Over the past week, I’ve been playing a lot of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. Having not played any of the previous games in the franchise, it’s been quite an experience. While I’ve poured countless hours into the public closed beta, I also recently got a chance to play the E3 build that was showcased a few months back.
And while we’ve already written down our reasons for why you should consider playing Breakpoint, here’s some more. I’ll be going over certain key aspects of the game that you should really consider before picking it up next month when it releases.
Gameplay Grind?
Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon franchise has always felt like a hybrid of all of their other franchises’ game mechanics. And I count that as a positive. The developer has always been known for their use of vast open worlds to be used in the game, but the gameplay itself has always been a point of contention. Breakpoint is no different. The gameplay reminds me a lot of The Division 2, which came out earlier this year. While Ubisoft isn’t marketing this as a looter-shooter, it certainly feels like one.
Weapons and gear are level-based, and there’s a decent emphasis on inventory management. Leveling up isn’t hard though, as I managed to reach level 30 with roughly 6 hours of playtime. The looter aspect certainly isn’t as expansive as it was in say, The Division 2, but it’s clear to see the influence. Enemy scaling nearly isn’t as aggressive as it generally is in a looter, however, the game does suggest you to prepare appropriately before heading into a higher skill area. You can still one-shot enemies regardless of their level, which is only an indication of how intelligent the enemy AI is supposed to be.
Co-Op Fun
What hasn’t changed though, is Ubisoft’s approach to co-op. Much like the previous Ghost Recon: Wildlands, you can team up with your friends to play the entire campaign. While it doesn’t necessarily make for the best experience if you want to get immersed in the story, it sure is a lot of fun. Wandering the open world of Auroa is fun if a little repetitive. You’ll be taking out bad guys on camps, rescuing generals and blowing up enemy bases/vehicles, just like the last installment. This time though, there’s plenty of missions dedicated to finding weapon upgrades, which after finishing can be used to, well, upgrading your weapons. Considering the fact that the game places a larger focus on a class-based character system, it can get immensely satisfying if you have the right team.
A Bug’s Life
Before you pick up your pitchforks, I know this is just the beta. The game is releasing in a month, and there’s still a lot of optimization left to be done. However, considering the beta’s primary goal was to find all the flaws with the game in its current form, I will list some of them in hopes that they’ll be fixed before its public release.
- The game’s resolution kept switching to 720p every time I started it, even after changing it to my desired resolution (1080p), after exiting the game Windows itself had switched to the lower resolution.
- While I didn’t run too much into connection errors when I did it resulted in pretty bizarre issues such as the healing function not working as intended.
- Less of a bug but more of a preference, I’d love if the game actually showed some performance metrics in the settings menu, just like it did in the company’s previous titles like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. As of right now, the only way of gauging the game’s performance is to manually change the settings and note the performance.
- The lobby host, after getting disconnected, couldn’t connect back into the team lobby. This led the rest of the lobby to connect back to the host, which in turn hindered character progression.
For context, I played the game on a system with a Ryzen 7 3700X and an NVIDIA RTX 2060 Super. With my settings on the ‘ultra’ preset, I was able to retain 60 fps throughout a decent amount of my playthrough, with occasional dips into the 30s. With the game still being prepped for launch, I expect these issues to be fixed soon for smooth sailing. But with all that said it has to be noted that we’ll be doing a full deep dive into the game’s settings menus when it officially launches.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint releases worldwide next month on October 4th, 2019.
The post Ghost Recon: Breakpoint First Impressions: A Fun Return to The Wild appeared first on TechQuila.