Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
Ubisoft
My two comrades and I waited patiently for the cartel convoy to show up. We were in a small village within one of the many lush valleys of Bolivia, and our CIA handler had told us that the place would be an optimal locale for setting up an ambush. Villagers milled around in the small settlement, oblivious as to the carnage that was about to be unleashed. Each of us was a highly trained Spec Ops man who could individually give entire enemy platoons problems…or so we thought.
As it began to rain, our attaché squawked over our radios, informing us that the convoy was approaching. One of our men had lain a couple of landmines out on the road which was hard to detect to the naked eye. As four SUVs loaded to the brim with cartel members rolled by, the one in front suddenly exploded—having run right over one of our mines. The three vehicles behind it stopped and about two dozen heavily armed gang members disembarked. They quickly situated themselves behind nearby cover.
Since my two battle-buddies and I knew that we were playing the new 2.0 Ghost Mode version of Ghost Recon Wildlands, we were very aware of the fact that each of us only had one life to live. No more carelessly running around, getting gunned down and respawning seconds later. No—this mode played for keeps.
We opened fire on the cartel members and picked off a few of them, but their brutal brethren began flanking around us. We were forced to enact a tactical withdrawal (okay, it was a retreat) as incoming bullets caused wood to splinter all around us.
I tossed a frag grenade at one of the vehicles and it detonated, sending several gang members sprawling. My distraction gave us a quantum of time to run to the other side of the village. Our plan was to fade off into the jungle and re-apprise our situation.
Instead, we watched in astonishment as three more SUVs pulled up filled with more cartel goons. Our single lives suddenly felt a lot more fragile.
When Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands back in March of 2017, it basically polarized gamers into two camps. The first one was more of the Call of Duty, run around shooting everything that moves – type. The second were guys like me who wanted to play the game methodically and tactically. However, even some of us within the latter group felt that being able to respawn after every death didn’t really feel that immersive.
Having unlimited lives meant that there really wasn’t any incentive for playing Wildlands the way we always thought it should be played: Slowly, strategically, and with a healthy dose of stealth sprinkled on top. If there wasn’t any punishment for running around willy-nilly and blasting away at every single digital life form in the game, then why play tactically at all?
The game’s new update, titled Special Operations 2, aims to address that. While I couldn’t really get into the new missions (featuring Rainbow Six: Siege characters), which featured the usual Ubisoft political correctness, the roguelike Ghost Mode is something that many gamers have been looking forward to for quite some time.
Instead of being able to run around half-cocked and refill your ammo whenever you want to, in Ghost Mode, you start off with a single primary and secondary weapon, and can only refill your ammo at designated ammo stations. That means you can’t just blast away at bad guys and girls and then expect to rely on magically refilling your magazines, by picking them off of random guns with different calibers.
A lot of folks hate this new mode. I played it with several random gamers when it debuted and had some “interesting” experiences. Several of these experiences involved watching fellow Ghost Mode newbies attempting to do their usual “Rambo tactics” of running up to enemies and blasting away at them from the hip. I’m not sure if they were aware that once you lose your character in this mode, that’s it—they’re gone forever. In any event, they get butthurt and leave in a hurry.
If you really consider yourself a military tactician, try upping Wildlands’ difficulty to Extreme. While I consider myself a pretty careful, stealth-based gamer, even I goofed up several times while playing on Extreme. Getting careless and allowing for even the smallest mistake can cost you your character, and all of their weapons and gear.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands’ Ghost Mode is the best thing to happen to this highly-touted stealth shooter, in my opinion. It makes your really slow down and plan your actions, instead of just running around, guns blazing. Try it out for yourself if you dare.
SCORE: 88%
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands 2.0 Update features great graphics that make its stealth 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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