Ghost Recon Wildlands Review

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC via Steam
U.S. Release Date: March 7, 2017

Oh what a brave new world this is.  Once upon a Tom Clancy game was nothing more than a name slapped on an overly ambitious video game to garnish a higher number of sales by associating with a famous author.  Now that isn't to say that the games are inherently bad, but let's just say that history hasn't been overly kind to them either.  The series is as marred with shovelware CoD simulators as much as any other as large as it has been with some series getting a new title with as little as a year between them, but that doesn't preclude them from having a few good fully formed turds every once in a while.

While Wildlands may be a polished turd we still need to remind ourselves that at its core is is just that: a turd.  The controls are anything but smooth and honestly it took some serious patching to solidify how helicopters fly (honestly now after 6 months post release do they FINALLY feel flyable without much trouble). But that's not really how I want to focus this review.  Yes, the game has issues, be aware that it controls like a drunk brick, that the menu is unintuitive, that the map is more clustered than someone's gonorrhea splattered genitals, and that honestly the way leveling works really makes me want to throw someone off a cliff.  Be aware of all that, because it is important.

I feel like bothering spoiler tags for this game and this review would be doing it a disservice because the story is so fragmented and all over the place (literally the map is a bunch of different provinces, each with their own story that wraps back into the big one in small little ways) that I'd never be able to fully describe it, so I'll give you the ass wiping version of it and call it good.  More or less the game takes place in Bolivia where a Mexican drug cartel called Santa Blanca and their leader El Sueno (Spanish for The Sueno) has come in to take over the local coca fields and make some sick ass fucking cocaine man.  Now obviously this is a bad thing and the CIA sent in an agent to get the skinny on them before sending in the ghosts to take them out.  Well shit went sideways, he got killed, and an embassy was blown up, so no its time to take this cartel down for good.  You're team (Nomad) is an elite group of special agents called ghosts.  You have to go through and destabilize the cartel operations in order to get to El Sueno.  There also a rebel faction who are freedom fighters for Bolivia too so they throw in their best for you too.

Throughout the game you have to complete a series of provinces to destabilize the cartel and their operations with influence, smuggling, production, and security.  The base game offers 21 of these provinces, and each province is held by a boss or buchon.  In each province you must perform different tasks to lure the buchon out of hiding and either kill or capture them.  These tasks can be airing out their dirty laundry (not literally), destroying coca fields, blowing up stockpiles, or my personal favorite, killing bad guys.  No really, despite the shitty controls the gun play in the game is incredibly fun because you can mark targets for the AI to automatically kill, and you can mark up to 3 at a time.  It's kind of insane.

As I mentioned the gun play is excellent especially with how they give you a different set of options to mix it up with when you're playing with different approaches.  For example I constantly found myself in the eternal debate on whether to parachute into a base, ram through the gates with a truck loaded with C4, take out the guards and stealth in, or guns blazing in a Humvee with a minigun on it.  The awesome thing is that for the most part, the choice is yours everytime.  There's a handful of situations that require the use of stealth, but outside of that go wild, do what you gotta do, and by all means make the cartel suffer.

I doubt it would surprise anyone that turds are offensive to people, and this one is no different.  The entire country of Bolivia was so pissed off that Ubisoft left this nice plopper on their lawn that they actually filed a suite against Ubisoft Paris for "misrepresenting their country", and while I can totally agree with their claim, it is a bit silly.  But, in Ubisofts defense they did use Bolivia as a backdrop for their claim of "[Bolivia's] beautiful vistas, wholesome culture, and lively people" which actually does shine through in the game, and has turned Bolivia into somewhere I have actually added to my top places to visit since this game came out (though I'll fully admit to a desire to do more research before I go).  So whatever the hell Ubisoft did, it worked on me.

The largest overall complaint I have is how unintuitive and hard to use the map and mission selector are.  Some games have really well made UI's but this on is just kinda like here's this really detailed map, and then here's literally all this shit you can do, sort it out, oh and zooming out doesn't help because you never get a summary of activities for a region, just who the boss is and your progress on getting them, and beyond that is a cartel overview. Additionally there are no indicators of what collectibles are underground or above ground so you can spend quite a bit a time searching for one specific item if you don't already know where it's at (I actually spent around 30 minutes trying to get an item that ended up being underground which I never really got because I couldn't find a way down).  Really even if it's just on the mini map this is the kinda shit that needs to be marked or indicated in some way, shape, or form as it caused me a large headache.

