-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Ghost Recon : Wildlands Open Beta Impressions.
- Thread starter 0racle
- Start date
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
I loved the old ghost recon games.
This is garbage. Open world bore in a boring desert with a bad story. I spend 90% of my time trying to get from point A to point B. Big pass from me.
It was fun sniping civilians in cars, too bad they stop you and make you reload the game for no reason.
This is garbage. Open world bore in a boring desert with a bad story. I spend 90% of my time trying to get from point A to point B. Big pass from me.
It was fun sniping civilians in cars, too bad they stop you and make you reload the game for no reason.
I actually like the gunplay. It feels good and it´s nice that you can actually see the sniper shot flying to your target.
But yeah, its a collectathon. Lame story and missions. The dialogue... oh god, why did they put jokes in there? The story feels like they tried to get some sort of inspiration from Narcos... if Narcos was written by a 14yo.
But yeah, its a collectathon. Lame story and missions. The dialogue... oh god, why did they put jokes in there? The story feels like they tried to get some sort of inspiration from Narcos... if Narcos was written by a 14yo.
MosquitoSmasher
Member
I was hoping that after the closed beta this would be different, being that there's a new location and all. But it's really just more of the same and becomes a chore rather quickly.
This guy perfectly explains what is wrong with the beta and very likely full game as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaE94c_Z0v0
The world is empty and devoid of interesting things. Sure there were a few farm animals but barely any wild animals if any. No random stuff happening, and this is something that would make it a lot better already. It would bring variety for you and your team or you alone in SP next to the very repetitive main and side missions. Unless this does happen in the full game but i doubt that.
I commend Ubi for improving things from the closed beta though. Vehicles are definitely more fun to use, in no way as good as in a GTA game though but clearly improved over the closed beta and also Watch_Dogs 2. I wish the gunplay was a bit more satisfying and that there would be any decent ragdolls. Also why the hell do i walk straight through dead bodies? We're in 2017, this stuff didn't even happen in GTA IV anymore.
This guy perfectly explains what is wrong with the beta and very likely full game as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaE94c_Z0v0
The world is empty and devoid of interesting things. Sure there were a few farm animals but barely any wild animals if any. No random stuff happening, and this is something that would make it a lot better already. It would bring variety for you and your team or you alone in SP next to the very repetitive main and side missions. Unless this does happen in the full game but i doubt that.
I commend Ubi for improving things from the closed beta though. Vehicles are definitely more fun to use, in no way as good as in a GTA game though but clearly improved over the closed beta and also Watch_Dogs 2. I wish the gunplay was a bit more satisfying and that there would be any decent ragdolls. Also why the hell do i walk straight through dead bodies? We're in 2017, this stuff didn't even happen in GTA IV anymore.
Meus Renaissance
Member
This is a game for friends indeed.
I need friends.
Does anyone want to play with me?
Starfleets (Xbox)
I need friends.
Does anyone want to play with me?
Starfleets (Xbox)
The main thing that's better about the open world in this game is the terrain. Not only is a bigger but the shape of the terrain is more natural which gives you more freedom.
In open-world games like Far Cry or Skyrim or Phantom Pain, a mountain or cliff usually means a wall, turning a lot of those games into really just a bunch of interconnected corridors with a few open fields. In Wildlands mountains look like actual mountains, and you can climb or fly over most of them. That means instead of being forced to approach missions from a pre-scripted direction you can truly plan out your approach from any direction. It also lends a greater sense of verticality to the game. Zelda Breath of the Wild is probably like the older, compressed style of open-world game but Nintendo giving Link the ability to climb almost any surface might create a similar effect.
Phantom Pain in an open world like this one would have been a far more impressive game. I hope Death Stranding is some kind of spiritual successor to Phantom Pain because I feel like that game deserves one that isn't constrained by previous-gen consoles (people forget MGSV was still made for PS3 and 360).
The second area of the Wildlands beta actually is a lot more interesting though. There's more obstacles in your way like SAMs to shoot down helicopters, enemy helicopters, and just much more heavily guarded bases. The terrain there is also really different, mostly being flat desert and mountains. It at least shows that the full game might get more varied when you expand out beyond the first area.
Overall, even in solo I still think Wildlands is an okay game. It is indeed just another Ubisoft collect-a-thon but I like how it's taken up another level in terms of scale and player freedom. Really I just like that we're starting to see more standbox military shooters. I like that MGSV is having an affect on other games. In addition to Wildlands I've heard Sniper Elite 4 and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 are taking a similar open-ended approach to gameplay.
