What is THIS GUY doing here? It’s the GOAT himself.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve played a Ghost Recon game.” This is the thought that continuously ran through my mind as I looked at my Uplay dashboard. Between the sporadic randomness of battle royale games like Apex Legends to the frantic twitch-and-you’re-dead run-and-gun style of Call of Duty, I was looking for something new and refreshing. I used to love playing Rainbow Six Siege, but something happened around the time Operation Grim Sky came out. I got really bad really quickly. Like, I specifically remember getting 13 kills with Rook about two days before the new season dropped. Then I just…started playing really bad. So bad, in fact, that it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I tried to actually play again.

Nevertheless, I’ve always enjoyed the Tom Clancy universe. From the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games that required advanced planning to being a slithery, slippery little snake in Splinter Cell, Clancy’s world has always had a special, green NVG glow in my heart. So when I saw the opportunity to play the beta of Breakpoint, the latest entry into the Ghost Recon series, I jumped at the opportunity.

This is the sequel to the wildly successful Ghost Recon Wildlands.

A quick note: This is a beta, meaning bugs, limited play area, limited play time, and the results should be close to the final product but some things may change. With that being said, the full game releases on October 4th, 2019. I THINK this is a pretty good representation of the game.

Set in the year 2023, Breakpoint takes place about four years after Wildlands. Your character, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony “Nomad” Perryman, is sent to the sprawling lands of ‘Auroa’, an island in the Pacific Ocean. Without spoiling too much, you’re there to investigate Skell Technology, a company developing a new wave of drone technology. Now, the Aurora is “World 2.0”, a “high-tech, high-security utopia of sustainable eco-cities and robotics research.”

You start off by creating your male or female character. Even though the story is created around a male character, designing a female character will still keep the name “Nomad”.

Does this mohawk make me look sexy?

The first thing you’ll notice about the game is the beautiful graphics. Immediately upon entering the playable portion of the game, you’ll notice how lush and expansive the game is. Ubisoft is saying that Breakpoint is even bigger than Wildlands, and the game world is absolutely stunning. You truly feel small, but it’s not overwhelming thanks to the map that displays the various regions of the island, your compass that helps you navigate better, and an assortment of vehicles allowing you to cover huge amounts of ground quickly. The amount of detail in the game is almost breathtaking. As you’ll see in the next clip, I commandeered a 4X4 truck, and because it was raining, this produced mud that proceeded to cover my vehicle. Top marks.

A 4X4 truck, one of Breakpoint’s many in-game vehicles.

Speaking of mud and weather effects, the game’s attention to detail continues to please with the prone camo mechanic. When lying prone, you can camouflage yourself with the environment. Using prone camo, my character proceeded to cover himself with mud, smearing it on his body to better melt into the world and stay safe from enemies. This really helped add to the survival aspect and never got old. Using it outside of snow or mud still allowed great concealment as your character will still try to flatten out as much as possible to break up his silhouette.

Quick kills and prone camo add to the game’s ability to make you feel like a badass.

I was also impressed by how my character changed cadence when running through water. It’s one of the small details that few games take the time to really show.

The way your character changes cadence while in water is ultra satisfying.

Audio in the game was spectacular as well, especially the gun’s sounds. Firing the weapons felt real. A lot of times in video games, sound design can slip and create a break in immersion. Games like Battlefield have always had some of the most realistic sounds, and this game is different but still really good. Landing a clean headshot on an enemy produced a visceral feeling of badassery.

The combat starts almost immediately upon world entry, and the fluid controls make taking on the game’s enemies a breeze, at least with time to kill. Shooting felt satisfying, the atmosphere feels enthralling, and I would often find myself feeling like a real life Rambo. The game’s AI is smart, enemies will spot you, hunt you down, and react to your movements and actions. This entry in the franchise has a much larger focus on survival. It took some time to get adjusted to playing a game in third person. I despise third person games, and while not bad for PVE content, the PVP in this game left me feeling a bit frustrated. But more on that later.

A high TTK (time to kill) in Breakpoint makes dealing with enemies a breeze.

Even playing on ‘Normal’, enemy engagements still felt challenging and rewarding if your were able to survive. In the next clip, you’ll see that despite my gaming experience, I got destroyed by the enemies from the game’s first major encounter.

Despite playing on ‘Normal’ difficulty, I got my ass handed to me several times.

Remember how I said the game had AI that will literally hunt you down? I was running on a road when I started getting an on-screen alert. Not realizing it meant that I was being tracked by a drone, I was quickly overwhelmed by a helicopter carrying armed soldiers ready to eviscerate me. The damn drone even marks you via flare to let the enemies know there’s an intruder around. Keeping with the game’s attention to detail, when trying to run down a steep hill, I proceeded to slip and fall, rolling down the hill and slowly taking damage. There’s also a really neat injury mechanic in the game where, after busting your ass on a hill or getting hurt in a battle, your player’s movement speed drops dramatically and you limp around, making you an even easier target for enemies.

Leave…me…alone!

