Ghost Recon Wildlands - Ghosts say no to drugs

Games
502

Yeah, I really enjoy Wildlands as its strength is the basic shooty (sometimes chaotic) gameplay loop to hook you in. The whole grindy make-numbers-go-up crud is kept to a minimum, which is in stark contrast to all the serious other Ubi shooters like the Divisions & Breakpoint which are overloaded with too much STUFF.

To me it seems like the developers are too scared that the basic gameplay loop isn’t enough to keep peoples attention and feel the need to add other shit to try and keep players engaged and thus suffocate the actual gameplay.

503

Wildlands has two problems that Breakpoint fixed: disappearing corpse and framerate. Otherwise, in terms of gameplay, Breakpoint is either on par or inferior to Wildlands IMO. Breakpoint nowadays can be played as a non-grindy shooter (Immersive Mode). Once you found a gun you like you can keep it forever and it will never be underpower. The story in Breakpoint is even worse than Wildlands, which is already pretty terrible (good in that potboiler kind of way).

But Breakpoint is so pretty. Wildlands is already visually stunning (lulz) but Breakpoint dialed it up to 11. It is my hiking simulator at this point.

504

Yeah, the story in Wildlands has the benefit of at least being a bog-standard uber-macho “bad ass DEA types go after evil narcos” thing, with a hint of depth (the entire folk religion thing is kind of interesting). Breakpoint is not only ludicrous, it’s banal, which is a bad combo in my book. But the landscapes are fabulous.

505

In WD Legion there’s a perk which lets you cloak corpses with your hitec AR invisifield. So if you yourself are cloaked and you do a takedown you materialise out of thin air, skewer the guy with whatever character appropriate weapon they have, then cloak your victim. It might be the best thing in the game :)

506

Okay, so Ghost Recon Breakpoint is currently on sale on the Microsoft Xbox Store for $14.99. I was going to just skip it, because the reviews I’d seen of it all said it was terrible, but after seeing your comments @Soma and @TheWombat, now I’m not sure.

I’ve generally enjoyed the Ghost Recon games, and definitely had fun with Wildlands. So is Breakpoint worth it at $14.99? Wait until it’s even cheaper in a year or two? Or stay on my original plan of just skipping it altogether?

507

If you put it in “Wildlands mode” it’s got quite a bit to offer for $15.

508

For fifteen bucks? Hellz to the yes.

509

It’s still amazing to me how Breakpoint was so much worse than Wildlands. It’s not even close.

510

Yeah… It really doesn’t live up to Wildlands despite being prettier. Even in “Immersive Mode” you still have horrible bullet sponge robots and odd mechanics to deal with.
I’d say wait for a 9.99 sale…

511

The combat robots are bullet proof? I want my money back!

512

Ok, I concede that I might have phrased that a bit awkwardly. Overall I was just trying to say that I prefer the “simpler” Wildlands gameplay to the Breakpoint gameplay, thats all.

513

It really depends. As far as gameplay goes, once you turn off gear leveling it is as good as Wildlands. Nowadays you can even turn off those bullet sponge drones outside of story mission.

But the you get the story to deal with, which supposedly is the skeleton that connects the game. And that skeleton is effing terrible IMO.

Wildlands has a hint of depth behind the drug war. All the cutscenes were narrated by a very cynical person, half winking at the audience. What I can read between the lines is that the drug war basically is a symptom of western insatiable appetite for coke. If Don Jr. el. at. don’t like coke so much there wouldn’t be drug cartel. It is simple economics. And because they like their coke too much to actually want to do anything meaningful, and so they choose to treat the symptom and not the cause by sending 4 elite soldier bros as a token gesture. And when the four dude-bros succeed beyond all expectations and took down the cartel, they basically undo the whole thing by granting immunity to the boss dude.

And the hint of sophistication in Breakpoint’s story? Elon Musk is a dick? We knew that already.

514

Thanks everyone. I’ll have to think about it. There are enough other games on sale at some pretty great prices such that I may end up with a Steam-like backlog on my new Series X, so maybe it makes sense to wait a year on Breakpoint and see if it drops further in price, or if they announce a new Ghost Recon.

