Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier Review

Steve Butts

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Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier Review

A smart shooter for smart people.

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Zhukov

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Dec 29, 2009
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Hasn't this already been out for like a week? I thought you guys had just decided not to review it.

Anyway, I found the game utterly and completely lacklustre. You play a bunch of bloody American special forces guys running around the world shooting brown people and Russians. Again. There's a coup in Moscow. Again. Someone gets their hands on nuclear weapons. Again.

Ugh.

Also, all the various gadgets made me feel grossly overpowered. Between the X-ray vision, invisibility mode, spotting drone, air support, indestructible mortar-bot, sensors and cover-penetrating weapons it all feels a bit, well... unfair. You're using all this in a battle against guys with AKs and sandals. Hardly the underdog heroes.
 

NLS

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Jan 7, 2010
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Zhukov said:
Hasn't this already been out for like a week? I thought you guys had just decided not to review it.

Anyway, I found the game utterly and completely lacklustre. You play a bunch of bloody American special forces guys running around the world shooting brown people and Russians. Again. There's a coup in Moscow. Again. Someone gets their hands on nuclear weapons. Again.
First Ghost recon game took place in the post-soviet countries. Desert Siege in East Africa, and Island Thunder in Cuba. This was 10 years ago. Since then, we've seen Ghost Recon 2 in Korea, Summit Strike in Kazakhstan, and the Advanced Warfighter games in Mexico/southern US border. Where do you go from there? It's either western europe or space, or in this case, back to old soviet and Africa.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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NLS said:
Zhukov said:
Hasn't this already been out for like a week? I thought you guys had just decided not to review it.

Anyway, I found the game utterly and completely lacklustre. You play a bunch of bloody American special forces guys running around the world shooting brown people and Russians. Again. There's a coup in Moscow. Again. Someone gets their hands on nuclear weapons. Again.
First Ghost recon game took place in the post-soviet countries. Desert Siege in East Africa, and Island Thunder in Cuba. This was 10 years ago. Since then, we've seen Ghost Recon 2 in Korea, Summit Strike in Kazakhstan, and the Advanced Warfighter games in Mexico/southern US border. Where do you go from there? It's either western europe or space, or in this case, back to old soviet and Africa.
I wasn't talking about the GR series in particular, but rather the whole modern warfare shooter sub-genre.

It's as stale as fantasy RPGs, if not more so.
 

NinjaDeathSlap

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Feb 20, 2011
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NLS said:
Zhukov said:
Hasn't this already been out for like a week? I thought you guys had just decided not to review it.

Anyway, I found the game utterly and completely lacklustre. You play a bunch of bloody American special forces guys running around the world shooting brown people and Russians. Again. There's a coup in Moscow. Again. Someone gets their hands on nuclear weapons. Again.
First Ghost recon game took place in the post-soviet countries. Desert Siege in East Africa, and Island Thunder in Cuba. This was 10 years ago. Since then, we've seen Ghost Recon 2 in Korea, Summit Strike in Kazakhstan, and the Advanced Warfighter games in Mexico/southern US border. Where do you go from there? It's either western europe or space, or in this case, back to old soviet and Africa.
I Think he was referring more to just the shooter market in general. TBH, it doesn't bother me all that much. So long as the plot keeps me interested, I'm not going to call it out for being similar to another plot from another game. If it's good, that's all that matters. Of course, I haven't picked this up yet so I don't know if it's good, but what I've seen of the gameplay has interested me enough to buy it as soon as I'm done with exams.
 

Jonluw

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I remember having a really good time with graw 2, but I don't know whether to buy this game.
I haven't been playing as much lately, and my 360 suddenly got all screwy around august-september, so it takes me several tries just to start up a game.
That, and I'm afraid part of my enjoyment of the game came from the fact that I was young and everything was new.
I just don't know.
 

NLS

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Jan 7, 2010
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Zhukov said:
NLS said:
Zhukov said:
Hasn't this already been out for like a week? I thought you guys had just decided not to review it.

