Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands Guide
Each area includes at least one Santa Blanca Cartel boss, hidden weapons and attachments, enemies to interrogate, fast-travel locations, skill points and resources, commendation medals, bases to raid, and more. If you want a game that’ll keep you busy for a while, Wildlands absolutely has your back. The most complicated missions are for the big bosses, who forgo the multi-stage province clearing in favor of a much longer and more difficult than average mission solely revolving around them. Located in provinces separate from the ones you spend time zeroing out story missions in, they feel dangerous and distinctive. For either single player or co-op, the upper bosses provide the most clever tactical challenges. You can't complete them in under five minutes, which is a possibility for quite a few of the main story missions. They use two or three of the styles of objective you'd pursue singly in regular missions. By the time you've actually finished over a dozen provinces, there's little in the game that feels new anymore save for these missions. Playing online only serves to exacerbate the divide. As the incessant tooltip prompts to join public sessions and seamless drop in / drop out mechanic suggest, the game has been built with co-operation in mind. Wildlands’ robust sandbox systems positively demand human improvisation, and there’s as much fun to be had just from seeing how far they can be pushed as there is executing the perfect military operation. It makes for a largely enjoyable multiplayer military shooters although not necessarily in a way purists would appreciate. By comparison, solo play can feel a little soulless. Ghost Recon: Wildlands drops players into a war-torn version of Bolivia, where the drug cartel has overtaken the government and has a stranglehold on the country’s economy. The ghosts are on a revenge mission that will take them all over the enormous sandbox, taking out every general in the cartel until they work their way up to the top jefe, El Sueno. Players can tackle this daunting task solo (with the help of AI soldiers) or with a squad of up to three additional friends.
The idea of four ghosts taking out an entire cartel is a little ridiculous and Wildlands does feel more like Just Cause than it does Rainbow Six a lot of the time, so don’t go into this one expecting a realistic, grounded drama. Although Wildlands has a focused central narrative, the game allows players to explore the regions on the massive map (have we mentioned how enormous this thing is?) in any order they choose. The fictional version of Bolivia has no regions hidden behind a level lock, although each zone does have a varying difficulty level that changes that number of gang members, corrupted police officers, and other challenges that the ghosts will have to face.The gameplay itself varies quite a bit based on whether players are solo or playing online with friends. When playing alone with the help of the AI squad, the player must offer commands and call out targets if they want to stay stealthy and avoid loud shoot outs. The AI team members aren’t the smartest we’ve ever seen, but they can manage to get the job done if players spend early skill points on leveling up the squad branch of their talent tree. This gameplay experience is fun at first, but does start to get a bit boring after the first few regions. Playing quarterback and calling out shots for each team member is rewarding when everything goes to plan, but Wildlands is so clearly meant to be played with a real group of friends that it is hard to go back to solo play after a few hours with a squad. When players team up online the rest of the AI squad immediately disappears. This means that a squad can drop down to two players, but that is still plenty of brains and firepower to get just about any quest done with the right amount of planning. Ubisoft has really nailed co-op objectives here and the game leaves tons of possible solutions to every quest. Players can take a sniper-focused stealth approach, brute force, parachute in, scout with drones, or whatever else they have decided to specialize in. The complete freedom really rewards creativity and makes planning each strike with friends a ton of fun. Even when things go south, there is usually the chance to frantically reorganize and audible into a plan B over voice chat.
Players collect skill points and resources while taking down the cartel and, when combined, these can be used to earn new abilities on a talent tree. The talents vary greatly and include tech upgrades, better squad commands, weapon perks, and more. The game doesn’t punish players for trying out different skills either, since there are enough skill points and resources around to eventually become a jack of all trades by the end game. In addition to skill points, players can also find weapon crates throughout the map to customize their gear. If Wildlands took one note from The Division, it’s to let players look and feel unique.
