After playing the closed and open Beta’s for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, I had my concerns and hopes for how the final release game would turn out. A full year following the release of The Division allowed enough time for lessons and feedback into how Ubisoft handle a large scale shooter. Ghost Recon: Wildlands offers a very different playing world to The Division as well as playing style but keeping the focus on teaming up with friends to get the best out of the game. It was time to finally see if Ubisoft had finally ticked all the right boxes for a shooter.

It is hard to imagine but Wildlands is the tenth game in the Ghost Recon series, after the series jumped into the future for its last outing with Advanced Warfighter, Ubisoft have brought the series back to the modern day and for the first time using a true open world to serve as a playground for players. The setting this time is the country of Bolivia in 2019 which has seen the rise in power of a once considered small time drug Cartel in the Santa Blanca. They have become one of the world’s largest producers of Cocaine and their influence has quickly taken dominance in the country, bringing them to the attention of USA’s drug and security agencies. A terrorist attack on the US Embassy leads to the capture of a DEA agent who is then tortured and killed by the Santa Blanca, forcing the US agencies to call in the Ghosts, an Elite Special Forces unit charged with one mission, to take down the Santa Blanca organisation.

Just like in The Division, the first thing a player has to do is create their own Ghost and happily the customization options offer far more than in The Division with clothing choices and how you can make your agent look. The agent you create will serve as the team leader and will feature as such in all cut-scenes in the story and whilst your choices in how your agent physically looks cannot be changed once set, cosmetic changes to clothing can be made through out the game and the variety is rather satisfying.

To succeed in taking out the Santa Blanca, the Ghosts must dismantle the organisation within Bolivia to weaken their forces and power in order to get to its leader El Sueno. The plan is to take out his lieutenants by going to the region they control and taking down their operations in order to disrupt the organisation enough to gather the to locate and deal with that Lieutenant. Each region will reveal six main story missions to complete, each one unlocked by finding Major Intel Caches which give information into what operations of the Santa Blanca the Lieutenant is responsible for and providing targets to complete. I was impressed with the variation in these story missions as you move from region to region and start to dismantle the cartel’s operations. I found the opening and closing cut-scenes to each lieutenant intriguing as the game plays a cut-scene narrated by El Sueno himself, explaining the lieutenants place in the cartel from his point of view which gives insight into how the Santa Blanca grew to such power in the first place and offers a different angle from the standard “why we must take them out” military objectives that the player will follow in the missions.

Beside the main story missions for each lieutenant and their region, the player can also complete side missions to aid the Rebels in the region fight back. By completing these you will earn XP resources which are used to upgrade the skill tree to unlock new abilities or to boost already unlocked skills. Supplies can also be tagged for the Rebels to collect to help their cause and doing so will again build XP resources needed for upgrading. These side missions can range from stopping enemy convoys in order to tag their contents for picking up by the rebels to helping to spread their propaganda message by activating radio transmitters and defending them whilst the message is broadcasted. My personal favourites are the vehicle capture and delivery missions which involve taking vehicles such as helicopters, planes and prized high end sports cars from the cartel and delivering them to the rebels which earns high amounts of resources. I will admit that the Rebel side missions can feel a little repetitious in each region; the rewards for completing them makes them all worth it long term and give plenty of gameplay to compliment the story missions.

Wildlands is best played with friends or other players, it is a strategic shooter after all and you can see how feedback to The Division has influenced this side to the game. Joining a friend’s game is smooth as is using public matchmaking to find other squads to play with. The entire story can be played in co-op with four players teaming together and the sheer size of the playable area is staggering with impressed me with the lack of loading screens after being spawned in the world, meaning you can travel from region to region completing missions without any break in loading screens unless you die and require respawning. Real team work between players brings the gameplay to a different level as tactics can be used in tackling missions and just the fun that can be had in this open world playground.

For those who prefer playing solo, Wildlands accommodates this well with the three remaining members of the Ghost team becoming AI Controlled during the game. Now this side kind of breaks the flow if I am honest as it bends the rules a little too much at times. For example, if playing solo and you decide to take a vehicle and just race off to an objective, should your vehicle have enough room, the AI controlled characters will simply spawn in the vehicle despite you leaving without them. They will also just suddenly appear as soon as stop the vehicle, something that with other players will not happen as they physically will have to travel to where you are in order to join you. AI controlled characters can spot enemies and are useful in a fire fight without being too overpowered and serve has very handy medic should you get taken out and will revive you. So whilst best played with friends or other real players, playing solo is completely possible.

