Eurogamer- http://archive.is/govHN
"Wildlands is that familiar glossy contradiction, the "gritty" quasi-realistic open world blockbuster - a work of great craft and care that's also a work of macabre war tourism, wowing you with its geography even as it casually up-sells the bankrupt fantasy of playing global policeman. Aside from being another Ubisoft love letter to icon-studded map screens, it reprises the fond Tom Clancy daydream that the answer to every festering international dilemma is a squad of all-American roughnecks armed with a list of names and a relaxed definition of collateral damage. It's a game about extrajudicial murder whose creators have taken the time to animate children playing hopscotch in schoolyards, a realm of soothing splendour in which you'll kick in the door of a village church to retrieve a laser sight accessory from the altar. It is by turns plodding and vivid, entertaining and abhorrent. I can't quite bring myself to loathe it, but it says a lot that I keep trying to escape it - or at least, to escape the part Wildlands expects me to play in reshaping its coked-up appropriation of Bolivia
Ghost Recon: Wildlands' premise reads like a 5am Trump tweet
It's easier to ignore the game's fundamental toxicity and hand-worn elements in co-op, but all that's still there at the back of your mind, like the smell of something burning in a crowded room. Earlier in the week I asked whether the Ubisoft open world had run out of steam. After a few days in the Wildlands I think the answer is a hesitant 'no' - few development studios are capable of landscapes as grand yet delicately worked as this, but the methods by which we traverse and uncover them are overdue a rethink, and the concept of a godlike special operator killing without undue compunction is rotten to the core. Wildlands is a world worth lingering over, but I need a better reason to make the trip."
Digital Trends-http://archive.is/vIiEj
"The trouble is that Ghost Recon isn?t good at being both things at once. Taken at face value, it?s impossible not to see the game?s shortcomings...and its premise can feel ? problematic.
and much of the plot and lore trades in stereotypes and gross militarism
Similar to Ubisoft?s last modern military game, The Division, Wildlands? premise and plot swerves into some unsettling political statements. Effectively, your Ghost Recon team is an unauthorized military force wandering around a foreign nation, shooting whoever you like. The game chastises you for killing civilians with a ?hey, you bozo!? kind of attitude. The radios, which turn on whenever you get in a car, are awash with Mexican stereotypes (the cartel is a Mexican transplant). For all of its silliness, there are also moments where its brotastic jokes and quite self-righteous ooh-rah militarism feels earnest and unsettling."
Ars Techinca- http://archive.is/XeWle
"While the reasons for your arrival in Bolivia might be clear, the justifications for your actions are absolutely not. Wildlands is, on its surface, a standard action game set in a tropical South American nation, but its blas? acceptance of American interventionism?as well as its careless casting of the Ghosts as ?good guys??creates an unpleasant edge to the story it tries to tell. Chances are you won?t like the Ghosts themselves, and nor should you: they?re a bad bunch of grossly immoral dickheads doing morally questionable things in the name of the ?greater good.? Ripped straight from the W. Bush Playbook of 2003, both the Ghosts and their handler, a woman called Bowman, are just nasty.
The ugly
Those politics, man. Damn those politics.
Polygon- http://archive.is/duQi7
Too much to excerpt here, the more than half the review is dedicated to hand wringing over thematics and tone, rather than gameplay or technical details (so far so Polygon...)
Kotaku-http://archive.is/8sooC
"But Wildland?s core is far more insipid. It is propaganda. It is jingoism made playable, perpetuating the failed logic that all it takes to solve the world?s woes is enough ammo.
They churn out banter that moves from unbearably dull to patently offensive, tossing out the kind of pithy one-liner that only teenagers would find cool before sitting down to make a homophobic joke. Wildlands wants them to feel alluring, but they mostly just feel like assholes.
The nature of your companions? chatter exemplifies Wildlands? biggest issue. It pretends to be politically mature, but it has nothing of value to say. Caught between Grand Theft Auto and ARMA, Wildlands can?t conjure cogent or meaningful gameplay systems, nor does it even bother to consider the real world ramifications of its gun happy gameplay.
Wildlands, continuing in the footsteps of The Division, is a game about being special and empowered. You are the player. The person with the gun. The government operative with the license to kill. Your enemies are the savage ?other?, no better than wild dogs that need to be put down. Bolivia is your playground, made to look like any other video game warzone. It is only the occasional corrido playing over the radio or small bit of environmental design that conveys any humanity.
There are times where it feels like Wildlands wants to say something. The game makes heavy reference to social media and information warfare but never does more than note how the cartel maintains a powerful media presence, which the game is keen to show in glitzy, tone confused briefing sequences. Wildlands also thrives on jingoism. It wants to talk about ?narco-states? but can only muster the brutish El Sue?o as the villain while depicting a caricature of Bolivia. The result is rubbish. Wildlands? gameplay is too chaotic to call back to Tom Clancy classics like Rainbow Six or the series? earlier titles. Its politics are too vapid to compete with the Splinter Cell series? pulpy yet prescient narratives. Wildlands wants to be everything. It succeeds at being nothing."
The Guardian- http://archive.is/HWVDw
" Instead of a living, breathing country, Wildlands feel like Westworld for the Guns & Ammo crowd. Which, of course, is essentially what it is. A chance for players to live out their hardline Republican fantasies largely unencumbered by law or morality (killing civilians will theoretically cause missions to fail but the developers have built in plenty of leeway). In this near future nightmare scenario Bolivia has been transformed into a narco-state run by the all-powerful Santa Blanca cartel headed up by the heavily-tattooed jefe, El Sueno ? a representation, by the way, that has sparked a real-world diplomatic incident between Bolivia and Ubisoft?s home country, France. You take on the role of an elite US soldier sent in undercover and off the books to destabilise the drug runners by murdering them in their thousands. Ghost Recon at least does a good job of making light of this state-sponsored genocide."
