This Thursday night began a free weekend for "Ghost Recon: Wildlands". I downloaded the game right away. 4 hours later, I uninstalled it.
It's not all bad. The character creation is in depth, with an outfit customization option that lets you change that outfit at any point during the game. This is great if you want to go full on "Dutch in the jungle" one moment, and then "Solid Snake" the next.
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When you fight, however, things fall apart. This game is 3rd person, which is a gamble for a shooter to take. It's a needless gamble, too; because when you aim it snaps to 1st person, complete with firing animations for the guns. Look; 3rd person exists to simulate humans' situational awareness during melee combat and driving. With a shooter it just blocks our view of the targets with our own bodies.
That's still not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that this game is joyless.
Just like every other Tom Clancy military porn franchise, you're not supposed to be having fun. Even though you're playing a four man army in a country taken over by a Bond villain, it's treated as totally serious business.
The game is joyless because the crowd that buys Tom Clancy inspired games wants this. They don't want fun, they want satisfaction, and there's a difference. They want to feel like hard core soldiers without going to boot camp. They want to pretend to be annoyed by civilians even though they tend to be civilians themselves. They think wearing baseball caps and humorlessly talking about the effectiveness of various guns makes them like the guys they wish they could be.
"Ghost Recon: Wildlands" was made for military 'wannabes'. If you are in that crowd, you will love it. If you're not, the game will feel a little sad. Tom Clancy wrote extensively about the military, but Tom Clancy was never in the military. Tom Clancy has also been dead for several years. This game is an echo of the opinions of a man who had no first had experience to begin with.
Also, the controls are clunky.