Finally the last little bit I want to touch on is DJ Perico, the in game radio host who works as a propaganda agent for the cartel.  He quite enigmatic, fun, funny, and one of the most real characters in a game I've ever met in a while.  He only plays a small role as a buchon in the story, but due to his status as a radio personality he's all over the place in this game.  Really he adds a lot to live up to here, and makes the driving portions a lot more bearable as you get some genuinely funny dialog along the way.

While Wildlands is a turd, it's a fun turd, the kind you play and enjoy your time with despite all the glaring flaws that the game has.  I actually once referred to this game as my guilty pleasure, because to some the idea of fun (which I've talked about before) is so foreign and almost damning that the true purpose of games is all but lost on them.  Though all of that I'd like everyone to remember that.  MY final verdict comes down to seven wet squirts out of ten, I do want to add a turdsterisk to it and say that it's a fun experience even if you don't play it through to completion.

Rantology: Having Fun

So the other day I caught myself turning on my XBox One for the first time since I had moved back in April, and while I admit it did take me a shameful amount of time to turn it back on and play it again, I don't regret me decision.  See, I've actually been keeping plenty busy on my other consoles lately, with Mario Kart 8 coming out on switch, Destiny starting their Age of Triumph celebrations (of which I still need to finish off my record book), and other assorted titles filling out the rest of my time with a sprinkling of WoW just to keep me in check.  Now, that's not to say that I regret my decision to have not turned on my console, but I feel I have neglected it for too long.  That being said I loaded up some Halo 5: Guardians, and just dived into my favorite new game mode Warzone Firefight.

Now Warzone Firefight launched sometime last summer, and while I was fully aware of its release, I was too busy playing other games at the time, I don't remember what games, but it was something I kinda wrote off as something I'd get to later, Well now that later has arrived and dear god I don't know what took me so long.  The game mode is absolutely brilliant in all the right ways, the usage of REQs, the team based goal oriented combat, in fact the only negative thing I can say about it is that respawn timers can get too long late in the game, but even that is offset by the weapons you've unlocked to that point.  However, as much fun as I was having I felt dirty for enjoying my time with the game.  I felt like I was somehow degrading myself for playing a game so many fans disliked, a game that was criticized for the removal of local coop so it could achieve a smooth 60 fps, and I will fully admit I was one of those dissenters at first, yet, as the Halo nutjob I am, went out and purchased Halo 5 at launch and at least gave it a shot, and while I like the direction the story went, despite some of its previous misgivings in Halo 4.  As dirty as I felt though, I just didn't care because at my core I was actually having fun.

See that's something that I feel like people have lost sight on in recent years, especially when it comes to gaming.  We all want this huge awesome new IP to launch with open world, and crafting, and all these other things to give us freedom in our worlds because a handful of games did it well and we're constantly under the illusion that that is where success lays, but I've come to disagree with that and instead I put forth a new idea: instead of chasing the heels of previous success, or criticizing something for every graphical misgiving, or a person for their taste, let's just all have fun.  It's really not that difficult of a concept to embrace, all you need to do is if you see someone enjoying something you don't, just ignore it, let it go.  Don't tell them you hate it, don't tell them why it's bad, don't criticize it for what it is or isn't, let them enjoy something.

Oddly enough this isn't the first time I've found myself in this situation either, with many releases over the last couple of years I've found myself either having to defend my interest in the game, justify why I would ever play such a thing, or I've just felt ashamed for playing something that I am genuinely having fun playing simply because the gaming community as a whole dislikes it for whatever reason.  A couple of very recent examples are Mass Effect Andromeda and Ghost Recon Wildlands.  It would be no small secret to the people who know me that I am a HUGE Mass Effect fan, I have art on my walls, clothing in my drawers, hell I even splurged on the $130 Pathfinder backpack, $100 DieCast Nomad ND1, and I'm currently in the middle of purchasing the FigPins.  Needless to say, I LOVE Mass Effect, it's wonderful and I practically disappeared when Andromeda came out this year, starting the game a mere week and a half before I moved, whilst packing mind you.  I loved the game, and had a ton of fun playing it, and while there were things I was looking forward to that weren't there, such as dynamic outposts, being able to land on dozens of worlds, and a larger selection of romantic options.  All those put aside I still enjoyed the game, and had hours of fun playing it despite having to defend my interest in the game due to its glitches and facial animations, both issues that in my playthrough were a maximum of  maybe 30 minutes in a 50 hour experience.

