CHENNAI: You are piloting a helicopter, heading your own ‘Ghost’ military team. You fly purposefully, but that’s because a voice calls you over the phone, and tells you exactly what to do. You fly into the sunrise, towards the location marked now in your map, going through clouds and all — thanks to the developers using the in-game seamless day and night cycle and weather system.
You fly over trees in a dense forest, making leaves ripple and casting shadows over the gleaming grass — thanks to NVIDIA’s ‘shadowing and volumetric light scattering methods’. You then think to yourself, “This is such an Instagram-worthy moment!”. As if on cue, the in-game photography let’s you take the 360 degree pictures of the landscape.
That’s right, yo — good story and characters are simply not enough anymore. And that’s why, in the ‘Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ game that came out just last week, the developers seem to have worked hard trying to recreate Bolivia in HD.
I initially thought Tom Clancy sounded a bit like hitman and COD had Ubisoft formulate their new combined hit game. But, the Ghost Recon series seems to work (despite the lack of zombies). It is the first in the series to feature an open-world environment. As it’s a tactical shooter with a brilliant multiplayer mode, the missions are structured so that you work with an AI team even in single player missions.
You do not operate alone. Strategy and stealth is required to finish a mission, and you can make use of your team to do your bidding. You need just mark targets, and deploy an order to shoot the enemies, and the job is done (it is not as easy as it sounds though).
In AC brotherhood, we had assassins who could be called for special kills — but the ‘Ghost’ team here has a more involved role. However, it is a lot more fun when you play multiplayer with friends instead of with the AI.
Wildlands might be worth your time, as the open-world format gives multi-player shooter flexibility, depth and variety — making up for the repetitivity disadvantage that most military-ops game missions face.
(Anusha spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)