Ghost Recon Future Soldier puts you on the front line with a spec ops team that use the most advanced equipment and weapons as they fight the war on terror around the world. Sounds pretty typical right? We have all played games with this very premise but sometimes a game comes along that surprises you, and all you had to do was get past your first impression of it.

The gameplay in Ghost Recon Future Soldier is truly rewarding because every aspect of third-person shooters we are used to are amped up to another level, and everything you do gives you a definite tactical advantage if they are used correctly.

The story has your team globe-trotting and taking down terrorists. At first each mission seems unrelated until you find out more is a foot. Each level does a great job of showcasing the different tactics, game play mechanics, and weapons without the campaign feeling like a huge tutorial. Squad commands are nonexistent, but the ghosts do a good job of keeping up and saving your ass. If you want a true squad experience it is best to play the campaign with three of your friends, which requires a great level of communication to meet your mission objectives.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier forces you to play tactically, and that is something I welcome with open arms.

Gear and Gunsmithing

Besides the shooting mechanics in Ghost Recon Future Soldier being top-notch, the game gives you a chance to change what makes your weapon tick. Gunsmith is a great feature that allows players to customize every aspect of their weapon of choice. When you are done swapping out components such as the barrel, gas system, trigger, etc you can try out your new creation on a gun range, which can be pretty fun all in itself. These two features combined gives you total control over your weapons before you even fire a shot during a mission.

Strangely enough, once you configure a gun the way you like, you might not use another. I only switched weapons in the field once and that was due to running out of ammo. It’s rare to actually run out of ammo even though ammo crates are found in every level.

How your ghost’s moves around the battlefield gives Ghost Recon Future Soldier the edge over other shooters in the genre. You can go prone quickly while strafing, slide on your knees into a prone position, and cover swap by just holding the action button. Once you learn how to be agile, the gameplay becomes more fast-paced and rewarding.

The downside to being a future soldier is there are times where you can feel like Batman against common street thugs, because using stealth camo, sensor grenades, and a transforming UAVs gives you a huge advantage that can be a very obvious at times.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the single player campaign. The characters never seemed overly cliché and the action scenes and levels were filled with enough challenges and surprises to keep me on my toes. The “Diamond Formation” action scenes turns you covering the escape of a VIP into an on-rails shootout, and bullet time scenes when your team breaches a room filled added more authentication to the overall feel of the game. The campaign is around 10 hours so find some friends and save the world.

Guerrilla Mode

The Guerilla mode in Ghost Recon future soldier pits four players against waves of enemies trying to take you down. It sounds like Horde mode from Gears of War, but there is far more to it than that. The main objective in Guerilla Mode is to secure different positions throughout the level. The first wave is stealth based; requiring your team to take over the position silently, and then you have to defend that position against waves of new enemies. There are 50 waves total, and every 10 you have to secure a new position. Believe me; every wave introduces more difficult enemies and new surprises that force you to change tactics, and to keep the line of communication with teammates open to make sure you come out alive.

Earn points with combo kills when your teams kill enemies quickly, and by tagging them with you UAV. Surviving several waves in a row grants you wave streak bonuses that grant your team new items and abilities that grow more powerful the longer you keep the streak alive. I’m impressed by how much fun Guerilla Mode is, especially when you are playing with friends you trust with your virtual lives.

Multiplayer

Ubisoft introduces a more objection based multiplayer in Ghost Recon Future Soldier, so don’t be too alarmed when you find out there are no standard modes like deathmatch or capture the flag. There are four modes total (Conflict, Saboteur, Decoy, and Siege) and three character classes (Rifleman, Scout, and Engineer), with aspects of the single player campaign carried over into multiplayer. You rank up unlocking new weapons and items, and on the field you can do some pretty cool stuff like stunning an enemy and hacking them to uncover Intel on their team’s location.

The multiplayer is a definite change of pace from other online shooters because you truly feel like you are working toward a victory instead of just having more kills than the other side when the timer runs out.

Should you play this game?
If you are looking for a solid tactical shooter, Future Soldier is the game for you. This game has a lot of offer shooter fans, but you have to get past its some-what typical presentation to see what this game is truly about. In other words, don’t judge this book by its cover.