Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (review)

This is one of those rare titles I played where I really enjoyed my time playing this game but also really loathed it (especially after playing the last four or five levels that made me tore my hair out, and not in a good way).

Ghost Recon: Future Solider’s gameplay is a game I consider a mix between being a classic strategic shooter (somewhat like the early Ghost Recon titles like the first Ghost Recon) and a “zoomer shooter” (somewhere in the likes of Call of Duty or Gears of War); enjoyable, but suffers from a few game-tropes that you’d also see in a COD title or modern third person shooter and haven’t aged very well. Those tropes are some slo-mo scenes (when breaking and entering a room), railgun shooting segments (although you’d also see this in classic titles like Medal of Honor Underground, but I think like Underground, Future Soldier has only one or two railgun segments from what I remember), and forced shooty-shooty segments (meaning the game devs made it almost impossible to ghost stealth through a couple of enemies who will you’ll immediately engage with, either because there’s too many to take out or they’re placed in spots to where they’re immediately spot their dead comrade and go into panic mode).

I really wanted to like this game, and I do for the most part, from the excellent and smooth gameplay and team mechanics, optional stealth (for the most part), and somewhat entertaining story. The weapon customization was neat, and there’s some new weapons and gadgets you unlock as you play through the campaign or complete some challenges, but some of the challenges aren’t worth it to me in order to unlock some weapons that may or may not be good or worth losing my sanity and braincells over. Some of these challenges (especially in the later levels like Valiant Hammer) are just plain sadistic to partake in and hard to pull off, and some of them are just busy-work that I don’t wanna bother with. It’s almost like the devs didn’t playtest them and made sure they were fun and hard instead of infuriating and nonsensically bullshit.

Overall, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a decent game, but it’s one title I won’t be going back soon, especially since it doesn’t have local co-op mode like previous titles. If you wanna try it out, it wouldn’t hurt to own a copy. It’s extremely cheap to buy and it’s worth your time playing, despite the levels being linear compared to the previous early Ghost Recon titles. Otherwise, you’d be better off playing something else like Spec Ops: The Line (or the early Ghost Recon titles).