Not just open-world shooters, but shooters that try to have actual sandbox gameplay where just about anything can happen during a mission. Far Cry 2 tried to do this but Far Cry 3 and 4 abandoned it. The game that did it the best without actually being open-world was Crysis 1. The most interesting example of a sandbox military campaign I've played might be the main campaign for Arma 2. The setup of that game was kind of similar to Wildlands in terms of scale and freedom, but probably had more interesting and ambitious missions. The problem is that it was about 100 times jankier than this Wildlands beta is.
In open-world games like Far Cry or Skyrim or Phantom Pain, a mountain or cliff usually means a wall, turning a lot of those games into really just a bunch of interconnected corridors with a few open fields. In Wildlands mountains look like actual mountains, and you can climb or fly over most of them. That means instead of being forced to approach missions from a pre-scripted direction you can truly plan out your approach from any direction. It also lends a greater sense of verticality to the game. Zelda Breath of the Wild is probably like the older, compressed style of open-world game but Nintendo giving Link the ability to climb almost any surface might create a similar effect.
Phantom Pain in an open world like this one would have been a far more impressive game. I hope Death Stranding is some kind of spiritual successor to Phantom Pain because I feel like that game deserves one that isn't constrained by previous-gen consoles (people forget MGSV was still made for PS3 and 360).
The second area of the Wildlands beta actually is a lot more interesting though. There's more obstacles in your way like SAMs to shoot down helicopters, enemy helicopters, and just much more heavily guarded bases. The terrain there is also really different, mostly being flat desert and mountains. It at least shows that the full game might get more varied when you expand out beyond the first area.
Overall, even in solo I still think Wildlands is an okay game. It is indeed just another Ubisoft collect-a-thon but I like how it's taken up another level in terms of scale and player freedom. Really I just like that we're starting to see more standbox military shooters. I like that MGSV is having an affect on other games. In addition to Wildlands I've heard Sniper Elite 4 and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 are taking a similar open-ended approach to gameplay.
Not just open-world shooters, but shooters that try to have actual sandbox gameplay where just about anything can happen during a mission. Far Cry 2 tried to do this but Far Cry 3 and 4 abandoned it. The game that did it the best without actually being open-world was Crysis 1. The most interesting example of a sandbox military campaign I've played might be the main campaign for Arma 2. The setup of that game was kind of similar to Wildlands in terms of scale and freedom, but probably had more interesting and ambitious missions. The problem is that it was about 100 times jankier than this Wildlands beta is.
Radical Edward
Member
Ummm... I cant think of anything this game does better than MgsV. Care to explain?
I just explained in the first two paragraphs.
Radical Edward
Member
Not seeing it, sorry. The fact you can't fly over mountains is mgsv? You can approach missions from any direction in TPP, you aren't forced into corridors.
Jaded Alyx
Member
It does have a cover system.
Emperor Bohe
Member
didn't really have fun with this to be honest. cancelled my pre-order, even though i had the amazon e3 pre-order discount.
I would disagree on that point, I found a massive herd of alpacas roaming some grassland. And that lake in the new area is only a foot deep the whole way through. Drive to the middle and you'll have dozens of flamingos flying overhead.
Always-honest
Banned
I like the coop and game mechanics but why is this open world? There is no need for it and it could have looked a lot better as a result.
cripterion
Member
There seems to be a bug with the dialog, I was just playing with a buddy and in the car I could hear 2 other voices, like we were a full team.
After trying this game for a couple of hours, I've decided I seriously do not like it.
The animations looked choppy in all of the preview videos, but oh my lord are they even worse when you're actually playing the game. The driving is abysmal, going off-road (easy to do because you slip and slide everywhere) will make you want to throw yourself out of the window - you constantly get caught and stuck on tiny rocks and tree stumps.
Playing through missions is okay if you try and play slightly stealthy, but gun combat doesn't feel great.
Visually, the game is pretty good, but that's nothing enough to make up for the problems. I played with three other people, definitely not for me. Quite disappointed because Future Soldier was ace. Glad for everyone who's enjoying it.
The animations looked choppy in all of the preview videos, but oh my lord are they even worse when you're actually playing the game. The driving is abysmal, going off-road (easy to do because you slip and slide everywhere) will make you want to throw yourself out of the window - you constantly get caught and stuck on tiny rocks and tree stumps.
Playing through missions is okay if you try and play slightly stealthy, but gun combat doesn't feel great.
Visually, the game is pretty good, but that's nothing enough to make up for the problems. I played with three other people, definitely not for me. Quite disappointed because Future Soldier was ace. Glad for everyone who's enjoying it.
