GHOST RECON: WILDLANDS

Ghost Recon: Wildlands was a laughable mess when it was first released. Buggier than the underside of a rock, barely working multiplayer and a core set of game mechanics that made it feel far from the classic, strategic Ghost Recon games. It got absolutely slammed in reviews, with some places calling it the worst game of the year it was released. Rough stuff. I ended up picking it up a long, long time after release and, crucially, after a significant amount of patches had whipped it into a much more playable shape and, due to a few key things it brings to the table, I ended up having a really good time with it - 100% completing the bloody thing.

Here’s the main things I really rated about this often-slated title…

The Sync Shot

The Sync Shot ability is the main combat tool you have in Wildlands. The way it works is simple - you can mark up to three targets by spotting them with your scope or your drone camera and then tell your teammates to fire on your command, or when you shoot at a fourth target. This allows you to drop entire squads of guards in one go, usually so you can maintain a stealthy approach. The thing I loved most about this was the devil-may-care attitude it has to realistic sight lines when combined with the drone camera. For example, when you encounter an enemy base you can send up the drone and spot every enemy within its walls, mark three targets that aren’t going to been seen by others when killed and then tell your lads to shoot them. ANY targets. It doesn’t matter whether they’re inside a building or whether there’s a fucking mountain between your squad and the marked enemies - they can bloody well shoot them if you mark them for a sync shot. This turned some bases into almost puzzle-like situations, as I scanned the area with my drone camera and ensured that anyone I picked off wasn’t going to cause a state of alert. Slowly but surely, you could clear out an entire base from a mile away, strategically choosing your targets and chipping away at the enemy presence. You get the odd rare situation where your guys can’t find the target you’ve selected and you’ll have to head in to clean up, but with some smart choices you can vastly turn a situation where you’d be massively outnumbered in your favour and barely get your hands dirty.

Vehicle Handling

Or, lack of, as the case may be. A lot of people hated this but I had a lot of fun with the fact that the vehicles - especially the motorbikes - seemingly do not care for the laws of physics. You could drive up near vertical mountain faces, bomb along rough terrain with the accelerator pushed to maximum and your character would stick to the bike like he’s glued to it. This allowed for some rapidly traversal between mission markers - you could simply aim the bike towards the waypoint, hit the gas and drive as the crow flies, straight as an arrow, across almost any terrain. In fact, you only really had to be concern with things like ravines or brick walls - anything else you’d drive straight over, no problem at all. Extremely daft, far from realistic, but a lot of fun.

The Main Objective

In order to complete Ghost Recon: Wildlands, you have to take down the cartel leader, El Sueno. Getting to him, however, isn’t that easy. He has four heads of various aspects of his criminal operation - Influence, Smuggling, Production and Security - and each of these is in charge of their own underboss, who in turn is in charge of a series of buchons, basically lieutenants in charge of certain aspects of one of the aforementioned four key sections of the empire. Kill a bunch of buchons and you can take on the underboss. Take out the underboss and you will unlock the mission to take out the head. Once you’ve taken out any two heads of operations, you can go after El Sueno. The brilliance behind all of this is two-fold. First of all, much like classic Xbox 360 title Crackdown, taking out a head will affect the rest of the game - taking out El Muro, the head of security, for instance, will lower enemy presence in other areas - so there’s a bit of strategy as to which ones you choose to take out before you take on El Sueno. Or, of course, you can take out all of them, ensuring the easiest possible ride when you decide to take on that final mission. The other cool thing is how they all have their own story - they’re quite a varied bunch. For every cold-blooded cartel killer that simply needs to meet a bullet, there’s someone like Marco Garcia, the DJ you hear over the in-game radio who you blackmail to stop him playing out his pro-cartel propaganda, or El Pozolero, aka ‘The Stewmaker’ who dissolves victims of the cartel in acid. His entire mission is built up to present him as some psychopathic serial killer, but when you find him he’s an intellectually stunted man, being exploited to commit this grim task without truly understanding what it is he’s doing. The whole setup adds a nice bit of flavour to the world, making the criminal empire feel like a believable organisation and makes El Sueno and your eventual success in taking him out feel like a true achievement.

The Predator

Finally, one of the best missions in any open world game ever - Ghost Recon: Wildlands did a limited time tie-in with legendary sci-fi movie Predator and it is a surprisingly perfect fit. You find some villagers who are taking about how a bunch of mercenaries were killed when the ‘jungle came alive’ and murdered them. You then head into said jungle and go on a short sightseeing tour of all of the cool Predator highlights. You find a few skinned bodies strung up in the trees, then a makeshift camp full of skulls and spinal cords - all of which your team tries to explain away by talking about how ruthless the cartel can be - before eventually stumbling across the Predator’s space craft. The whole time, this is soundtracked by pieces straight from the movie and sound effects of the Predator’s clicking and movement throughout the jungle keep you on edge. Eventually, you have to fight the ugly motherfucker itself, which unfortunately, is a bit of a crap bullet sponge of a boss fight that doesn’t really work within the rules of Wildlands and ends up being quite frustrating, but does have the main Predator theme playing whilst you do battle and has a cool setpiece when it self destructs upon death and you have to pull an Arnie and run for your life before he blows up. It’s extremely atmospheric and a lovely little love letter to one of the best films ever - they nail almost every aspect apart from the fight itself. Can you imagine stumbling across this without actually knowing about it and slowly realising you’re about to fight the actual fucking Predator? That would’ve been an all-timer of a gaming moment.

Sadly, if you thought all of that was cool and would like to play it - you can’t. A couple of years ago, no doubt due to licensing bullshit, the mission was deleted from the game and you can never play it again. Modern gaming, everyone!

THANKS FOR READING.

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