First let me quality myself so you know what kind of gamer I am and what my expectations were:



I'm a solo campaign type of gamer. I'm an adult with very real adult responsibilities and have neither the time, nor the interest in competing with more experienced players online. I played Ghost Recon Wildlands last year and fell in LOVE with that title. To me, it was perfection. So I was hoping this game would be similar. I grew up playing the Rainbow Six games (I even read the novel that launched a thousand tiny Tom Clancy ships into the world of video games). Raven Shield was probably my favorite.



So naturally I purchased this, hoping it would be a combination of Ghost Recon Wildlands (a large scale solo campaign time-waster but with a more SWAT and entry tactics feel the way the old R6 games were). What I got was a game that, with the exception of the tutorial, was completely multiplayer based. Oops-- that was my mistake for not doing my homework.



What infuriated me about this was that in order to even enjoy what little scraps they were willing to offer the solo campaigners required me to once again shell out more money to subscribe to Xbox Gold, sign up for the Ubisoft servers, and whatever other hoops needed to be jumped through. Sort of like that same vibe you get at the checkout aisle of any store, where the cashier asks you if you want to sign up for their credit card and provide your email address. And when you decline, they snatch your item out of your hand and tell you, "I'm sorry, you can't own this unless you sign up for our crap." It's kind of like that. You can't play the game at all, basically, unless you pay twice-- once of the game, and once for a gold membership (even if you want to play offline).



Let me tell you what I want in a video game: If the internet ceased to exist tomorrow... in fact, if all PEOPLE ceased to exist tomorrow, and I was the last man on earth sitting alone in my living room with my TV hooked up to a generator, could I pop in your video game and still have a good time? If the answer is "no, you'd need our servers" or "no, it's a multiplayer platform" or "no, you'd need to pay a subscription fee on top of what you paid for the game itself... and regularly renew it... for a price..." then, clearly, a bad video game has been created. Period.



That being said, however, I'll give this 2 stars... the second star is for what could have been...