Visually the world of Bolivia is just stunning on screen, with some truly breathtaking scenery and backdrops to the action which can take place on ground, on water and in the air. Different environments force players to adapt their approach to missions as well as just navigating around the regions. Wildlands has one of the most impressive dynamic weather systems I have seen in recent years with a staggering storm system that recreates a lightning storm that will make you stop in your tracks to observe. The lighting is so robust in the game engine that you can see breaks in the cloud as sunlight pours through as lightning lights up the sky, and if a storm happens above a valley, each strike will light up the valley as well. Watching the sun rise or set is not only visually impressive but also highlights when night time is about to begin or end, thus adding a new strategy if planning on attacking an enemy stronghold or encampment as darkness adds a new tactical option for players.

Vehicle use is a strong element in Wildlands and the options are plentiful. From using off-road vehicles like dirt bikes or 4×4’s to the different sea based craft to taking to the air in attack helicopters or planes, navigating around the Bolivian country is tremendous fun. It is then a shame that sadly vehicle use has similar problems in handling as the first Watchdogs game. The camera can be a pain as vehicles will tend to be rather finicky to drive with a more arcade driving style than I had expected, depending on the type of vehicle you use, it will take some time to get a feel for how they handle and especially at speed. I had hoped that feedback from the beta’s and from Watchdogs would have influenced the driving to be more refined but it certainly is not a game breaker but is an annoyance overall which I feel could easily have been avoided.

I am really enjoying my time with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, it is amazing fun with friends but still satisfying if played solo. The story is strong and gives enough gameplay within the open world of Bolivia to keep the pace strong but allowing players to do their own thing in their own time in terms of tackling regions and lieutenants. The gun play is great with enough weapons to unlock and customise to give new attacking options with the enemy offering just enough resistance to stop it at times from being a complete cake walk to completing tasks but never feeling too underpowered with a skill tree that rewards the player effort in collecting enough XP resources to upgrade them. Though the side missions do indeed feel a tad rinse and repeat after a while, overall there is enough here in the main story campaign to keep the action exciting and fun. Of course the question of how this is sustained long term hangs above Wildlands as someone who has played The Division since its launch, there is a fear that once you have done all there is to do in the world, what will be left to do in it going forward. This is something Ubisoft will need to pay attention to when it starts to release the two expansions planned for Wildlands, sooner rather than later needs to be their goal here.

Whilst nothing in Ghost Recon Wildlands can be seen as groundbreaking or truly unique, Ubisoft has managed to blend a good number of their games together to give Wildlands a solid foundation to launch with. The use of the tactical drone to survey and mark enemies has been influenced by Watchdogs 2, The Division style of weapon customisation works well here without the cover based system it used and the clearing of regions and upgrading skills on the fly is very much inspired from recent Far Cry games. But Wildlands succeeds in refreshing the Ghost Recon series, bringing it back to a more grounded modern day setting with the decision to go with a large open world drives the freedom to tackle the story however they choose to do so. In what could have been rather generic gameplay and story, Ghost Recon Wildlands offers great fun for fans of third person shooters and nothing will beat teaming with friends, tearing through the Bolivian countryside as you are pursued by Cartel forces and seeing a friend pop out of the boot of the car to return fire….a definite highlight of my time with this game!

Having completely missed out on the PlayStation 3 era altogether due to selecting the Xbox 360 as my gaming console of choice for that generation, a good number of classic PlayStation titles and series slipped my gaming. Thus my PlayStation 4 bucket list was created and thankfully only a few remain unchecked going into 2017, one of them was Kingdom Hearts. Ahead of the hopefully imminent release of Kingdom Hearts III, a collection of previously outside PlayStation Kingdom Hearts content has been released under the mouthful title of ‘Kingdom Hearts 2.8 HD Final Chapter Prologue’ and finally I was to experience Kingdom Hearts…well, just about anyway.

This collection contains three parts; Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop HD, Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep ‘A Fragmented Passage’ and Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover. Each is a standalone option to choose to play from the main menu. The music on the main menu is soothing and embodies the sense of wonder I have grown to have about Kingdom Hearts as a series.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance HD was originally a title for the Nintendo 3DS so this remastered version marks the first time it has appeared on a main PlayStation console and has been adapted to suit a console rather than the dual screens of the 3DS. It stars Sora and Riku, characters from the main Kingdom Hearts games as they look to complete their Mark of Mastery exams by protecting parallel worlds as they prepare for the return of Master Xehanort. Each character is playable in the worlds but use a timed based system which results in switching to the other character via the Drop system which depletes over time.

