Ghost Recon: Wildlands Closed Beta Impressions

Ubisoft has been known to develop massive open world games with the Far Cry series and Watchdogs. Of Course, Ubisoft knows that their shooters are well-known and fun to play as well, that’s why Ghost Recon: Wildlands has the best of both worlds. The open world nature of game forces players to get creative in combat with the environment. The shooting aspect of the game is that last piece of the puzzle. Shooting in this game can be used in many ways, you can stealthily kill a group of enemies, or go in guns blazing. From the two hours played in the closed beta, Ubisoft is mixing the two the success of the open world and the shooter genre to create a beautiful world with a lot to do, but doesn’t add to their formula.

Character Creations/ Customization

The character creation menu was limited in this beta, though has enough options to make the character you want. Just like most character creation menus, you can change hairstyles, eye colour, outfits, and tattoos. The most robust customization is the fully customizable facial, from the scars to the skin tone, they even have pre-built the facials if you can’t find the face you like.

When getting out to the open world you will find loot and from the loot you can customize your loadout. To add enhancements to your weapons you must find an ammo box, then you will have the option to change loadouts. These enhancements will improve your weapons and won’t add a lot to your stats, like RPGs.

The only way to improve your stats are to level and add skills. These skills aren’t as effective as enhancement to the weapons, but will add additional stats like heath, stamina, and drone distance.

There are a lot of enhancements and weapons in the open world, exploring is rewarding with all the things you can find.

My First Hour in Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ Open World

First, this game is best played with friends and can be played solo, I’ve played with random players using the matchmaking and is still fun. Matchmaking and joining friends are quick and easy, simply hold the button and you’re joined. When finding my first group I tried to do the first mission, but couldn’t get everyone to cooperate. Then just roamed around looking at the landscapes and realizing that this world is gigantic, the world is my sandbox and I should use it to my advantage. So, I restarted and found a new group to play with.

Once I found them it was a better experience, everyone was close together so communicating wasn’t too difficult. Once we were on the same page, we just explored and saw multiple outposts. This is where I had the most fun. I had options to go about this, either bring out my drone to scope and mark enemies to then stealth them or everyone go in loud and deadly. The setup of “what should we do?”, and “how do we approach this?” is the most enjoyable moment. This reminds me of Metal Gear Solid V and all the preparations I did before going in the battlefield but with co-op.

Once we were done taking over outposts, driving vehicles and planes was the next thing we did and it was a lot fun. It’s also great getting to one place to another, but that can be done using the fast travel system. This system must be used while you have your drone out, and aiming at one of your allies to fast travel.

Playing with your friends is the best way to experience this open world and all the surprises it will give you.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands has Some Great Moments with Friends, but Doesn’t Introduce Anything New.

Even playing with a group in matchmaking I had fun. Running around and infiltrating outposts with other players is satisfying when you can cooperate with your group and pull it off. There are great cooperative ideas that I can see a lot of players are going to love. What fell off was these ideas were already done, the only thing that is different is this game has the multiplayer layer of those kind of games. I said that this felt like Metal Gear Solid V -- which is an amazing game, and it does feel like it. The scoping, the marking, and the sneaking these two games have the similar mechanics. Overall I want to play this game but only with friends, but as a solo player I don’t think that this game will hold up because it has the same formula of most of these games.