Scripted plays
Occasionally firefights occur – after an alarm is raised or during scripted set-pieces, where you're assaulting or defending a position. Certainly, Future Soldier is more assured at gunplay than Advanced Warfighter before it and there are a couple of stand-out moments – not least those featuring the Warhound, a controllable mech armed with mortars and rockets. Yet with enemy AI and level design geared around stealth, it's understandably less satisfying than CoD or Battlefield.
Negative tactics
The same is true of the multiplayer Adversarial mode. Given the Ghosts' ludicrous technological advantage over their enemies, balancing the asymmetric warfare was always going to prove challenging.
Rather than balancing through uneven team sizes and respawn counts, developer Red Storm, instead, ducks the issue altogether by scaling back universal access to gadgets. So, despite the decent range of modes and character classes on offer, the move to more familiar symmetric multiplayer combat brings the game into direct and unfavourable comparison with those dominant on-line shooters.
Swear by the turrets
Lastly, the Guerilla mode fares little better. An effective and enjoyable Horde-clone, it's the best multiplayer mode on offer, demanding concerted communication and strategy to survive its exacting challenge. However, its preoccupation with defending positions against wave after wave of enemies only further dilutes the traditional Ghost Recon gameplay.
Gun fanatics might find themselves attracted to Future Soldier's weapon customisation mode, which allows gamers to assemble their gats, modified piece by piece. Those with Microsoft's Kinect can access this mode without a controller, even firing their custom weapons on the shooting range using the motion-sensing peripheral. While the concept is a fun idea, it's nothing more than a novelty.
Soldier insight
Verdict
By simplifying its tactical strategy and drawing heavy inspiration from Splinter Cell, Future Soldier might have broadened its mass market appeal, but it has lost much of the individuality that distinguished the series. The irony is that in reinventing itself, Ghost Recon has moved into a stagnant genre desperately in need of its own reinvention. ®
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Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
COMMENTS
Tango down
The original Rainbow 6 was a thing of beauty. Small, intense scenarios. Careful planning, and realistic damage. It was great and the gritty realistic nature of it made it a refreshing change from the Duke Nukem and Quakes we were used to.
This review is right. Subsequent iterations have changed this series from a game of strategy with action, to an all out action game.
Ding Chavez is not amused.
The PC versions of Advanced Warfighter(1 and 2)
are more like chess games than shooters, just like any other realistic mil-sim.
Re: Man up
Why I already am.
And I wipe out the DS3 using losers on Killzone 3*
* positive KDR, often top of my team, often winning team, in top few thousand world wide, win games when 4 vs me, I play tactician markman and engineer.
So I play a FPS using motion controls, large numbers of us do and a lot of us are very good. You do realise we actually have to aim - you know point at the screen to shoot!
I know at least one sharpshooter user, he is pretty good as well, top couple 100 in the world.
Finally it takes skill to use the sniper rifle like this, you actually have to hold your breath when aiming, stil got 30 streak using it though!
So you see a shooter game with this logo on - and it doesn't support it during campaign this is serious misselling.
Re: Be careful with PS3 version - the cover lies
>> BTW some of us strugle to aim quickly with sticks and like motion type control like a mouse, or a move controller.<<
Man up.
It's true....
COD has stagnated the FPS genre. The same game has been re-released ever since the first MW, they are still usign the same grpahics engine! At least BF3 tries something different.
