Review: Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

I love Tom Clancy games but I’ve always struggled with Ghost Recon titles, that is, until now. Ghost Recon see’s you form up in a 4 man squad, much like Rainbow Six, but you’re an elite war fighting unit, armed to the teeth with weapons, gadgets and my favourite of them all… Active Camo.

The story is based around a coupe in Russia, as the game opens 4 ghosts are killed when a bomb is set off during an ambush, you then take control of Kozak, part of a 4 man team consisting of 30k, Ghost Leader and Pepper. Kozak has Russian born parents so his language skills are used through-out the campaign and takes on one mission later on in the game as a solo combatant.

The story is very well thought-out, it all makes sense fairly quickly leaving you do decide what tactics to use instead of wondering what the hell is going on.  The missions take place across the world with the bulk of them centred around Russia, many environments come into action such as fighting in the desert with sandstorms and in arctic conditions, during these scenarios you will have access to many gadgets such as Magnetic Vision (allows you to see all armed hostiles), Night Vision and the ability to equip X-Ray mounts to your weapon scopes.

Before each mission you will be offered the chance to pick your weapon load-out using the Gunsmith, before choosing your equipment a narrative will give you the choice to pick the ideal gear but challenges may present you with a harder choice, do you want an easier time on the mission or do you want to complete a weapon’s challenge set? This of course offers you replayability.

As you play further in to the game you will unlock further customisations for your weapons including skins, the skins have no real advantage or disadvantage but it will help you recognise who is who in the many cut-scenes.  The cut-scenes are not like most games, it blends in and out of the game using the same engine so you get a real fluid feel and look to the game. These cut-scenes appear on breaches most of the time and some of them are pretty impressive.

As I mentioned before I loved the Active Camo, from the second mission onwards I used it constantly, even in battle scenarios in order to out-flank the enemy. It also helped in a huge way towards the stealth element of the game. I’m not great at stealth but this game made me feel like I was, it was borderline hand-holding but it really delved me deeper into the game.

It’s hard to find any real fault with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, the story mode was ambitious but pulled it off, the game play itself was near perfect. I guess my only real issue is that sometimes I felt a little overwhelmed in situations but that was my own fault for not planning my move properly and the game has a real good way of punishing you if you make a mistake.

The only other issue I had was when I first played the game, when you first launch the game it starts installing an optimum sound package to your hard-drive, it does give you the option to not install the audio but it’s very much a sign that the DVD format is lagging behind now. Not only that the load times were extreme in some places, waiting several minutes for stuff to load and then the game crashes, fear not though! After installing the game to my Xbox the load times were cut down by a huge amount, we’re talking seconds as opposed to the minutes previously. If I have one tip for you, it’s this… Install it to hard-drive.

Overall the game has a few flaws but they’re very minimalist when compared to recent FPS titles, it offers a very fluid look into the future of warfare and it gives you pretty much one of the most solid third-person shooters this generation has seen.  It’s not for everyone but it is for people who love Tom Clancy fiction and for people who love shooting shit.

Review: Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Results