Should you take a walk on the wild side?
Ghost Recon finally returns with Wildlands, a third-person free-roaming outing which you can play solo with AI companions, or online with friends to tackle the Santa Blanca cartel, who have taken over Bolivia, turning it into a narco-state.
At first glance, you’d be reminded of Far Cry 3 or 4 with it’s open world and vast amount to accomplish. The game does switch to first-person if you zoom down the barrel of your gun, but it’s primarily third-person and you get plenty of tools at your disposal, including a drone that tags targets and you can issue commands to AI team-mates. Your character can also be fully customised…I personally made mine look like Big Boss/Venom Snake, just because the game reminds me of The Phantom Pain.
The great thing about Wildlands is that you can tackle your objective in a number of ways and while the campaign itself isn’t the most exciting, just working together to overcome the cartel is fun, while searching Bolivia for collectibles is pretty fun too.
Visually, Wildlands is an impressive beast. Bolivia looks stunning, but the character models are a mixed bag. Animations are hit and miss too, but the game handles like a dream regardless and load times are small. Voice-acting is by the numbers, but does the job…while the soundtrack is impressive overall.
The Verdict
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is impressive with it’s vast open world of Bolivia. It doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before, but it’s an improvement over past Ubisoft open world entries and a welcome change of pace to the Ghost Recon series. It’s most definitely worth a look.