Ghost Recon Wildlands is actually a tactical shooter where you eliminate the enemy unnoticed with the precision of a surgeon and the stealth of a wild cat. At least in theory. Read here how our author Jürgen fared with the “A-Team”.
Anyone who knows the action movie “Bad Boys 2” will surely remember this scene: The heroes let a carefully planned operation escalate into a wild shootout and messed everything up. Afterwards, they are summoned to their angry captain’s office, who then explains the meaning of the name of their department (TNT). “Tactical Narcotics Team! “T” stands for Tactical! Tactical!!! With finesse!”
Ghost Recon Wildlands – Four Against the Cartel
A similarly intense debriefing is likely awaiting the “Ghost Recon” team, at least for the crew played by me and my buddies. After I had already completed several missions in solo mode while usually approaching tactically thanks to drone reconnaissance and carefully coordinated synchronized shots, I wanted to play the game in coop mode.
After all, games with coop modes are always better when played with as many friends as possible. Borderlands 2 is the best example. So I was quick to respond when I received a game invite from my buddy one evening, who was already in virtual Bolivia with two other comrades.
GRW – “We Have a Tank!”
As the login screen was loading, I was already imagining what Ghost Recon might look like in coop. GRW isn’t a wild shooting game like Borderlands; here, tactical and calm approaches are necessary. At least I thought so…
As soon as I was online, however, I felt like the unfortunate captain from Bad Boys: “Hey, there you are, we have a tank at the main gate and I’m going in from the back on my motorcycle!”, echoed from Teamspeak. Before I had properly grasped why my comrade urgently wanted to storm the north gate with a motorcycle, all hell broke loose:
“Argh! I’ve been hit!”
“Shit, there are still some up in the house!”
“Can someone pick me up?”
“Hey, there’s a cartel medal lying here!”
“Next Time with Stealth, Seriously!”
In the end, we still emerged victorious, albeit only with sheer firepower and the odd respawn. The cartel base lay in ruins nonetheless, with dead sicarios littering the already reddish-brown Bolivian soil. But the next mission was already looming, and after we had run over a few more cartel members (and I think also a civilian) with our stolen tank on the road, we took off with a helicopter to the next mission objective.
“This time we will proceed tactically! With stealth!”, was solemnly praised in Teamspeak.
“Yeah, sure, the next base is well fortified, we’ll do everything by the book”.
That my buddy was already humming the melody of the A-Team on the way there should have made me suspicious…
“T stands for Total Damage!”
Yes, I admit, I was not entirely innocent in the course of the following mission. It all started with me wanting to jump out of the plane particularly cool with a parachute, to occupy an ideal point on a hill in front of the enemy base as a sniper. Unfortunately, it’s dumb when you forget to use the parachute after jumping and crash headfirst into a rock.
The rest of the team then wildly gunned down in the base, and shortly afterwards, the well-known Borderlands gameplay was back on track.”
“T” stood here more for “Total Damage” than for “Tactics”.
But as they say: The result is what matters, and this cartel base did not withstand our combined firepower for long either. A teammate remarked: “That was stealth; the enemy didn’t know what hit them!”
Ghost Recon Wildlands – Anything Goes
In this style, it continued for most of the evening, and we experienced all sorts of hair-raising scenes that only an open-world game can produce. For example, a mission where we mined all entrances to the enemy base with C4, only to accidentally blow up our escape heli right away. Or a group of overly eager rebels who wanted to help us with their colorful party bus but ended up running over half the Ghost team in their excitement about “La Revolución”.
Despite this rather chaotic way of playing, we still had a blast, and the fact that Ghost Recon allows such approaches speaks for the game. By the end of the evening, however, we finally managed a flawless infiltration and eliminated a cartel stronghold without alerting the enemy. See, it can be done!
Also interesting: Ghost Recon Wildlands – 10 Tips for the Tactical Shooter
