We tested the Ghost Recon Wildlands beta and show you how we liked it.
Today, the closed beta phase of Ghost Recon Wildlands ended. Since Friday, players could immerse themselves in the world of Ubisoft’s new tactical shooter and get a first impression of the game and gameplay. The overall mood of the game was well-received by many testers; however, there is still much work to be done to satisfy the players.
During the closed beta, severe performance issues and bugs occurred. Some gameplay aspects were criticized as well. But does that make the entire game bad?
Co-op fun despite bugs
The beta of Ghost Recon Wildlands gave many players the opportunity for the first time to try out features such as the CharacterSmith and the GunSmith. You start the game with the visual customization of the Ghost in the CharacterSmith. There, players find many options to uniquely design their character by combining hairstyles, beards, accessories, scars, and clothing.
After character creation, you can team up with up to three other friends in cooperative mode. Your friends are clearly marked in the interface and on the minimap, so you won’t lose sight of each other. This is a significant advantage, as the world of Ghost Recon Wildlands is huge.
Vehicles
Civilians drive vehicles on the roads that you can “acquire.” While you may not necessarily steal a Lamborghini or a motorcycle, the vehicles have room for your entire team. This allows teammates to handle planning while one person in your team takes on the driving role. The selection of vehicles is decent and ranges from SUVs to airplanes and helicopters to tractors or ambulances.
Missions and Skills
You can use the vehicles to reach the mission deployment locations. In the active area of the closed beta, players could complete a few quests from the main story and had a selection of various side missions. On the way to the main missions, you frequently passed by side missions. This way, most optional tasks could be completed conveniently and without major detours.
The first story missions available in the closed beta gave an impression of how darker the story of this game is. Through notes and recordings found along the way to the quests, players gain interesting additional information about the people they encounter in Bolivia. The voice actors of the dialogues are particularly authentic. This can give you chills as you hear highly detailed recordings of the “enemies,” providing insight into the disturbed psyches of these individuals.
While main missions provide you with experience points and weapons, side missions mainly yield materials that you can use to skill. By skilling abilities, you specialize your Ghost in different areas. In the early levels, you can choose between enhanced drones with longer battery life, more stable aiming, or pain suppression to take less damage.
In various camps on the map, you can find weapon upgrades such as sights. To obtain these improvements, enemies must be defeated first. This feature stood out positively to me, as you can “earn” the modifications instead of simply receiving them as rewards for leveling up.
While these missions often resembled each other, this may change when multiple areas are published in the full game.
World
During the closed beta, a limited area was available for exploration. If you crossed the borders of this area, a countdown began whose expiration had deadly consequences. Those traveling by helicopter or airplane could see slightly beyond the limited test phase area. In the distance, deserts and mountains beckoned exploration.
Although the beta area was limited and only a small part of the large map, it left a significant and expansive impression.
The paths between the various missions were not too short and were mostly connected by a drive or a flight, making the mission objectives easily accessible. However, the developers should still make improvements to the handling of vehicles and aircraft. Because vehicles are used so frequently, the controls need further refinement as they currently feel vague.
Weapons
The weapon system of Ghost Recon Wildlands already works well in the beta. A Ghost carries two primary and one secondary weapon. Depending on the situation, you can comfortably equip many weapons with silencers to silently take out enemies.
You unlock new weapons as you progress in the game. One of the first new weapons in the beta was a sniper rifle that my team tested and found to be “good.”
Wildlands has a bullet drop mechanic that makes hitting distant targets more challenging. The further away an enemy is, the higher you need to aim above them to hit. This makes sniper kills more realistic, but also more difficult. However, when you do hit an enemy standing on a watchtower hundreds of meters away, the joy is all the greater.
Combat with assault rifles was not too easy either. “Adventure continuous fire” won’t get you far in Wildlands, as aiming requires skill. Overall, playing with the different weapon types was a lot of fun.
During the beta, players had access to assault rifles, sniper rifles, light machine guns, shotguns, and pistols. With the GunSmith, weapons could be customized, for example, by equipping different optics. While there was not a large selection available during the testing phase, the complete game is supposed to offer over 10,000 customization options.
Conclusion on the Ghost Recon Wildlands Beta
The closed beta of Ghost Recon Wildlands showed that the game has a lot of potential. However, many functions need to be improved before the game releases.
This includes vehicle control, AI behavior, and rewards for completing missions stealthily. This feedback was also frequently seen on Reddit and other social channels. Fans even go so far as to demand a later release to give developers more time to resolve the issues.
Despite these criticisms, I had a lot of fun during the beta phase. If they handle the feedback from fans correctly and tweak a few things, Ghost Recon Wildlands has a bright future ahead. However, whether a large Day 1 patch will be enough to solve the problems is questionable. The release is already set for March 7, 2017. A delayed release would provide more time for fixing issues, but whether that is still possible at this point is uncertain.
Ghost Recon Wildlands is an exciting co-op tactical shooter that still has its rough edges. If the community feedback is taken seriously, we can expect a strong title in the co-op shooter genre.