515

I am in the “Breakpoint is significantly better than Wildlands” camp, actually. Only played it with immersive mode though. I enjoyed its more RPGish structure and didn’t mind all those dialogues and story additions. Its “Elon Musk” figure is misguided, but not some evil caricature (that kinda falls to Jon Bernthal’s character). It was more immersive and less…gamey than Wildlands, which I prefer, and Nomad is much more of an actual person (although completely different one than in Wildlands).

Also, the DLC for Breakpoint, the one with Sam Fisher, was great. Kinda showed how open world Splinter Cell could work.

516

I’m digging Wildlands, which is like Just Cause with no parachute. You zoom around in helicopters and look for weird shit to explore or activities to do. It’s UbiGame, Military Flavor, but there’s an enjoyable goofiness to your skill set (and your ability to bomb down a mountain on a dirtbike, or drive an armored truck UP a mountain). It’s good for me as an Explorer. I can tell after 20 hours it’ll wear thin, but it’s good fun for now, and getting new tricks and toys in a steady drip is pretty great .

517

Fallen Ghosts DLC currently free for 20th Ghost Recon anniversary. This was quite good from what I remember.

518

Fallen Ghosts downloaded. Thanks for the heads up @Alistair.

519

I picked up the Narco Road DLC having uninstalled Forza Horizon 5. Maybe zipping round Bolivia will be more fun than zipping round Mexico. And it is! Not only can you do the smactus thing, there’s a game attached as well. And the map… is not as terrible as FH5 :)

Old school (ie dumb) checkpointing though.

Roll on a new GR.

520

The free Fallen Ghosts (which I still haven’t played) got me to finally start playing Wildlands. I’ve been really enjoying it. I have killed every boss, El Sueno twice to get the good ending, and have 100% of the weapon cases, attachments, and story items. Moved into Tier Mode after hitting Experience Level 30 somewhere along the way, and am currently up/down to Tier 15.

Still having fun grinding towards Tier 1 & farming convoys for resources to level up damage for my favorite weapons. My character skills are fully maxed-out & I have every bonus medal, which turn out to make little difference when you are shot at high Tier levels.

Since each Tier increases incoming damage, and leveling your weapons in Tier Mode increases their damage, the game becomes like a very large version of the original Rainbow Six PC games. If you don’t plan your way into a base, spotting and shooting enemies first, you will die. I miss games with instant death gunfights, so I’m still having a blast (or dying in one, the AI frequently uses grenades).

Bonus fun: calling in a mortar strike gives me happy flashbacks to Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (released January 2005, but still holding the title of Best Player Artillery Support Evar).

Bonus Un-fun: the AA missile launchers still regenerate too quickly. Playing solo, I believe it is impossible to kill all six of the launchers around El Sueno’s Mausoleum at once. As soon as a destroyed one is out of sight for a minute or so, a new one pops in to replace it. This creates some no-fly zones in the game. One or two launchers I can handle (missiles can be dodged if you are in a Little Bird), but 4+ means I’m driving in.

For posterity’s sake, I am sorry to report that the Predator mission was removed in December 2020. Ubisoft didn’t want to renew the license for an old game.

Now a question for you all. With the benefit of hindsight, and keeping in mind I’m nursing some seriously old hardware (i5-3570K & Z77 motherboard from 2012, and a GTX 770 I bought in 2014, but at least I have 16GB of memory), what old open world game should I dig up next? Division 1/2? Did Breakpoint get patched into greatness? Fallout: New Vegas? Far Cry ___? I did play Just Cause 1 & maybe 2. Hunter: Call of the Wild? I’ve got a lot of stuff in my Steam library, though I know a lot of Ubisoft stuff is exclusive to other online stores.

521

Breakpoint is certainly worth a look, although it probably is demanding. It’s on deep discount at Ubi right now. They have a 2 hour refund window I think (?) and you’ll be able to check performance within that time if you want… Likewise for the Divisions.

The games you list are all pretty different, so what are you in the mood for? Call of the Wild is free now I think, on Epic.