Anyway, I found the game utterly and completely lacklustre. You play a bunch of bloody American special forces guys running around the world shooting brown people and Russians. Again. There's a coup in Moscow. Again. Someone gets their hands on nuclear weapons. Again.
First Ghost recon game took place in the post-soviet countries. Desert Siege in East Africa, and Island Thunder in Cuba. This was 10 years ago. Since then, we've seen Ghost Recon 2 in Korea, Summit Strike in Kazakhstan, and the Advanced Warfighter games in Mexico/southern US border. Where do you go from there? It's either western europe or space, or in this case, back to old soviet and Africa.
I wasn't talking about the GR series in particular, but rather the whole modern warfare shooter sub-genre.

It's as stale as fantasy RPGs, if not more so.
I'm saying: It's stuck between going for the modern-warfare setting, or going somewhere it's already been in the past 2-3 games already. Yes, compared to most current "realistic shooter" settings, it might feel a bit tiresome. But compared to GRAW 1 and 2 for instance, it's a fresh sight to not shoot yet another Mexican at the dusty grey/brown looking border. Either way, it's going to be a setting previous fans or new players will have grown tired of on beforehand.
 

Siberian Relic

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Jan 15, 2010
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The narrative and characters are lackluster, yes, and Zhukov's not at all out of line by raising complaints about the inclusion of Russians and Soviets. This is a Tom Clancy game, after all. George Lucas is more likely to give up post-release editing.

But the teamwork and tactical stealth aspects are actually strong enough to overcome the story deficiencies, in my opinion. The characters are rote and uninspired during the cutscenes, but they have an interesting reality to them during the missions--a result, as Steve said, of their relevant and genuine communication between each other. And, really, the coordination aspect covers campaign, guerilla mode, and multiplayer. Communication and tactics (however much internet soldiers can muster) in multiplayer just makes for a satisfying experience, especially since the game modes are focused on objectives, rather than just the standard "massacre the other team for ten minutes" mode. It makes the efforts more endearing to know you can depend on to your teammates and vice versa.

In guerilla mode, in its harder settings, is very hard to get through as a lone wolf, and the campaign has been smartly tweaked to make it harder when your squad is populated with human players (the AI-controlled squadmates, when camouflaged, are harder (if not impossible) to detect than human players, because you have to be able to depend on them to find a vantage point to take out your targets).

Me, I like the change of pace from Call of Duty and Battlefield. I can tackle many areas by ordering targets for my squadmates and never fire a shot, or I can snipe alongside them, or I can order targets for them to snipe while I sneak about and cut a few second smiles. Or, if I can risk an alert and I'm feeling reckless, I can pull out an unsuppressed AR and blast away. I just wish I could move bodies (a la Splinter Cell) and issue basic movement orders to my squadmates. Oh, well.

Unlike its Modern Battlefield: Duty Calls competitors, Future Soldier puts heavy emphasis on what you you do before and after pulling the trigger.
 

Chrinik

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May 8, 2008
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Zhukov said:
Also, all the various gadgets made me feel grossly overpowered. Between the X-ray vision, invisibility mode, spotting drone, air support, indestructible mortar-bot, sensors and cover-penetrating weapons it all feels a bit, well... unfair. You're using all this in a battle against guys with AKs and sandals. Hardly the underdog heroes.
But they are not supposed to BE underdog heroes...They get all this shit so that they ARE imballanced, coz war is not fair, and you do anything to win. Any side does that. Don´t think the "good guys" play fair in a war. Noone ever did.


On Topic: Finally it´s out, and it sounds like it´s what I imagined, so probably gonna pick this up in a while.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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Chrinik said:
Zhukov said:
Also, all the various gadgets made me feel grossly overpowered. Between the X-ray vision, invisibility mode, spotting drone, air support, indestructible mortar-bot, sensors and cover-penetrating weapons it all feels a bit, well... unfair. You're using all this in a battle against guys with AKs and sandals. Hardly the underdog heroes.
But they are not supposed to BE underdog heroes...They get all this shit so that they ARE imballanced, coz war is not fair, and you do anything to win. Any side does that. Don´t think the "good guys" play fair in a war. Noone ever did.


On Topic: Finally it´s out, and it sounds like it´s what I imagined, so probably gonna pick this up in a while.
But this isn't war, it's a game.

