Ghost Recon Wildlands

Thanks for the advice, I will

My time with GRW yesterday was a mixed bag... there's so much potential, but I'm already finding nit picky annoyances within the first few hours.

First of all character creation is great. Seriously happy with so many different looks you can do for your character. I do wish there were MORE options, but the options they give are pretty varied. You can play a male or a female. You can wear a ghillie suit, full tactical gear, jeans & a cowboy hat or a gas masked terrorist and everything in between and more. Like I say I just wish there was a tiny bit more variety, but they do give you a fair amount of choices and most of it looks really, really good. It's not Fallout level of detail so you are stuck with one of a dozen or so premade faces. Still I thought it was pretty cool and I spent 30 minutes just playing around in it. I ended up with a quasi- Vaas looking dude that kinda resembles him (if you squint and don't listen to his voice LOL)

The vehicles handle like hot garbage. Every car and truck feels the same and it's all ridiculously bad... you fishtail everywhere unless you have a very light touch (something you shouldn't need in an action game where most vehicle travel is going to either be overland ATV-ing or fast and furious vehicular combat). Hopefully they tweak the physics on this stuff. Air vehicles are even worse with some really bizarre helicopter and airplane controls... how can we be over a year in development and these vehicles handle like this?!?

Third person to first person got really jarring to me for some reason. I can't explain it but it throws me way off... I wish there was an FPS toggle to keep you in first person. This would make an AMAZING fps game.

The plot seems interesting but some of the dialog is pretty lackluster. The voice actors sound a little wooden... and the writing is not great. I can forgive this. Maybe it gets better as you go on. Kind of surprising for an Ubi game though. Far Cry has the narration beat on this game for sure (hell even AC series has superior voice and dialog)

The world is huge and beautiful. I do like it despite it feeling so GTA-ish. My GTX 970 though struggles and it tells me I need to play in low... ouch. I guess we are heading into the next wave of "requires a 1070 or better" games. That sucks. I really didn't want to have to buy a $400 graphics card just to enjoy a game. The struggle of the PC master race sigh. I don't know how they are going to make this game work well on console.

The companion AI is a little meh. It's suitable and does the job but I'm often yelling at them for NOT doing their jobs when a whole base is descending on MY location. Come on guys a little covering fire and overwatch please. They just sort of hang out in the rocks and pop random shots off. Sometimes I have to order them to open fire when there's a HUGE firefight going on all around me. Obviously the game is meant for COOP and I'm sure that would be tons more fun.

Huge amount of weapons and attachments. Honestly I'm wondering if it even matters. I have the feeling weapons like in FC are more or less equal in terms of stopping power. I do like that most standard dudes go down with a bullet or two. I have yet not to take down anyone except for heavies with a full spray... and that's on normal mode so kudos for recognizing bullets have some punch. There's some lieutenants and defender types that soak a few rounds and graphically they don't look like they have armor, but it's not really over the top and pretty typical. Of course who knows later in the game... there are already Unidad troops that do have armor and take many hits. Overall though I was impressed at the guns in the first bit of the beta.

Gameplay itself... I dunno. I'm really on the fence. The third person thing is fine, but there is no jump feature only being able to mantle certain objects and places is annoying. It reminds me a lot of MGS in that respect. I feel like if you are going to have a predominately third person game you should give it dynamic movement like the Tomb Raider games. This movement feels stiff and constrained. The stealth aspect is good though and prone shooting is great.

There are animals and npcs, but they are just there for you to shoot and terrorize. They serve nothing beyond window dressing which is a bit blah.

I don't know what it is, but it's just not ticking all the boxes for me. I WANT to LOVE this game... hell I've been waiting on it forever. I'll bet the COOP is fun in the way Ajay and Hurk COOP is. As a single player game though? It's not blowing me away. Maybe I need to spend some more time with it...

What do you guys think? Anyone tried it out yet? Agree or Disagree??

I also noticed the graphic requirements; if my GTX970 is only good for low settings, then won't be getting the game anytime soon. I've still got a handful of very good games that I can continue to enjoy - including revisiting Skyrim via the SE release.

Also my impression is that the industry is basically moving away from SP-oriented games to COOP-centered.