I felt assaulted and wronged because how dare I have fun when a few people put videos on YouTube for reddit and other meta sites to laugh at and criticize the game for it. How dare I enjoy something that let down their expectations, people who didn't play the game and had no interest in it in the first place.  How dare I have fun.  How dare I enjoy myself.  The same issue revolves around Ghost Recon Wildlands.  The reviews came out for it and were less than positive, the game was repetitive, the open world felt like it made the player travel vast amounts for no real reason, and the narrative is too shallow, but I found myself in the same place, having fun.  I've enjoyed my time with Ghost Recon, I love taking down bases, getting into firefights driving around Bolivia, flying up as high as I can and parachuting back down to Earth.  I'm loving every minute of it and I've actually been putting off completing it because I don't want it to be over.

Yet it was in a PSN group chat that I realized I shouldn't feel bad for enjoying something, if its fun then why should I care what people say about it? Lately we've all been obsessing over review scores and graphical improvement, and making sure that everything is tippy toppy to the point that anything but the very best isn't good enough.  People complained about Arkham Knight's graphical and game play issues, but I still had fun, I may have been frustrated at points, but I enjoyed the ride through the game.  People complained about Destiny and it's lack of story content and it's MMO-esque approach to gameplay, yet here we are almost 3 years later with the sequel getting ready to release and new players are joining every day, something must be keeping those players coming back. Another much criticized game over its lifetime is World of Warcraft, being one of the largest games of all time leading up to the 2010 release of Cataclysm that rebuilt the world from the ground up and saw many players straight up leave the game after being so invested for so long, other games stepped in place to acquire some of it's player base like Rift, SWtOR, Guild Wars 2, and more recently Final Fantasy XIV.  Yet many remained loyal to the game for a myriad of reasons, even throughout the Warlords of Draenor expansion, which some refer to as "The Dark Days of WoW".  Yet still, the rush of getting new equipment, enjoyment of friends, and conquering bosses still remained fun to players to world over, these players didn't leave because they were still enjoying themselves in one way or another.

Now none of this is to say we should be happy and content with whatever the industry hands us and just "be grateful we're getting games", but we certainly shouldn't talk down on someone who enjoys something.  As a long time fan of the Koei's Warrior franchise I know very well what a double sided dose of criticism looks like.  It takes a certain sense of mindless grinding to get any sort of real enjoyment out of those games, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, in fact sometimes a mindless grind is exactly what I need to destress after a long day, I find it relaxing and fun, so what.  We all got into this insane hobby around the central idea that games and gaming is fun.  No one started off day one out of the gate as being the best and min maxing every character to be the mathematical best at whatever, we all have our own unique playstyles, and our own unique approaches to everything, so why should our enjoyment be any different. Gaming takes all types, some like graphics, some like stories, some like mechanics, some like to min max and feel powerful, some are just tournament players who dedicate everything they have to being the best at their game, and that's all okay.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that we need to stop getting into petty arguments and judging each other.  We need to sit down and just appreciate gaming a bit more, appreciate gaming for what it is, something we have fun with.  Not everything needs to be an artistic masterpiece, not everything needs to appeal to everything, glitches happen, and someone is going to disagree with you about Ubisofts Spiderman game on PS4, but who cares.  What really matters is that you're having fun, and if you see someone enjoying something you don't like here's a little piece of advice: don't attack them for it (unless of course that thing is discriminatory in any way that is), they're people like you. Let people have fun.

The Division Review

The Division, like many things in life, is an acquired taste, and not something that is meant for the masses.  With a sometimes difficult to understand and convoluted storyline, and glitchy gameplay it is no wonder that the game hasn't exactly received the welcoming reviews that Ubisoft was hoping for in March when the game launched, and believe me, I was there on the front lines.  I picked the game up on day one and was still somewhat unemployed when it launched.  To be honest, while I did enjoy the game, I found it frustrating the say the least.  Leveling was fun, even if it wasn't the most expedited of experiences, though I do have to give the game credit as it offered plenty of side quests to do between major story related missions, many of which revealed the events of the outbreak of "Green Poison" or "Dollar Flu", which is the disease that causes widespread chaos in New York City.

