Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

[retroed]

This seems to have gone under everyone's radar. The only other person who has played it on my friends list is Riva.

I've not played a Ghost Recon game before other than Shadow Wars on the 3DS, but that's such a break from the rest of the series it's no comparison. I've played through the first three missions, and there's been some good variation and use of the future tech. So far in the campaign I have gone super stealthy with my cloak, thrown a sensor grenade and seen the location of enemies through walls, throw up a controllable UAV into the air and flown it around a bit. You have three other squad mates, and at any time there's more than one enemy you can mark them with RB. Once you've marked up to four enemies, you take the first shot and your squadies will take care of the rest at the same time. It's quite satisfying seeing four enemies drop to the floor similtaneously. I'm pretty sure you can play through the campaign in co-op, but I've not tried it.

The standout of the package here for me though, is the online. It's bloody excellent. There's multiple modes (no FFA or TDM, though), but the only one I've played so far is Conflict. 15 minutes long, two teams of six broken down into two lots of three per side, sees you defending and attacking a point. Simple, good fun. The cover mechanic works very well, almost like Gears of War. Once in cover, as you move around there are other cover spots marked out on the map. If you hold A you will run to that piece of cover. It works like this to try and encourage more moving around the map, and it seems to work pretty well indeed. I'm looking forward to trying out the other game types.

I'm playing as a rifleman, currently level 8. The ACR is my weapon of choice, along with various upgrades such as extended mags, improved trigger, and laser aim. I have just replaced the 360 degree camera equipment with a Med kit, so I can now revive team members along with myself. The gunsmith area that was introduced mostly so they could stick 'Better with Kinect' on the box works just fine with a pad. Select your weapon and it gives you and exploded version of it where you can tinker with each individual part. Neat.

I'm liking Future Soldier a whole lot, and although I've heard it's been dumbed down for the masses (I wouldn't know), it all seems to play very smoothly and does have tactical elements providing the rest of your squad play along and work towards the objective. If you like Gears, you'll feel quite at home here and probably enjoy it quite a damn lot. It's also a bit like a less stressful, scaled down, third person Battlefield without vehicles and with cool tech, that works. I'm loving it.