The highly anticipated and delayed Ghost Recon: Future solider is almost here, And thanks to Red Storm and Ubisoft we were lucky enough to get a beta to play and try out. The last Tom Clancy game I put a few hours into was the excellent Rainbow Six Vegas 2 which was a while ago. I was looking forward to trying something new as I mainly come from a FPS background and have a lot of hours logged into both Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3.
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Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a third-person cover-based shooter that uses gameplay traits from both first-person shooters, in that you can aim down the sight of your gun, and third-person in that you can go from cover to cover. One of the first things that got me with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is that it can take a while to get into, but once you have you can easily start picking up new tactics and can be a very rewarding experience. Most of my own kills have been through flanking the enemy team by keeping tactics stealth based. If you go into this game as if its like Call of Duty or Battlefield you will die. Lots.
I would compare Ghost Recon: Future Solider as a combination of Battlefield 3 and Gears of War 3 due to similarities in both pace and tactics, and both third-person and first-person gameplay styles.
The two maps in Ghost Recon: Future Solider are called “Mill” and “Pipeline”. Mill takes place in a village in Russia with plenty of flanking opportunity with the central areas acting as bottlenecks. Pipeline is set in an Nigerian shanty town that has plenty of cover and choke points. Both maps are completely different in looks but are pretty evenly balanced so no team really has the upper hand.
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Onto the game modes. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier comes with two game types “Conflict” and “Saboteur”. Conflict is an objective based team death match where completing objectives and gaining kills to win the game, the objectives range from protecting a site, eliminating a carrier on the opposing team, and planting EMP’s to eliminate enemy intel. Saboteur is an attack/defend game type one team has a bomb that has to be planted in the other teams base, the other teams job is to defend their own base at all costs. In both modes teamwork is always best to gain the upper hand on the opposing team and staying near your squad is a must.
Gun customisation is very big in Ghost Recon: Future Solider, gunsmith offers deep customisation options for your weapons, you can change the sights of the weapon, change your barrels, equip an under-barrell attachment and even change your trigger mechanism. There is also the Kinect feature which wasn’t available in Beta.
In Ghost Recon: Future Soldier you have three base classes that you can further expand by playing as them throughout. The Rifleman is your standard assault character he has increased armour who specialises in assault rifles and light machine guns. The Scout is the sniper of the group who comes with sniper rifles, sub machine guns and uses stealth camouflage to sneak around the battlefield. The Engineer has access to shotguns, revolvers, motion sensors and a UAV that can be very useful to a team.
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The controls in Ghost Recon: Future Solider are very fluid and feel natural to anyone who has any experience in cover-based shooters or any type of shooter for that matter, the loading screens tell you exactly what the controls are so it is only a matter of time until you fully get used to them. The controls could easily compare with Gears of Wars 3 in terms of fluidity and ease of use.
Now to the negatives I know this is a beta and should not expect it to be flawless, Some of the issues that I am about to mention may be fixed for the full retail release. Host migration is a useful feature in many games today, but at times in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier it can fail to get you back into the game and keep you on the host migration screen until it either puts you back into the game or you restart your console. I have had a couple of crashes mid game which can put you off of the experience. As with most things as long as the developers get good feedback from issues it can all be rectified for release.
Overall Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a great game asides from the issues that I have had, the animations are fluid and look good. Gameplay is top-notch for a third-person shooter once you’re able to get into the game it becomes very rewarding. Ghost Recon:Future Soldier is a game for both first or a third-person shooter fans.
Ghost Recon releases May 22 in the US and May 25 in Europe for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the PC version will release June 12 and June 15.
