Hey all,
It's been a while since i've typed up a blog post and i just got a new Mechanical Keyboard so i thought i'd break it in with some clicky clacky thoughts on the latest Ubisoft's latest open-world cocaine mountain simulator. As of this post i've spent over 60 hours with the game, most of that being solo play but a decent portion of it 15-20% in co-op. During that time, i've finished the campaign, eliminated all the bosses in all regions, discovered what i feel are the best weapons in the game for my play style, and gotten both the "good" and "bad" endings. I'm sorry to say that as in the opening minutes, the story is pretty much non-existent throughout the entire game but the story the was never the main draw for me. I'm a shooter fan and more specifically, i love military themed shooters with light tactical elements. This game taps into a lot of what i love about games i've played in the past and while it's not as good or better than most of those games were when i played them, the combination of elements it borrows from the games that have influenced are serviceable enough for me to recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the games i feel it cribs from with some caveats.
I feel like Wildlands borrows the stealth infiltration and recon elements that i loved so much from Metal Gear Solid 5 (albeit not as refined here) and mixes them with some decent if not pretty good 3rd person shooting that has some nuance to it that it does a terrible job at educating the player on. Ghost Recon has been a 3rd person shooter primarily since GRAW and while it lacks the hard cover system we've grown used to seeing from games like gears of war, it does feature a very functional soft cover system where you character will take cover behind barriers and provided the cover is sufficient, it may actually protect you. You may be slightly confused about that last line because the game doesn't surface the fact that bullet penetration is a huge factor in Wildlands and it's just one of the things the game does a poor job at explaining to the player. Several surfaces in the game including fabric, wood, sheet metal, and even cinder blocks/light concrete can be penetrated by bullets provided they are of the appropriate caliber and fired from a weapon with a high enough penetration stat. The moment i realized this after i fired my .50 caliber sniper rifle at a target behind a concrete road barrier and misjudged the bullet drop (yes there's some exaggerated bullet drop) but still got the kill was revelatory. The reason i hadn't noticed this up until this point but the game sort of hints at is the impact of suppressed gunfire vs unsuppressed gunfire. The game surfaces that you lose damage when suppressing your weapon via the stats screen and there's a perk on the skill tree that says it removes the damage penalty that attaching a suppressor to a weapon brings but the game doesn't mention the importance of the penetration stat that the bottom of the weapon stats page. That penetration stat can be the difference between heavily damaging a vehicle in one shot or disabling/exploding it in one shot. These numbers also extend to enemies wearing body armor like helmets/vests. a higher penetration stat will damage these enemies faster or even negate their armor while a lower will have to widdle down their armor first before you do lethal damage. To fully understand all the numbers tied to it, it would require some code analysis or exhaustive testing but just suffice to say there's more going on there than the game lets on.
Another criticism i have to raise against the game is that it introduces itself poorly and without context of how it certain systems in the game work. The main bad guys here are the drug cartel but the game also poorly introduces the other enemy faction you'll face in the opening hours. I know this because i started a second playthrough to see if there was something i missed or misinterpreted up front and it doesn't explain this well or at all. The other enemy faction is a corrupt bolivan special forces outfit called UNIDAD. While they are introduced as a faction that's in league with and sometimes at odds with the cartel, their main function as far as gameplay is concerned is to act like GTA cops complete with their own wanted meter equivalent. When your open world antics start to spill out into the street and cross the vision cone of one of these guys, expect it to not end at just 1-2 guys in a patrol car and backup will likely be on the way. Higher "wanted levels" call in support chopper and on the highest level, an AH-1 Cobra gunship (or several) that the game comically/incorrectly repeatedly refers to often as the AH-64 Apache will show up and ruin your day. While you may be temped to stay and fight it out with these guys, it's essentially a death sentence early in the game until you unlock more firepower and even then you're just delaying them killing you until you can successfully break contact and leave the area. This faction represents the dichotomy of the game's idea of player choice in going in guns blazing vs. choosing the more tactical and stealthy approach. Players are actively punished for failing to approach missions cautiously and there are even a handful of the 100+ missions that result in hard fails if you are even spotted by an enemy. what's worse is that the only tools you are given to dispatch enemies result in lethal takedowns where the bodies of your kills are left on the ground with no choice to move them leaving them to either be discovered by other enemies or despawn. Whichever happens first.
Finally the game's overall presentation are extremely hard to overlook but if you're a person like me who can enjoy a game like just cause 2 without paying any attention to the story or voice acting, you might be in luck here too. I'm sure anyone reading this has heard the horror stories of a monotone exclamation of "shitballs", overused gems like "...and baby makes 3" , and in general the worst profanity i've heard since the time in high school when the foreign exchange students came to visit and the first words they learned were some insanely strung together combos of profanity. Luckily, the gameplay is just solid enough that you don't really need a story to keep going and have fun as long as you potentially adhere to some suggestions i'll list below to hopefully make your experience as enjoyable as mine.
1. Quality of life here. There's in game radio that has one station, plays a few terrible radio interviews and quips featuring/referencing some/most of the game's bosses that are goofy as shit and completely out of place. These are intermingled with some middling hispanic sounding music. As of the last patch, there's an option in the audio menu to turn these radios off everywhere in the world. Do it!
2. The game has pretty decent hud and ui customization options. I recommend turning on the xp display option if you're trying to keep better tabs on the RPG elements so you can see the types of actions that will get you more XP and help you progress fasters. It's small, unobtrusive and sits in the border of the screen. Or if you want a more minimalist approach, turn off hud elements, your crosshair, minimap etc.
3. The default difficulty level is stupid easy for Ghost Recon veterans and 3rd person shooter fans as well. I'd recommend starting at the second highest difficulty by default which will increase the awareness and lethality of enemies while the highest difficulty will even remove the area heat signatures from the minimap that are often a crutch when scouting bases and lead to sync shot cheesing of outposts.
4. Don't abuse the sync shot. it's a great tool for taking out a cluster of enemies all at once or maybe removing all the snipers in an area to aid in approaching a base safer but you'll have a tougher time getting that strategy to work as enemy densities increase and their patrol paths often seem somewhat randomized. Any one of them will raise an alarm as soon as they spot a downed body.
5. Think on your feet and adapt to the changing circumstances. Some of the most fun i've had with this game has been when i got creative and didn't rely on the same tactics for everything or when i got unexpectedly spotted and things went to hell. Adjust your kit mid mission, use the suppressor when you are sneaking in but as soon as your spotted, it may have no further use, take it off and make use of the extra stopping power and bullet penetration and reattach it when you're in a spot you need to be quiet again. Change weapons to smgs for close quarters or equip a sniper for long range shots. You can do this at any time in the menu.
6. Finally because it's an open world game and it's a ubisoft game, there are collectibles everywhere and many of them in the form of gear/stat upgrades that i'd encourage you to not gorge yourself on up front. There are some that make the game entirely too easy and will make any threat you face the rest of the game feel almost negligible. An example being the .50 cal sniper that 1-shots choppers is easily obtained from a base in one of the most difficult regions in the game is an item you can obtain from the start and you may not ever need to use another weapon of that type. Again, break the game or don't. It's your call but i would at least try to play the game a while without all the great gear and useful buffs before you seek them all out.
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