I finally managed to escape, and ran into another set of enemies. Now 100% convinced that I am a super human strength-wielding badass mega soldier, I then engage the attack chopper who’s still following me with my pistol (stupid), followed by me demolishing a group of soldiers in an armored Jeep (smart).

One thing I’d like to say, in the control settings, you can change the first-person aiming system to third. While I ‘get’ why you’d want the first-person perspective, the constant jump between the two perspectives left me a bit disoriented. If you’re a third-person purist, I’d suggest making the experience fully third-person, but you may enjoy this as is. For me, it was too jarring, especially when the combat got hectic. I usually have pretty snappy aim, and I noticed that I would miss a lot of my shots. Not necessarily because of the game, but because of over-and-under correcting my crosshair placement while switching perspectives. Logically I shouldn’t do this, but it was hard during my short time playing to remember that it’ll always be in the same spot. I also tried hipfiring in third-person. Meh.

Pissing off an attack chopper…

Despite my hands, eyes, and brain not always coordinating, I managed to finally take down that attack chopper. B-O-O-M. It crashed to the ground in a big, beautiful ball of fire. I AM VICTORIOUS!

GOT ‘EMMMMM!

Now, if you’re like most people, based on this limited info, the game seems pretty sweet. There are separate classes to pick from as you level up and gain skillpoints, like a medic or a sharpshooter. There’s a huge, sprawling world with lots of different climates and terrain to experience. Missions are gained from the game’s hubworld, called Erewhon, similar to ‘The Tower’ in Destiny. Traveling here will allow you to link up with other players, grab new missions, and shop for new weapons and armor. Speaking of weapons, this game has a lot of different weapons to choose from. Pistols, assault rifles, DMRs, and LMGs help round out your arsenal. You can also go crazy tricking out your gun’s attachments through the game’s gunsmith system. I painted my sniper in a woodland camo finish. If I wanted to be stealthy, I could simply tap a key to attach a suppressor or remove it when I needed to go loud.

There’s definitely going to be a heavy focus on PVE — yes, including raids — utilizing the game’s intuitive drop-in co-op. Sounds good so far, right?

You can choose from 4 different paths, including a medic and a sharpshooter.

If this were strictly a PVE game, I’d agree. On the PVE side, whether solo or experiencing the game’s 4-player co-op, I had an absolute blast. My squad and I went on a few missions, got a few weapon blueprints, and also saw a huge ray gun fire randomly before we were all wiped out by Skell’s crazy man-hunting gunner drones. It was awesome!

The PVP? Eh, that’s another story entirely.

I’m not sure how many times I had to shoot this guy, but it was definitely too many.

While I was playing the beta, I can say that the PVP was both frustrating and tedious. It felt like the opposing side had an abnormally large amount of health. This is a complaint I have about a lot of games. I like a nice, fast TTK. If you watch the above clip, I’m pretty sure that despite me certainly missing a few shots, I’m pretty sure I killed this guy like five times before he was actually dead. And for a tactical third-person PVP experience, this was not what I wanted. Honestly, I didn’t want a third-person experience at all, but I tried my best to open up to a new realm of possibility. My view on third-person PVP still remains the same, though:

Third-person PVP is shit. Period.

The movement was clunky, the pacing of the games was too slow, then too fast, all the while hit registration lacked and our squad’s enjoyment of the PVP experience waned. We started off gung-ho, followed by a slight dip into frustration, finally landing in a huge, steaming pile of, “Let’s play something else.”

For a game‘s PVE experience to feel so rich and vast, the PVP felt like a mere afterthought. The outcome of our matches were ultimately decided by who could get a drone first to mark the other players. By the time you could shoot down the enemy’s drone, your whole team was marked — and you STAY MARKED FOR QUITE SOME TIME. This isn’t the answer for those of you wanting SOCOM back, not by a country mile.

Combine all that with the general sense of not knowing what was going on and you can guess why the multiplayer experience left so much to be desired. I guess the ‘not knowing’ part is supposed to add to the strategy aspect of PVP, but it just fell short in my eyes. For Breakpoint’s PVP multiplayer to ever be more than just something players do when they’re tired of PVE, Ubisoft would need to rework the entire game mode, “Ghost War”, from the ground up. Also, there was some sort of weird, completely dismissed aspect of a battle royale where the map closes in over time. And yeah, it was dismissed. For that to have any sort of effect of gameplay, matches would need to be shorter or the player cap needs to be increased. There’s no situation where a 4v4 scenario needs level restrictions via a closing circle.

As Adele: Hello? Can you hear me?

Still, I think this game will probably be favored among a lot of people. The open-world exploration coupled with a deep skill system and a lot of guns to lay waste to your enemies with is certainly satisfying. I just wish that they’d take some notes on PVP pacing from their big brother, Rainbow Six Siege.

Overall, if you’ve been looking for a beautiful, tactical co-op game to sink some hours into, you can’t go wrong here. Just be sure that you temper your expectations for a truly competitive multiplayer experience.