Kurt Russell
Member
Yup, had the same thing when playing with a friend.
really? i gave this beta a short whirl earlier and the one thing that stuck out to me as being properly shit were the vehicle controls. vehicles absolutely felt worse than in watch dogs 2 (which doesn't really have the best vehicle controls in the first place) and it isn't even close. playing on ps4 and it feels like there's either a weird input delay or there's something completely fucked about the way the physics are working. it seems like a nudge of the stick to the left or right and the car will move slightly before then making a larger turn a split second later. the normal sedans and hatchbacks found everywhere feel god damn horrendous to drive especially. weirdly 4x4s seem to fare better than the rest - probably because they're heavier vehicles - but they still handle poorly.
compared to other open world games the helicopter controls feel like trash too, an awkward mix between a more momentum based helicopter system like in gta 4 and 5 with a more arcadey, easy to use system like in just cause 2 and 3 and the saints row series. it just doesn't feel like a good middle ground and the camera is jittery as all hell when flying about.
i dunno, maybe it's different on other platforms and these problems do actually stem from some kind of input lag on the ps4 version. but from what i played of that version i would not praise the vehicle controls at all.
Feels really bland doing the first region. Only story mission that was any different from a typical sidequest was the convoy interception.
Lacking enemy counts for a full 4player coop team. One LMG or sniper on a vantage point could clean house on most first map encounters. It improved once we moved west to the second map where the bases are more populated and there are alarms / SAM defenses.
I saw the number of cartel bosses on the map screen and I'm not sure Ubisoft will adequately fill up this game with unique content. May be too much of a slog to go through. I likely won't be preordering.
Edit: also the dialogue/chatter sucks
Lacking enemy counts for a full 4player coop team. One LMG or sniper on a vantage point could clean house on most first map encounters. It improved once we moved west to the second map where the bases are more populated and there are alarms / SAM defenses.
I saw the number of cartel bosses on the map screen and I'm not sure Ubisoft will adequately fill up this game with unique content. May be too much of a slog to go through. I likely won't be preordering.
Edit: also the dialogue/chatter sucks
Bluecondor
Member
Single player protip:
The game became a lot more enjoyable for me in single player when I realized that you can take a motorcycle and your 3 AI teammates will automatically show up right next to you as soon as you get off the bike.
While it is a pain to drive cars through the winding roads, riding a motorcycle up and down the mountainous terrain is actually pretty fun, and you can get from A to B much faster by going off road.
This reminds me a lot of MGSV when you use D-Horse to traverse through mountainous areas in the open world.
The game became a lot more enjoyable for me in single player when I realized that you can take a motorcycle and your 3 AI teammates will automatically show up right next to you as soon as you get off the bike.
While it is a pain to drive cars through the winding roads, riding a motorcycle up and down the mountainous terrain is actually pretty fun, and you can get from A to B much faster by going off road.
This reminds me a lot of MGSV when you use D-Horse to traverse through mountainous areas in the open world.
The physics are still interesting. https://twitter.com/gossithedog/status/835583339620880384
Maroon Gamer
Member
Always-honest
Banned
Are the servers offline?
I will say I do understand this game can probably get boring in Solo but this game just shines in co-op. It adds a whole layer of tactical player that you don't get with the AI. Like I'm playing with just one friend and he's the sniper and so if we have the chance, he will stay on elevated ground and support me as I move through a compound. It's fun. 
Blexcellent
Neo Member
Yeah servers are down, looks like For Honor is having the same problems aswell.
Always-honest
Banned
Fuuuk
Blexcellent
Neo Member
Add R6 Siege to that aswell, praying its not a DDoS
flaxknuckles
Member
It seriously bothers me that you leave no footprints or tire tracks in the mud.
A lot of the time you are, especially in the Afghanistan map. Many of the major locations really only have one or two points of entry. Though, this isn't necessarily to the game's detriment. A lot of the areas in Phantom Pain honestly feel like Kojima took a section out of what could have been MGS3 or Ground Zeroes (or Crysis 1) and dropped it off to the side of the open world map, examples being things like the palace ruins, OKB Zero, the villa where Code Talker is kept, or The Devil's House. Parts like this are why people argue TPP would have been better as just a series of isolated smaller sandboxes. Locations that don't do this however include that one large village in Afghanistan, some of the villages and bases in the Africa map, and the airfield.
Anyway, I never actually said Wildlands was better than MGSV in every way, just that the way the world is built felt more open-ended and more advanced. The Afghanistan map in MGSV is very mountainous and hose mountains are used to basically guide players down paths, sometimes with one location having multiple paths leading to it. Wildlands is different because there's almost no point where the terrain itself stops you from going somewhere. Almost 100% of the terrain is traversible on foot. That's a fundamental difference from almost every last gen open-world game: Far Cry, Elder Scrolls, etc. The one mainstream exception I can think of is Just Cause which might still have a bigger map than even Wildlands, but more importantly has that same level of scale and freedom where the terrain isn't used as an artificial impediment for the player.