As my first introduction to playing anything Kingdom Hearts, my reaction to the first 20 minutes was one of confusion and intrigue. I knew Disney characters were a part of the series but the very first thing I was presented with was a fight with Ursula from the Little Mermaid. The way in which the story felt thrown at the player was overwhelming and the opening to the game moves pretty fast with cuts-scenes that do set up the story but was lost on a newcomer to the series like me. It did feel as though I was playing a remake of a handheld game, loading screens are frequent and the gameplay is quick but the shifting between Sora and Riku never gave me time that I felt I needed to learn about them as characters. But it gives an incredible look into how the world of Disney blends with that of Kingdom Hearts and in terms of story and scope for what Kingdom Hearts III has in store it honestly left me wanting to get into this series even more. Getting to grips with the flowmotion system of moving around felt a little lost in what came across as rather empty worlds, something that probably worked ok on the 3DS but for this remaster, being a little more populated would have helped a lot I feel.

Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover was a surprise for me in that I was expecting content to actually play. Instead it is merely an animated movie that looks into the very earliest history of the Kingdom Hearts universe with one of the strangest introduction to any animation I have seen with text on screen moving so fast you can hardly make out what the text on screen is saying yet you have almost three minutes of it to get through. To be fair it is listed as the final chapter in the collection so if a player follows each chapter choice normally they will find this animated film as the closing part to the collection.

It tells the story set before the Keyblade War itself, which to someone like me who is not familiar enough with the main story as it is, did not help fill in any of the blanks at all. The story is really all about politics, how when seven people are chosen to be Foretellers, holders of books with prophecies of the future and their role in preventing the spread of darkness across the worlds. The pace is slow, really slow and on first viewing, the chapters are not skippable, meaning you have to play the whole animation as a complete piece before given the option to watch individual chapters in bite size after watching it that first time. Due to its setting, it is disconnected from what is shown and played in Drop Distance and A Fragmented Passage though it is apparently something that will be referenced in Kingdom Hearts III. My reaction to this was pretty much the same as most Star Wars fans coming out of watching The Phantom Menace for the first time in that this animation has themes and exposition that feel strange and not in line with how the story was told in the actual playable chapters in this collection. The quality of the animation is great though and if the cut scenes in Kingdom Hearts III follow suit, the story telling through them will indeed be amazing, but it just feels rather out of place without anything a player can actually play or experience other than sitting there watching it unfold.

I left the middle chapter, Birth by Sleep ‘A Fragmented Passage’ really is the crown jewel of this collection and to a newcomer to Kingdom Hearts, a superb way of demonstrating its gameplay and story telling in a traditional straight forward gaming way that I wish it had been my first selection in going into this collection instead of Drop Distance. Short at just shy of three hours long, it is told from the viewpoint of the character Aqua, who along with two friends are trapped in the realm of Darkness. Set after the events of Drop Distance, King Mickey Mouse reveals that he has been keeping a few secrets, one of which is the truth about what happened to Aqua and her attempts to rescue her friends from Darkness.

This is truly the best teaser for Kingdom Hearts III as A Fragmented Passage uses the same Unreal 4 engine that it is using. Visually the game world and character models are simply stunning and the gameplay is smooth in transitioning from combat styles to moving around the world using Aqua’s double jump. It felt far more controlled to play as Aqua than the flowmotion with Sora and Riku in Drop Distance and I felt more comfortable with this gameplay style. The story telling between gameplay sections in cut-scenes was easy enough to follow for a newcomer like me and left me excited going into Kingdom Hearts III more so than before I played this collection and especially more than either of the other inclusions. Exploring this world felt fun and intriguing and the gameplay soon became second nature.

Now to someone completely new to Kingdom Hearts I was hoping that for this remastered collection at least, each would come with some kind of introduction as to their place in the series but sadly each is presented just how they are, which left me as confused about the series as I was without this collection experience. Back Cover felt like filler and Drop Distance failed to capture me as much as A Fragmented Passage did, with the latter certainly paving the way for what looks to be an amazing visual platform with the Unreal 4 Engine for Kingdom Hearts III. This is a collection for fans well versed in the series but it did very little to help welcome me as a new player which feels like a missed opportunity. Drop Distance and Fragmented Passage are short game experiences, worthwhile but indeed short. Back Cover was a chore to sit through in one sitting to justify it as anything but padding to justify the pricing for the collection.

If only Square Enix had added something to allow new players to Kingdom Hearts more freedom to learn about the series, even if it were just text based information to set up each chapter or explain their place in the overall Kingdom Hearts series but if this collection was simply a way to put the engine being used for the next game, through its paces, then it has paid off. It gave me a glimpse into the world of Kingdom Hearts and whilst it was not a bountiful feast of lore to snack on, does have me engaged enough to want Kingdom Hearts III even more now.