I can say that about so many games though, many of which are better in their component bits.

It feels like a completely different game. When you can set up a real plan and execute on it, when you can ignore the trite story because you’re just there to hang out and chat with people, when those long minutes of travel downtime are filled with lighthearted chat, when every encounter has the potential to become a funny anecdote-that’s when Wildlands is at its best. Buggy at times, sure, but infinitely more bearable. Wildlands does feature four-player co-op, which I played for a bit with my colleague Adam Patrick Murray earlier this week and again with some internet randoms later on. Which I guess brings us to the big caveat: Co-op. Nope, you still get to hear all the terrible barks and every useless, bland thought that comes out of their mouths. They swear like teenagers who just learned what Urban Dictionary is, they make jokes so bad even your dad would be too embarrassed to say them out loud, their personalities vacillate between nonexistent and detestable, and they never shut up, even if you’re playing in co-op and those characters aren’t actually around. Playing solo, you’ll create your character and tag along with three other AI nobodies who are insufferable. The absolute bottom of the barrel though are your own characters. Worse are the purposefully-edgy villains, like the torture experts who-and I swear I’m not making this up-are featured in a two-minute audio log discussing some dead guy’s genitalia. You know: The old general, the young social media handler, the pop star, all with tenuous ties to this fictional drug cartel. I don’t even know where to start here, except to say “It’s bad.” You’re sent to Bolivia to take down the Santa Blanca cartel, a drug-smuggling, child-smuggling, smuggle-smuggling ring populated almost entirely by forgettable archetypes. Finding the rare airplane is an actual joy, but helicopters possess the grace of a flying cow and cars drive like you’re back in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, with no weight or physics to the handling. That’s another part of the problem: Travel in Ghost Recon just isn’t very fun. Ghost Recon is an actual shooter, not a shooter/RPG hybrid. I like the moment-to-moment of Wildlands quite a bit better than its Tom Clancy brethren The Division. Ghost Recon: Wildlandsīut seriously! Ghost Recon: Wildlands is just Far Cry 3! Every mission is some variation of Far Cry’s outpost infiltrations, with you scouting out a base (either with a drone or binoculars), marking targets, then either picking off targets quietly or storming your way in-or, most likely, some combination of the two. That sort of info can be useful, but it also feels lazy to write. It’s usually some sort of faux-pas to describe games within the context of other games-“It’s Dark Souls by way of Gone Home crossed with a bit of Crysis.” Ugh. We’re mercifully spared the whole tower-climbing routine Ubisoft made notorious, but Ghost Recon’s been transformed from a beloved tactical shooter with a rich pedigree into a cheap Far Cry clone. I’ve talked at length about the Ubisoft Formula™, the bizarre process by which all Ubisoft games have become somewhat indistinguishable, but Wildlands is the most egregious. It is the most repetitive Ubisoft game yet-worse still because you’ve already played its ilk before. Wildlands may top the list in both respects. All very beautiful games, and all repetitive as hell. See also: The Division, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the original Watch Dogs. Ghost Recon: WildlandsĪs with so many Ubisoft games though, Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a tech and art showcase with little else to recommend it. Flying over Bolivia’s Laguna Colorada, the famous pink salt lake, and seeing flocks of flamingos take flight around you-it’s seriously jaw-dropping stuff. But there’s so much here it’s genuinely impressive. It’s not the most beautiful game, and character models in particular dip hard into the uncanny valley, seemingly five years uglier than the surrounding scenery. Suffice it to say the game runs smoothly, barring a few load hitches here and there. We already discussed performance Monday, so I don’t see much reason to recap here. So much space, and absolutely no reason for most of it to exist.

It’s stunning-and yet therein lies the seeds of Ghost Recon’s downfall. In a car? I don’t even want to estimate how long it’d take to cross this fictional Bolivia. This is a game where you can spend 10 to 15 minutes crossing the map by helicopter without hitting a single load screen. I said it Monday in PCWorld’s initial PC performance impressions piece, and it’s worth reiterating now. Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a technological marvel.

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