Ghost Recon Future Soldier – Preview

Tired of shooting things yet? You’d better not be. More so than any time in videogaming history, high budgets mean high-caliber weapons, and the differences between the major games on the major systems are diminishing all the time. With Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Ubisoft is trying to differentiate its game from the pack. So just how successful has it been? First look and it’s all a bit Killzone. Scarred beaches, dust and rubble and grey everywhere… It’s all very somber, all very serious and all a bit too familiar. Until, that is, you turn invisible. Then everything totally changes.

The ‘Future Soldier’ in the title is the real giveaway here. Unlike a Modern Warfare, Ghost Recon is taking things a little bit further, handing you the opportunity to play with the technology that’s on the horizon but is not quite here yet, and optical camouflage is just one of them.

At any point, the Ghosts can switch to a Predator-style near-invisibility, using their special reflective nanosuits (we don’t know how it works). This renders them almost impossible to see, and opens up plenty of options on the battlefield. Sending in one man in camo to flank your enemies while your team-mates take up strong cover positions is one obvious way of taking advantage of your new-found tech. The demo, for example, saw one particularly brave Ghost stroll right into an enemy base and take down foes with slick stealth kills. It’s going to make for some seriously tense combat scenarios – as Ubisoft likes to call them – because if you get rumbled then you’re going down.

Ubi has confirmed four-player co-op for the first time in the series, meaning that you and three real-life buddies will be able to charge through this future war together. Unlike a Gears or a Halo, success in Ghost Recon only comes from tight, tactical awareness. Rushing in headfirst into the enemy isn’t going to work, so you’re going to have to rely on communication, battle planning and careful use of the returning cross-com cameras in order to succeed. Probably not one to play with randoms, then, if Left 4 Dead and every other game ever is anything to go by.

Even on your own, though, Ghost Recon has always provided team-mate AI that’s robust and compliant enough. Playing on your own can sometimes make for a richer experience, simply because you can be the skipper without annoying your mates with your constant order-barking. The cross-com tech allows you to see what your buddies are doing at all times, so you can plan co-ordinated assaults and flanking maneuvers with relative ease.

More so than any previous Ghost Recon, though, Ubisoft is allowing players to go ‘all-action’ if they wish and just take the fight to the opposition. Spurred on by the current crop of mega-shooters, Ghost Recon Future Soldier’s slick cover mechanic and hi-tech weaponry will be ample for players to just dive in and blast the hell out of everything. It’ll be far less satisfying, of course, but the option’s there, much like it was in Splinter Cell Conviction.

There’s no doubt about it, this is Ubisoft’s big game of the winter, and its attempting to gain a foothold in the market that’s dominated by Call of Duty, Killzone and even Halo. Future Soldier is different enough and ambitious enough to make the Ghosts stand out from the pack. Quite a mean feat, considering no one can actually see them.

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