Since The Division is a game that is primarily focused on online play, and since I recently have replayed through the main storyline and have been taking a second look at end game content I will be doing a then vs now review of the game.  This should help people decide if getting into the game roughly 8 months after release is worth it at all.

Now, I'm no stranger to online based shooters, hell I play Destiny on a somewhat consistent basis, and even stuck with it through some of its darker days where people decided to bitch and moan about some of the more "unfair" concepts that they just didn't understand, like loot tables, or RNG, or poor matchmaking (though to be fair a lot of this still happens, and I still write the majority of them off as entitled fuck-wits whose parents never told them no as a child).  So The Division is a game that is right up my alley, and oh boy, what a way to throw a game at me.

******************************SPOILER WARNING *********************************

The Division takes place in a shattered derelict shell of Manhattan after an outbreak of a man-made variation of Smallpox released on Black Friday refereed to in game as "The Dollar Flu" or "Green Poison", society has effectively run down and gangs, glued together militant groups, and a for-hire militia have taken charge of the city.  You play as a member of the Strategic Homeland Division (S.H.D.) sent in during the "second wave", or after the first group of agents failed to get the situation under control.  What is the S.H.D.?  Short version is they're government sleeper agents living among the populace who, once activated, more or less have operational control and independence to do whatthefuckever they like.  Needless to say this power is abused by some.

The game starts you off on the opposite side of the Hudson River from Manhattan where you are tasked with gaining control of the local rioters to allow the Joint Task Force (J.T.F.) to sweep in and hold the neighborhood and the attached helicopter pad.  After cleaning up the Neighborhood and local police station you meet up with fellow Division Agent Faye Lau and the rest of the second wave and take a ride over to Manhattan, but your Osprey Gunship transport is hit with a Javelin missle during takeoff killing everyone except Faye and yourself.  Faye is pretty fucked up, but you get out with minor injuries and meetup at and reclaim the James A. Farley Post Office.  Once secured you set about the city completing objectives and recruiting allies to discover not only the events of Black Friday and the cause and source of the virus, but also the events that transpired to cause the second wave of agents needing to be sent into New York. 

Using your connections you enlist the aid of Dr. Jessica Kandel who stayed behind to work on a cure to the virus.  Dr. Kandel enlists your aid to track down the orchestrator of the virus, a biologist by the name of Gordon Amherst, and obtain his research notes to discover why he did what he did.  Captain Roy Benitez is the second to join your cause, after rescuing him from a group of rioters attempting to mount an escape via the collapsed Lincoln Tunnel he sets you to work to shut down the various militia groups around the city, most notably "The Cleaners" led by Joe Ferro, a group of public works employees who stayed behind to burn out the virus using napalm, "The Rikers" led by Larae Barrett, escaped inmates from Rikers Island who have taken to lawless streets of Manhattan to fuel their revenge against a system that left them to die when the virus broke out, and "The Last Man Battalion" led by Charles Bliss, a paramilitary group hired by Wall Street executives to protect their financial assets that went rogue after being abandoned by their employers they now set out to create a new world order in the midst of the chaos.  The final member of the band is a former member of the LMB known as Paul Rhodes.  Rhodes, an engineer and general conspiracy theorist, is in charge of restoring critical infrastructure (power, water, gas, communications, etc...) to the good citizens of New York, and while he is working with the JTF, he doesn't exactly like the idea of it.

Over the course of the game you discover that Amherst wasn't alone, an internationally acclaimed virologist Vitraly Tchernenko was in contact with Amherst helping to answer questions about how to "theoretically" breed the prefect virus and what the ideal situation would look like.  Before this, during an investigation into a first wave Division agent transponder Rhodes discovered you discover that a select few members of the First Wave went rogue, lead by Aaron Keener (aka "Vanguard") who discovered Amherst work and decided he was right to let society fall and that humanity needs a culling of the population in order to maintain order and save the planet.  Working with the LMB they get to Tchernenko first to discover where Amherst manufactured the first.  Minutes after discovery Keener and other rogue first wave agents leave the United Nations building and use the now disgraced LMB as a decoy to get to Amherst gene printer and take it to an undisclosed place in "The Dark Zone" and continue to prefect Amherst work and release the virus around the globe.

