Ghost Hunting

    So Ghost Recon Future Soldier.
    I recently got this out of a local Redbox because I'd played GRAW when the 360 first came out and I actually liked the game. Of course its been such a long time since I played it that I might be imagining things. Regardless.
    Things I liked about the game,
    The characters while not exactly fleshed out are somewhat funny to listen to when they actually start talking to each other which isn't often.
    The amount of weapons I first thought was a little light considering most have about thirty different rifles alone. However while the amount of weapons might be a little light to me the amount that the player can customize them is kinda bonkers. Pretty much everything that goes on the guns can be customized down to the barrels and gas systems that they have. I'm not an expert on these kinds of things so I don't know if that's actually possible but I thought it was cool.
    I'd say graphics but since everything has the same ones now its not worth mentioning.
    I applaud the effort of making the game be more about teamwork with the sync kill where you mark up to four unfortunates and are able to get them with one pull of the trigger by getting your AI allies to help out. That worked very well and it was extremely enjoyable to move through levels getting help from them to avoid detection.
    However that mention of avoiding detection is where we break away from the things that I actually thought were really good with the game. Don't get me wrong I did enjoy the game when I got things to work right but there were faults.
    Story Note Spoilers continue at own risk Well I think there was one but honestly I didn't really care it was one of those things happening in the background and all I was concerned with was accomplishing the current mission. I know it had something to do with a coup in Russia, because if we aren't shooting at Russians of some flavor we're doing it wrong. The story dropped a pretty huge ball as well with these bad Ruskies wheeling out a band of guys with the same kind of gear that you get and in larger numbers than you and better with theirs able to work while they are walking while yours doesn't. This comes up as a bad guy but is never dealt with which is pretty weak seeing as how you are supposed to be top of the line in tech and now we find that we've been beaten to the punch. I'm not saying it needs to take center stage but come on at least let me go find out how this came about.
    The AI.....Well honestly its crap I had to restart a section at least three times because they got stuck and I couldn't proceed farther into the level. They also don't seem to understand that they are supposed to help you by shooting bad guys. It wasn't until I got to the level that you have to do on your own that I finally realized the only reasons they were there was to give me four guys to simultaneously shoot bad guys who don't know you're there and to revive me when I got killed by one of the other AI who forgot this isn't Halo and rushed me.
    Speaking of the combat well...Its also a crap shoot since the friendly AI is so bad it struggles with the weapons in its hands combat becomes extremely risky to engage in since you will be fighting tons of guys at the same time. In addition its very trial and error with you only learning about the guy that wanders around that particular building only AFTER he had filled you with bullets.
    Actually thinking about it Ghost Recon Trial and Error probably would be a better name for the game since that's what's driving it. Many of the levels have an alert=fail. Now while this is automatically stupid I did like that it does tell you when that's the case. I understand that many of the game's missions are supposed to be on the sneaky sneaky but come on give me a break. Maybe I lack the stealth mindset but I don't want to have to spend ten minutes waiting around and planning every little detail only to be screwed because while I'm using that stupid drone to do all this an enemy walked up to me and shot me to hell.
    Finally lets get one thing straight here. Third person cover based with light health should not have as its climactic piece a chase through dozens of bad guys shooting at me. That's just trying to irritate the player because they need to move fast while the ENTIRE game up to that point was slow and sneaky and it should stay that way.
    Last point that I want to make is that the game installed something on my console in order to "enhance the sound experience" Wait hang on what? I don't have surround sound and I don't have one of those headsets that creates an ambiance. I sit around with podcasts/music/the other tv in my area going at once I don't need a enhanced audio experience and I don't want to wait ten minutes to play the game.

    So all things considered its decent but not great and not terrible. Probably end up playing it and forgetting about it because nothing about the game really stood out to me.
Take that for what you will

Hambone Out