Always-honest
Banned
Fuk, tried that too
Junior Mint
Member
Agreed. I enjoyed the PC Ghost Recon games and even enjoyed the consolized Advanced Warfighter games but this one feels like a third person Far Cry. Another big world with bland NPCs, bad graphics, horrendous dialogue, and boring drive-20-minutes-to-the-next-waypoint-in-an-empty-world gameplay.
MosquitoSmasher
Member
Hmmm ok that's interesting. I have not seen those yet. I did see some other animals but i don't exactly know what they are called. It was in the new region though.
Well they definitely are improved in the open beta from the closed beta, the driving feels better and is more fun. It has been a while since i played WD2, so i might have to come back on that. It just sucks that Ubi just can't seem to nail down driving mechanics in their games. I thought they were terrible in Watch_Dogs, while driving in Driver SF was a lot more fun and felt better. WD2 was better but still it felt very off. Same with the motorcycles in Ghost Recon, it's just not fun at all in my opinion.
And when i then fire up GTA V it's just a world of difference. It's a shame because Ubi does get other things right, not talking about GR here now but about WD2. I've spent quite a bit of time in WD2's world and watched the many different behaviours of the many different pedestrians and it still manages to amaze me. They really nailed that aspect in WD2 and it easily trumps GTA V there. Wish GR had some of that to make the world feel more lively.
Frozenprince
Banned
Immediate impression: why the fuck is there no jump button
chixdiggit
Member
Did any Ghost Recon have a jump button? Heck I can't think of any Tom Clancy game with a jump button, though I'm sure there has to be some.
Superblatt
Member
Can't login on PS4. Ugh........am I the only one?
privitsan02
Member
Ubisoft needs to go away for a while.
Serves no purpose, anything that the jump button would do I.e. vaulting or climbing you can do that already.
Superblatt
Member
Laughable. I have 20 mins while my kids are asleep and this was my chance to give it a whirl. BETA....deleted.
Radical Edward
Member
I get what you're saying, now. Thanks. Don't forget to add gtav up there with just cause for your example
I think GTA has that natural open world where you don't have environment acting as walls but it does not uses it in missions at all. The missions in GTA are as linear and scripted as in any other linear game which I think has been one place where the series has lagged behind and I hope this changes in the future GTA games and Red Dead Redemption 2. Compare this to Watch Dogs 2 where you can enter a location from anywhere you want or can even finish a mission without even entering the location if you want to, do zero kill stealth or even ghost without even touching anyone and you can see how Watch Dogs 2 allows for a lot more freedom in player approach.
chixdiggit
Member
I think I am done with the Beta. Had some fun moments playing online with a group but it is far away from a full priced title for me. I expect a very polished game to be sold at full price.
I was really hoping for Ghost Recon Future Soldier in an open world structure and this is just not it. It feels like the game Mercenaries to me and that's not necessary a bad thing just not what I expect from Ghost Recon.
If this did not have the Ghost Recon name and was on Steam Early Access with a $30 price and a targeted 2018 full release I think people would be more forgiving and pretty hyped about it.
I was really hoping for Ghost Recon Future Soldier in an open world structure and this is just not it. It feels like the game Mercenaries to me and that's not necessary a bad thing just not what I expect from Ghost Recon.
If this did not have the Ghost Recon name and was on Steam Early Access with a $30 price and a targeted 2018 full release I think people would be more forgiving and pretty hyped about it.
MosquitoSmasher
Member
I'm sad about what Ubi games are starting to become. AC started off nicely but boy has franchise fatigue set in for me ever since Unity...well before that actually already. I can't deny being curious what Osiris or however they'll call it will be like because of the interesting setting but i am sure the gameplay mechanics and everything that makes it AC will ruin it for me again.
And then as for Ghost Recon.......it looked really promising in the first video and damn good graphically too. It doesn't look as good at all, but i do have to add that i am playing on Xbox One, it's likely looking a lot better on PC and PS4 Pro. But this game really needs a better variety of objectives, if it's already becoming boring in a beta....that is not a good sign. I miss the GR that was on the first Xbox, hell even GRAW. Not even going to start about the very first games that were only on PC, it will never be like that anymore.
And then as for Ghost Recon.......it looked really promising in the first video and damn good graphically too. It doesn't look as good at all, but i do have to add that i am playing on Xbox One, it's likely looking a lot better on PC and PS4 Pro. But this game really needs a better variety of objectives, if it's already becoming boring in a beta....that is not a good sign. I miss the GR that was on the first Xbox, hell even GRAW. Not even going to start about the very first games that were only on PC, it will never be like that anymore.