Came across this short article, FWIW, which isn't too kind in regards to playing GRW in SP mode:

www.mobipicker.com/ghost-recon-wildlands-enjoyable-friends-otherwise-just-another-repetitive-shooter-singleplayer-side/

Thanks for the link, Mike.  My take is SP is fine, even if the squad mates are binary (they either kill everyone in sight with computerized brutal efficiency, or they hang back and let you get your *** kicked!),  and in my book GRW makes several important steps forward compared to FC 3 or 4. 

I didn't play coop at all, but it looked easy enough to join up if you didn't like the team AI or got bored with it.  I got hi jacked into coop three times while in mid game.  I'm not sure how that happened as I'd turned off all the "I wanna play coop" options during initial game options set up.  The other guys were all on chat, as I could hear them over my speakers, and I'm gonna guess none of them were old enough to drink legally!    It kinda pissed me off as all three times it caused me to lose whatever progress I'd made on the objective/mission I was working on at the time----stuff happens, I guess.  I just dropped out to the main menu and hit continue again to start my interrupted mission over. 

Man that under barrel nade launcher is AWESOME on open sights, isn't it?   And the GPMG was no slouch when taking on enemy bases or vehicles.  Being able to hang out the vehicle windows, or have my team mates do it if I was driving, and engage in running (driving?) gun fights was pretty cool too! 

Stealth?  I'm not a big stealth guy anyway--even if you're trying to be Sneaky Pete with a dash of Secret Squirrel------------like I said; Stuff Happens!  And as we all know; when the going gets tough; the tough go cyclic!  I started most things "trying" to be sneaky; but as soon as the bad guys pinged on us it was suppressors off and time to GET LOUD!  The "rebel assistance" features (once you'd unlocked them) were nice as I used the rebel distraction option on a number of enemy bases.  I had the mortar strike option unlocked too, but I never used the darn thing.  Twice I found that discretion, not aggression, was the better part of valor when taking on Unidad (Bolivian military allied with the cartel) bases as they reinforce in seemingly endless waves, so the smart tip was to hit hard, grab whatever you were there for and beat feet outta there before being over run!   

Yea, the character creator was a welcome feature too.  I watched a YT video preview on it, and it looked to me like the CC in this demo had a number of features and options turned off, so I'm hoping the full game version will be even better. 

Dialogue?  OMG!!!  It never failed that I'd crept up on a camp or emplacement and was about to initiate, and the AI TM who told the bad jokes would start up on one of them!  GGGGGRRRRR!!!!!!!  

Plane and chopper (Get to the choppa!) flight controls were........................................."interesting".  I was very grateful the plane damage model was as forgiving as it was!   I started out gaming in '86 on flight sims exclusively, and still have my last Thrustmaster joystick/throttle controller; though it's almost surely not supported by GRW  .  That would make flying a cinch (unlike the light switch controls of a keyboard-----inputs are very progressive and much easier to control)! 

One thing I DID NOT like at all; was the dumb *** mechanic of having to scrounge weapons/weapon unlocks and XP to obtain kit and/or skills.  TOTALLY out of place in a game like GRW.  The Ghosts are like Delta Force, the SAS, ST 6, GSG 9 etc.  They are at the top of their game and whoever in the world of military ops has the best kit.  It's them!  I'm quite sure none of them have to scrounge enemy bases for a holo sight to trick our their M4/H & K 416, etc!  

C'mon 3/7!  

One of all four commands you can issue to your AI team is "wait there", or something to that effect.   Look (aiming cursor) where you want them to be; bring up the menu wheel and select that command.  I used it quite a bit to keep them out of the way as I was waiting for a variety of things, (i.e. guard to pass by, convoy to arrive at ambush site, etc).  Otherwise they are quite prone to walking in front of you, and giving the ambush away. blocking your shot and getting you killed; so on and so forth.   BTW:  You will, or can, leave them behind by getting on a single seat vehicle (motorcycle etc), or by getting into a multi seat vehicle and leaving before they get in.  When you dismount the vehicle they will magically spawn out of your ***    for your gaming enjoyment/amusement!  

Here's a link to an Ubi GRW Forum thread that has one of the better constructive critiques of the open BETA.

forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1592868-Feedback-Notes-on-the-Open-Beta

Oddly enough...................AI is one of the topics addressed.