. Its cooperative for 4 players makes it a very attractive game, yet its technical section and its bugs prevent it from being a totally satisfactory experience.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands can provide countless hours of thrilling sandbox shooter gameplay, but co-op is needed to make the most of it. Its massive, numerous and diverse locales are often gorgeous to behold, and navigating them tactfully with a good co-op team is a blast. Just don't expect to have as much fun in single player, as your team limits your mission methods due to shaky AI and a lack of deep squad commands.

This huge, wide-open shooter constantly shows its flaws in its mission variety and vehicle physics, but its strong, sandbox-style gameplay and seamless co-op kept me coming back for more madness. If you must repeat experiences over and over, you could far worse than helicopter chases, assassination missions, or drug busts gone wildly wrong.

Completing the same type of mission over and again does wear on you. Still, there is fun to be had with Wildlands before the feeling of repetition sets in.

This game is one that requires you to play with friends in order to extract the fun out of it. In single player, Wildlands is passable, but in multiplayer it shines. While the missions don’t do much in terms of variety, in playing with others, you find yourself expecting the unexpected. But the real hero is the vast open world, providing you with freedom to approach each objective in any way you wish. Yet while the open world giveth, it also taketh away. A lack of density is obvious, and meandering becomes the most frequent activity that you do.

Basically, Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a good game. It offers you a big wide world with many missions and possibilities. It combines the tactical gameplay we all know and love from other Ghost Recon games, with all of these elements spread out on the beautiful map of Bolivia. But its repetitiveness, forgettable story and the trouble finding a decent team make its problems more obvious than ever.

It seems crazy to say this, but Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a little too big for its own good. It’s hard not to admire the time and effort that went into crafting this truly massive and beautiful open world, but there’s simply too much copy and paste going on when it comes to the content within; the side missions especially, but also the story scenarios. While the initial hours of Wildlands are thrilling, repetition ultimately seeps in and as such you’re enjoyment of the game may depend on whether you have a friend or three to play through the campaign with. Ubisoft has done a tremendous job supporting a pair of other recent Tom Clancy titles post-launch – Rainbow Six: Siege and The Division – so even if you’re not sold on Wildlands as it stands, I highly recommend keeping your sights trained on the game as the developers tweak the experience and eventually add the competitive multiplayer suite.

Having hundreds of different weapon mods and customisation options are great if you’re a gun nut, but when everyone dies after a few hits it starts to lose its appeal. Instead it’s the stuff where strapping a vehicle or chopper with C4 and letting it glide into enemy territory before setting it off should have been encouraged more in the overall design. In the end, Ghost Recon Wildlands suffers because it plays things a little too safe and fails to make proper use of the gorgeous fictional world of Bolivia in a way that offers more than solid stealth shooting, fun co-op, and small bursts of player-created fun.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a rather fun co-op game. It’s made for co-op and should be played in co-op. While I’m against the solo play, I will say that solo players will have some rough times trying to get the AI to cooperate with you. But with a squad of four players, tagging enemies, syncing shots, and doing crazy stunts like jumping out of a helicopter onto and enemy base just to see what will happen is what really makes this game special. There are some issues here and there, and while the game can be difficult, it feels fair for the most part. The run and gun shooter fans may be put off from it, but I highly suggest Wildlands to players that are looking for a fun co-op shooter with some more tactical aspects. There’s a lot here for anyone who likes making their own fun in a giant sandbox.