*********************************END SPOILERS**********************************

Most of the setting of the game outside of the story is obtained via collectibles that are scattered throughout the map that will give you insight into what happened to the first wave agents and other citizens of Manhattan.  These collectibles are locked behind clearing all the missions out of different neighborhoods, unless you search for them the hard way.  Completing these side missions will reward XP and currency and either base resources to upgrade your base of operations to unlock new skills, perks, and passives, or gear and equipment blueprints used in crafting.  Each wing of your base has a different resource: Medical, Tech, and Security, and corresponds to a different skill tree, leveling all of them is important, but which one you select first is crucial early game as it could lead to a higher chance of survival in more difficult missions.

The game does offer a decent matchmaking system that is hop in and hop out that you can start from the world map, a mission location, or even from a terminal at your base of operations.  The game is good about allowing freedom of movement between party members in case one person doesn't have a mission unlocked or needs to fast travel to assist another one for a mission or encounter.  

As far as end game content there are 2 pieces given at launch called "The Dark Zone" or and endgame PvPvE area in which agents can form groups to hunt down NPCs or other players for high quality loot that must then be extracted so it can be purged of viral disease as The Dark Zone is the place that was hit hardest with the virus.  Players are also notified when other players go "Rogue", or when they agrees another player" so there is some risk in starting combat with other players and you aren't able to just sit there an kill people unnoticed.  Finally when you extract your spoils from The Dark Zone you signal a helicopter to come and get them out for you, well at launch once you attached your gear you could leave and were still guaranteed you could get loot so a lot of solo players would rush in, attach their loot, and rush out seeing as they couldn't handle the mobs that would inevitably come in to investigate the agents flare.  This has been changed and you are now able to "cut off" other players loot from the extraction helicopter, so you must stay and protect it from the NPCs and the other nearby players who are notified of the extraction happening.  The second piece is called "Incursions" which are basically high end missions that have some special mechanics, but most extremely tough enemies in high numbers.

Now, to the new stuff that has been released since the game came out, we get it in 2 major content updates, the first is called "Underground", and the second is called ":Survival".

Underground is a Diablo-esque random dungeon generation match-made multiplayer mode for The Division, and one of my favorite updates so far.  You are tasked with exploring the underbelly of New York to weed out the remnants of the different factions that threaten the city.  The dungeons are fun and rewarding and allow you to add modifiers to make them longer, add difficulty modifiers such as only being able to use one skill at a time, or slowly losing health through the duration of the mission.  Overall I thoroughly enjoy the challenge and cooperative elements they bring to the table.

Survival is a match-made multiplayer scenario in which the agent learns of a vaccine to the virus being located in The Dark Zone with an impending snow storm on the way you gear up to retrieve the vials and bring them back, but you must race against the clock as you become infected with the disease when your helicopter crashes and you are stuck in Manhattan and must fight and gather your way to the vials.  Other players are present in the map, a total of 24 participate in a match, and you must compete against them for loot as each loot box only opens up for a single player making resources limited.  You must craft and gather better gear, weapons, and even skills in order to survive against the mobs that wander the area.  After reaching The Dark Zone and gathering the vials you are set to extract and must fight off special Division agent killers known as Hunters who use Division tech against you.  This mode can be played in both PvE and PvP modes, with PvP offering higher rewards (which is the right way to do it imho, not gimp a PvE player, but rewarding a PvP player).  While I really do enjoy this mode it has early scaling issues, and can be quite difficult if you don't know the map very well, though these issues will correct themselves once you get a better grasp on the map and manage to pull through roughly the first 15-20 minutes to start getting better weapons.  Oh I forgot to mention cosmetic items actually have an effect in this mode providing much needed warmth for your player.

With the updates to the base game I would be remiss if I said the game hasn't improved and gotten at least a bit more fun, and while I enjoyed the game from the start I enjoy it a fair bit more now that getting better gear isn't nearly as time consuming as it once was, nor is it nearly as daunting with all the new modes to offer brand new goodies around every corner.  While the game isn't perfect, I do recognize the changes and appreciate them for what they are.  Overall I give The Division 8.5 Sealed Chaches, out of 10.

I played Tom Clancy's The Division on Playstation 4 which I bought the Gold Edition of the game that has the season pass included.