Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands PC Review

Ubisoft's most anticipated game of 2017 Tom Clancy The Ghost Recon: Wildlands an open world tactical shooter with multiplayer is finally here and here is our review of the PC version of the game.

At First Glance the Game would seem a lot more confusing than it really is. The Santa Blanca cartel, Rebels and Unidad forces can seem like they are fighting each other and you as well but all these factions will quickly make sense as you progress within the game. While a lot of games tie you to a linear story despite being open world ,Ghost Recon: Wildlands actually has no such restriction right from the start you can  freely choose any boss mission and explore any area without the whole of Bolivia chasing you because your level is low. The Game in fact has one of the largest maps we have seen in any game with many location featuring beautifully designed environment, carefully themed texture, lightning and sound effects. So there is a good chance that most of the time you would be stunned by the pixel beauty and marvel at the hard work done by the Ubisoft team.

The Story is quite simple involving a drug cartel (Santa Blanca) producing and supplying cocaine  all over the world and your job, as a member of the US Spec Ops working with CIA officer Karen Bowman, is sabotaging their whole operation with the help of your 3 teammates and the rebels led by Pac Katari to free Bolivia from the grasp of Santa Blanca.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands offers a lot of character customization like hair, body details, clothes, accessories etc. You can also customize your weapons by adding a different scope, changing the trigger type from single fire or burst fire, adding a grenade launcher , and also adding a suppressor if you want to go full stealth mode. The game also provides you the option of changing the paint of your weapons . All of these customization allow players to build a player that's not only efficient in game but looks cools too. And since this game has a co-op mode, all these customisations help you make your character look unique from other players.

As for gameplay, Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a tactical shooter that is played in third person mostly but you can switch to first person perspective quite easily for precision. The game offers  a large collection of weapons ranging from handguns, compact machine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, light machine guns, submachine guns, shotguns, frag grenades, mines, C4, flare gun, flash grenade and diversion lure (phew!).

The game also enables the use of  night vision and thermal camera if you like to take advantage of night. On top if this you are provided with a drone that can help you recon an area from a safe distance before making a tactical choice to enter an enemy infested area. There are even more types of drones available for distraction or lethal action.

Rebels can be also called for backup during an intense fight to overwhelm the enemy with gunfire, they also provide additional help like providing you a vehicle in and out of combat, drop mortars on enemy position, recon an area where enemies are hard to detect, or just create a diversion so you and your team can slip in the enemy base without anybody noticing.

The best part is that the game lets you use these weapons and tactics in any way you like and approach the mission any way you like rather than guiding you all the way and this makes the gameplay much more fun.

What’s  an open world without any means of transportation? Ghost Recon: Wildlands has may different ways you can travel by ground, air, or by water. Different type of vehicles are available like cars, bike, helicopter, tank, plane or boats. The Thrill of riding a bike down a hill, or driving a car with a mounted gun to take down enemy vehicles, travelling through the vast rivers using boats, flying on top of huge mountain, dodging a missile fired at you or skydiving from a plane and opening your chute right before you hit the ground - all of this experience will keep piquing your interest for many hours of your gameplay.

As is the trend of next-gen open world games, Ghost Recon Wildlands is no exception and has a huge amount of collectables. Cartel medals, weapon cases, accessory cases, skill points and Kingslayer documents are spread out all over the world.

Apart for that you have to collect resources like fuel, medication, food and comms for upgrading your skills. With the skill tree you can upgrade your weapons, drones , physical capabilities, squad and rebel supports. Even though these can be upgraded, they are not enforced on you and you can still complete mission without upgrading any of the skills but it sure does help if have skill points in things like bullet resistance, revival speed, drone battery and range and stable aim if you like taking enemies from a distance.

When it come to mission, this  part of the game where most gamers would be disappointed. The missions when compared to most third person shooting game are quite easy. The bosses have little resistance and are fairly easily captured or killed. Even though there are a lot of bosses and missions you will start feeling a sense of repetitiveness as most boss tactics remain largely the same. To keep things interesting Ghost Recon: Wildlands also offers a co-op mode where you can  play with random online players or with your friends, which makes completing missions much more fun as you share some awesome and very funny moments together.

Now the game is not without bugs that are sometimes fun to watch and sometimes quite annoying like getting stuck within an area and being unable to move .

So is the game good or bad? We would say it is somewhere in the middle but slightly leaning towards the good side. The huge and detailed map definitely deserves applause, the game mechanics are also good except for a few bugs here and there but the experience is hampered by a feeble storyline and repetitiveness. While it might not be the best game of the year it still is a good way to kill time and deserves a playthrough if only to admire the beauty of a virtual Bolivia. There is also a DLC which will be  released  for Tom Clancy The Ghost Recon: Wildlands called the Narco Road which features 15 campaign mission , new weapons , new vehicles like monster truck , even cars with nitrous and we are quite excited to experience that and see what new cards do they bring to the table.