Compete lack of balance is a reality in actual warfare, but in a game it makes for crappy gameplay and an unsatisfying narrative.
 

F'Angus

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The lack of couch co-op or campaign matchmaking still puts me off getting this.. I wish they'd add it in a patch but I doubt they will.

Still it does sound interesting.
 

Meight08

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Feb 16, 2011
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You call this crud a strategic shooter!?
Play the original ghost recon first before you say that.
 

SnakeoilSage

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A co-op campaign with a less cookie-cut story would make this a fantastic game. Nevertheless, thank god for GR taking the Michael Bay out of its military shooter.
 

Rad Party God

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Feb 23, 2010
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A tactical shooter in a market oversaturated with COD clones!??

Suddendly I just got a wee bit interested in this game, just because the video review kinda reminded me of Deus Ex Human Revolution.

Might as well replay that instead.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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rolfwesselius said:
You call this crud a strategic shooter!?
Play the original ghost recon first before you say that.
That was the one where you could fire a shot in the air and just wait for the enemies to stroll up in single file to be gunned down.

Strategic!
 

Paragon Fury

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Jan 23, 2009
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The reason that the Tom Clancy games can't do the whole "War with another nation" thing yet is because the main three series (Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon) have not yet caught up to the timeline in Endwar, where the actual war amongst superpowers occurs. The most recent Clancy games (Conviction, HAWX 1+2) and now Future Soldier are all building us up to and giving us little pieces of information that lead us to the conflict in Endwar and give us insight into why it starts. It seems very convoluted on its own, but when you put the different pieces from different games together it starts to make more sense. Rainbow Six: Partiots will likely give us another piece of the puzzle when it comes out.

And I notice you kind of glossed over the multiplayer.
 

devotedsniper

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Available: 14 June 2012
This game will unlock in approximately 2 weeks, and 21 hours
But i want to play it now steam! This is getting frustrating now all my current pre orders are either already out on console or out in America for the past week or so...


Can't wait to play this and the new Rainbow Six whenever that comes out. I just hope ubisoft haven't done another GRAW 1 & 2, i brought the pack on steam (on the weekend you could buy the duluxe FS for the same price as standard) went to play the first GRAW to be greeted by horrible controls and a completely different game, i bought the collection pack specifically for the GRAW's thinking they were the same as the xbox version (used to play them alot back when i had an xbox)...i wish i could get my money back.
 

NLS

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Jan 7, 2010
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Paragon Fury said:
The reason that the Tom Clancy games can't do the whole "War with another nation" thing yet is because the main three series (Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon) have not yet caught up to the timeline in Endwar, where the actual war amongst superpowers occurs. The most recent Clancy games (Conviction, HAWX 1+2) and now Future Soldier are all building us up to and giving us little pieces of information that lead us to the conflict in Endwar and give us insight into why it starts. It seems very convoluted on its own, but when you put the different pieces from different games together it starts to make more sense. Rainbow Six: Partiots will likely give us another piece of the puzzle when it comes out.

And I notice you kind of glossed over the multiplayer.
Haven't had time for Conviction or HAWX yet, but damn, so Endwar is actually happening? I always sort of thought of it as an alernative grim future setting that wouldn't actually be happening in current or future games. I mean, once it actually takes place, EVERYTHING changes. What I'd like to see though, is how you in future R6, GR and SC games work together to prevent Endwar from ever happening in the first place, leaving Endwar as just a "what if"-scenario.
 

ElPatron

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Zhukov said:
You play a bunch of bloody American special forces guys running around the world shooting brown people and Russians. Again. There's a coup in Moscow. Again. Someone gets their hands on nuclear weapons. Again.
It's Tom Clancy we are talking about, lol.

SupahGamuh said:
A tactical shooter in a market oversaturated with COD clones!??
You might enjoy it, but it doesn't get that much different from CoD if you compare it to it's predecessors.

Don't trust it on the merit of being called "tactical shooter" alone.
 

teebeeohh

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Jun 17, 2009
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i will remember weeks later what the bad guy wanted to do: take over the world, OF COURSE!

pyrrhic victory, i love you captcha