Thanks to poor design, navigating the menus to unlock new gear takes longer than you have in between matches, and Ubisoft doesnвЂ™t let you customize matches as in past Ghost Recon titles. The point system smartly awards players for working together, but the clunky user interface and unrefined controls may turn off shooter aficionados. Most of the modes are boilerplate, but I enjoyed Conflict mode, a timed competition that rotates the location of objectives throughout the map. Multiplayer has always been a big draw for the Tom Clancy shooters, and Future Soldier preserves that legacy with a robust suite featuring five competitive game modes, class-based progression systems, highly customizable weapons, and a Horde-like mode called Guerrilla. The stickiness of cover is also inconsistent, and I found it tough to aim around the corners of cover objects. Having to click the R3 button to go in and out of ironsights is cumbersome and gets you in trouble, especially during frantic multiplayer firefights. Holding the left trigger gives you a third-person zoom, and pressing R3 provides a first-person ironsights view. Rather than streamline the controls, Ubisoft chose to preserve the awkward zoom system from the previous games. The third-person control scheme, while adequate, could also use refinement. Having your ammo count, teammate positions, enemy positions, ammo crate locations, objective location, and data about your current location all on the screen at once is ВinformationВ Вoverload. The invasive HUD also mars the sensory experience. Held up against the high graphical benchmarks of the genre, Ghost Recon looks technologically malnourished. While they look impressive in certain scenarios, the ugly textures, pop-up, and cardboard cutout grass that pierces straight through your prone soldier are much more prevalent and break the sense of immersion. Ubisoft seemed to channel all the graphical horsepower into creating particle effects like sandstorms and smoke. These missions betray what makes Ghost Recon unique and ultimately feel like a step backward in game design.ДЇuture Soldier also looks aged. One sequence even leaves your Ghost team behind as you tackle a Medal of Honor-style infiltration job. IвЂ™d rather spend my time trying to master the micro sandbox puzzles than performing Rainbow Six-style breaches, VIP escort, and stealth follow missions. Ubisoft occasionally diverts from sandbox levels to mix up the action, but the majority of these sequences falter due to their overreliance on genre clichГ©s like corridor-based level designs and mandatory gun turret sequences. The technology makes the early missions easy, but the battles even out later in the game when a Russian Special Forces team uses similar gadgets and disrupts your technological advantage with EMP blasts. Sneaking through enemy encampments like the Predator, using drones to mark tango positions, and lining up simultaneous kill shots is empowering to the point of being overpowering. With several high-tech gadgets like active camouflage, drones, and a remote-controlled robot armed to the teeth with an unlimited supply of missiles, churning through these enemies is much easier than it was even in the Advanced Warfighter games. You can also play through it with three friends, but I recommend increasing the difficulty. Your teammate AI is sharp enough to move without being spotted, and they wisely call out enemy positions as they see them, so there is no disadvantage to playing through the campaign by yourself. The game is at its best when you treat the micro sandboxes like puzzles, keeping your squad camouflaged and picking off unaware enemies in groups of four using the innovative Sync Shot mechanic without alerting other targets. The Future Soldier campaign, which focuses on the GhostsвЂ™ attempt to thwart a Russian coup, succeeds when it sticks to the tactical approach of its predecessors. The Ghosts have a lot of catching up to do to stay relevant in the hyper-competitive military shooter genre, but after a troubled development and several delays, this Future Soldier looks more like a military game of ВtheВ Вpast. In the five years since Advanced Warfighter 2 shipped, Battlefield has entrenched itself as a major contender in the console space and Call of Duty took over the world. A lot has changed since the GhostsвЂ™ last tour of duty.

Ghost recon future soldiers