Ghost Recon: Breakpoint review

The highly-anticipated new chapter of this popular franchise is a disappointing tactical error that misses the mark.

Being a highly-trained commando operating behind enemy lines is a popular theme in military computer games, offering plenty of opportunities for stealth, action, explosions and the use of interesting technology and hardware in the process.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, developed and published by Ubisoft for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is the latest instalment in the popular series and the sequel to 2017’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

The landscape of Auroa is very well done, which is good because you’ll be spending a lot of time in it. Picture: Supplied

At first, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint does make some improvements over its predecessor, notably by having a marginally better story — a behemoth tech company led by an eccentric billionaire runs its own islands somewhere that are approximately 2000km from New Zealand, and the company’s security contractor has staged a coup and taken the archipelago over. Also, the tech company was making drones that are now weaponised.

The gear score system just means you have a cluttered inventory full of guns and clothes and other things that all do the same thing but have different numbers and colours next to them.

Following the coup, a cargo ship leaving the island is sunk and US Special Forces — led by your character, call sign “Nomad” — are dispatched to find out what happened. And everything goes horribly wrong from the start, with said weaponised drones shooting down your helicopters and killing most of your team.

From there, you have to link up with the local residents, find out what’s happened, re-establish contact with the outside world and get revenge for your dead comrades.

The game I saw in previews at E3 earlier this year looked like a gritty, realistic, almost survival-based shooter, with a focus on healing injuries, stealth and tactics.

The game I have been playing for the past few days on my PC is more like a strange hybrid of The Division 2 and Just Cause, which is OK I guess (I enjoyed both those games) but not what I was expecting or really what the gaming world needs at the moment either.

And then there’s just the bizarre and uncharacteristic lack of polish in the game, from graphical glitches to server dropouts to subtitles that don’t match the spoken dialogue.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint looks amazing and promises a lot but suffers from a number of issues that drag the whole experience down.

One of the characters is supposed to be a former New Zealand SAS soldier — but has an American accent. As someone originally from New Zealand, I was both astounded and disappointed by this, given Ubisoft’s traditionally legendary attention to detail in their games — and it’s not like there aren’t any New Zealand voice actors around.

Another issue is the game sets you up as one of a handful of survivors from a disastrous infiltration attempt to the island or Auroa — and soon you end up in a hub area with dozens of other players and a store selling assault rifles and light machineguns — utterly destroying the idea you’re pretty much on your own as the hunted rather than the hunter.

Literally as soon as I walked out of the hub area, I had access to a helicopter that was parked there. Any injuries I sustained in the game — which were made out to be a big deal in the hands-on experience — could be instantly healed with a medical syringe or bandages, both of which were in limitless supply.

Taking down the massive robot drones as a team can be very rewarding, but like the rest of the game, it’s a lot harder on your own.

The loot levelling system is an unwelcome addition too. Upgrading a gun doesn’t seem to increase its performance at all in any practical way, so having three different nearly identical Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine-guns in your inventory is mildly confusing and unnecessary to say the least.

What the “gear score” system does instead is force me to keep changing my character’s appearance and equipment to suit the game’s arbitrary levelling system, rather than letting me pick what I liked best.

The AI is terrible, frequently rushing at you Banzai charge-style while you pick them off or mow them down, and there are also issues with the way the world resets if you get killed mid-mission too.

In one case I spent probably a good 20 minutes stealthily eliminating all the enemies in the base and undertaking parts one and two of a three-part mission — before getting killed by a drone in part three and finding, when I continued from the checkpoint, all the enemies had respawned.

The civilians are inexplicably ungrateful too, frequently telling you to go away or leave them alone — even when you’ve literally just rescued them from getting shot by enemy forces.

While you can absolutely play solo, where the game does improve is in co-op. For some extremely disappointing reason, your AI squadmates aren’t present in Breakpoint, but if you have any online or real-life friends with a copy of the game, you can team up with them and it’s a much better experience.

Being trapped behind enemy lines outnumbered and outgunned is supposed to be a major theme of Breakpoint, but it doesn't come across well in the game.

My brother and I had a lot of fun tooling around Auroa together completing missions, and it made a lot of missions much easier and more fun. Breakpoint says it is optimised for co-op play and it definitely is, with more players enhancing the experience.

One of the new tactics available with other human players was for a rescue mission where one of us would pilot the helicopter to the objective while the others would parachute in to stealthily eliminate enemies by the landing zone. The pilot would land the chopper and keep the engine running while the others extracted whoever they needed to rescue, then everyone would board the helicopter before lifting off and getting out of there Dr Zoidberg style.

One of the highlights of the game is Jon Bernthal’s portrayal of Lt-Col Cole Walker.

He does a superb job of portraying a complex and charismatic character, and it would have been nice to see more of him in the game since his appearances are relatively spaced out.

The game world looks great — almost like “New Zealand Scenery’s Greatest Hits” in some respects — and I spent quite a bit of time just exploring various nooks and crannies and learning more about the world, although much of that exploration was involuntary after respawning in weird locations or falling down a cliff.

The gameplay itself in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is solid — most enemies go down with a single shot — the scenery is great and the story is more engaging than Wildlands,— but much like the rescue mission that starts the game, it all looks like a good idea on paper but just doesn’t come together in the implementation.

Breakpoint just doesn’t seem to know what sort of game it is — is it a loot-shooter? A serious military tactical adventure? An open-world chaos sandbox?

It pains me to say it, but in many ways I actually enjoyed Breakpoint less than its predecessor. If I wanted to play a loot-shooter, The Division 2 is very good. If I wanted to fly around an island blowing stuff up, the Just Cause series has me covered.

Hopefully, Ubisoft can make some changes and tweaks to the game to improve the player experience, but there are too many stoppages, misfeeds and failures to fire for me to recommend this right now.

Continue the conversation on Twitter @RoyceWilsonAU

Originally published as Ghost Recon: Breakpoint review