The game is overflowing with aesthetic and functional customizations to weapons and gear. The impressive arsenal of weapons all have customizable parts and dozens of unique paints to make them stand out. There are also tons of wardrobe choices so every player doesn’t have to look like a generic soldier. You take on the role of an elite US soldier sent in undercover and off the books to destabilise the drug runners by murdering them in their thousands. Ghost Recon at least does a good job of making light of this state-sponsored genocide. Each of the organisation’s two dozen underbosses has their own distinct dysfunctional personality and dedicated backstory, and there’s enough wit in the writing to elevate the stereotypical playboys and peasants-made-bad into if not three- then at least two-dimensional characters. To give a sense of the scale of the challenge ahead, each buchon (the game practically fetishises Latino slang) rules their own zone of the map and players must discover pieces of intel to unlock the five story missions that will eventually reveal their target’s whereabouts. That equates to well over 100 campaign levels alone and this being an Ubisoft game, there are also dozens of side missions to complete and collectibles to uncover, most of which increase the combat capabilities of the rebel forces fighting by your side. It’s a tall order, then, but the entire map is accessible from the start and you’re completely free to tackle the bosses in whichever order you see fit, a five point difficulty offering rough guidance as to the challenge you’ll face. And once you get the hang of things there’s a not unpleasant rhythm to the process of entering a new area, hunting for intel and then working your way towards the boss. Playing online only serves to exacerbate the divide. As the incessant tooltip prompts to join public sessions and seamless drop in / drop out mechanic suggest, the game has been built with co-operation in mind. Wildlands’ robust sandbox systems positively demand human improvisation, and there’s as much fun to be had just from seeing how far they can be pushed as there is executing the perfect military operation. It makes for a largely enjoyable multiplayer military shooters – although not necessarily in a way purists would appreciate. By comparison, solo play can feel a little soulless. Your AI squadmates might as well be actual ghosts, moving freely around the battlefield without alerting enemies and dispatching sentries remotely marked using the Sync Shot feature with unwaveringly perfect headshots. Ironically this nod to Ghost Recon’s tactical past actually undermines Wildlands’ freewheeling intentions, making you feel less like an armchair commander and more like a lazy cheat. Likewise, while your near-infallible fake friends can revive you once per mission to simulate co-op play, they’ll often autonomously complete the main objectives before doing so.
Wildlands leaves the strategy up to you, and because vehicles and fast travel points are so plentiful, the wide-open Bolivian landscape feels like a land of opportunity, not a burden. Speaking of vehicles, yes, the chatter is true: many of them don’t control well. Even on a bone-dry dirt road, some cars and jeeps feel like they’re skidding around on slick ice. After 15 or so hours I was able to pilot anything without much trouble, but it took far too long to nail Wildlands’ “feel.” Choppers, in particular, take a while to break in: once you’re cruising, you’re good, but building up to that speed requires a weird dance of tipping the nose up and down and easing up on the throttle. And, because the map is so large, you’re forced to spend a ton of time in vehicles to get to locations between fast-travel points. Also, it’s very common for high-priority targets to jump into a vehicle and flee, and if they get too far away you’ll often lose them and fail. These situations take an already uneven driving and piloting system and push it to its frustrating breaking point. The cycle begins with a boss hunt. Each province has a boss, and to learn that boss’ identity and draw him/her/them out from hiding you need to complete four to six missions. That’s not a major ask, but the missions are usually a rote combination of the following: blow up an inanimate object (cocaine cache, equipment), extract and interrogate a high-value target (an assistant, a family member), steal or photograph something (a car, documents), or just kill some stuff. It doesn’t help that enemy variety that stands between you and your objectives is almost non-existent.
There are standard enemies, heavily-armored enemies, and snipers that’s about it. Even common video game mainstays like The Flamethrower Guy, The RPG Guy, and The Guy With The Big Shield don’t make an appearance. Sometimes you’ll face other obstacles, like an enemy chopper or a jammer that keeps you from using your drone. They definitely crank up the intensity, but you’ll quickly learn how to deal with them, too. Even the variety that comes from the diverse locations isn’t enough to mix it up.All of this content can be played in any order whatsoever. You can drive straight from your starting region to the most difficult and remote province of the game without even finishing the tutorials. There is a dizzying variety of weapons and vehicles, all based on real-life counterparts and easily identifiable. With so many toys and tools and such a huge world to utilize them in, the possibilities for completing any given mission are open-ended to the point of absurdity.
