Ghost Recon: Breakpoint – Ultimate Edition
Ubisoft
I’ve been a fan of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon games for years, although lesser so more recently. I played the original title, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon (2001), and fell in love with its patient, highly tactical gameplay set across large-scale maps. It forced you to communicate with your friends (granted you were playing co-op).
I played the Ghost Recon series of games up until around 2007 when Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 came out. After that, Ubisoft took the series in a decidedly more casual direction.
Although I did enjoy 2017’s, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, to a certain extent, I still felt that it was much more of an arcade-y experience than I was used to. However, I did appreciate that Ubisoft dared to take the franchise in an open-world direction.
Their follow-up to Ghost Recon Wildlands was Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which debuted in October of 2019. Unfortunately, Ghost Recon Breakpoint suffered from a very rocky launch—the gaming press and fans alike roundly criticized it for a multitude of reasons. But to Ubisoft’s credit, they’ve released a number of updates, including a major one that changed the game drastically (in a good way).
That update included a new immersive mode that added the option to remove the controversial looter-shooter mechanics. They also rolled back many of the other unpleasant additions that Ubisoft had introduced to Ghost Recon Breakpoint. So much so, that the game—in its present state—harkens back to the good old days of yore when Ghost Recon practically oozed with tactical goodness.
I’ve been waiting for the day that Ubisoft released such an update and I’m glad I did. With even a few of the realism options turned up, stealth and tactics have become important elements to consider once again. Cranking them all the way to the max turns it into the closest experience I’ve had since playing the original 2001 game.
I’m no longer running through enemy strongpoints willy-nilly or careening over them with various vehicles as I did before. With the realism jacked up everything is much more focused and deliberate. Running around recklessly will only get you killed in a hurry.
Therefore, planning and communication are at the forefront of any operation, just as in the past. Instead of racing from A to B in the search for better firearms and gear with better stat-lines, I’m creeping around like a silent killer again, emblematic of a true Ghost. That’s the way that Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was meant to be played in the first place—at least in my mind.
What I’m impressed with the most is that Ubisoft has given players the option of implementing these changes. You can either chose to play the new, realistic way, or stay with the old version if you prefer collecting new guns and gear, and more arcade-y gameplay. You can fine-tune countless aspects of the difficulty levels now to make Ghost Recon: Breakpoint play the way you want it to.
Ubisoft has bestowed players with an incredible amount of power in shaping the way the game plays out and you can make changes to your settings on the fly, without impacting your prior progress or the content that’s available to you as you play on through the campaign.
Although the game still has a few issues, including some bugs here and there, the Ghost Recon: Breakpoint – Ultimate Edition adds some new goodies and gear to play with, as well as the new, adjustable realism settings. This is literally the ultimate edition of the game!
RATING: 8.5/10
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint has some pretty amazing graphics that make its shooter gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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