Over the past few years, the Ghost Recon franchise has gone through a lot of changes. But at its core, it’s always been a tactical shooter, and last year’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands added in the open world formula to it. Fans of the series seemed weary of this addition, but Wildlands actually turned out to be a solid addition to the series marrying the series’ tactical shooting with open world shenanigans. And so with this year’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, developer Ubisoft decided to tweak the existing formula instead of reinventing the wheel.
Yesterday, we got a chance to pay a cooperative mission from the campaign, and while it doesn’t seem drastically different from Wildlands, we’re pretty pleased with what we saw. The game is still a third-person cover based tactical shooter, only now you can choose a specific Class. We were given control of the Panther class; a covert operator of sorts who can kill from the shadows without making too much of a noise. That playstyle complemented our cooperative partner – who rolled with the Assault class, a class capable of sustaining as well as dishing out more damage.
The mission had us infiltrating a high tech compound full of heavy guards armed to the teeth along with lethal drones and a bunch of well armed grunts. Our mission was to extract a target located bang within the compound. As with older Ghost Recon games, you can choose your approach. A stealthy approach is definitely preferred, but if the shit hits the fan, you can always shoot your way out of a sticky situation. And that’s exactly what happened to us. We started the mission real sneaky by tagging guards and picking them off quietly, but a few minutes later, we were spotted and it was all out chaos. Now Ghost Recon is not a very easy game, so you will have to play carefully. You go down fairly easy, and in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to lose track of where bullets are coming in from. After a few tries, we successfully managed to extract the target.
Gunplay definitely felt more satisfying than Wildlands, with weapons offering more of a punch than the previous game. Your operators also move like they more weight to them which adds to the realism this game is going for. Like we mentioned earlier, you can now choose your class and every class has its set of perks you’ll be able to use on the battlefield. Breakpoint has even incorporated a loot system by which you’ll be able to equip better gear, but we never really explored those systems during our time with the game. Both of these additions are great for players who are looking for a little bit of depth in their shooters.
The build we played through was an older E3 build, and the developers on-site claimed that the final product would be even more polished. Even with our limited time with the game, we enjoyed what Breakpoint brought to the table and are definitely looking forward to the game when it launches on the PS4, PC and Xbox One early next month.
