E3 2011: The problem with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

I like a squad-based shooter. In practical terms, they're a tad more realistic than the one-man army scenarios where you Rambo through an intergalactic conflagration with one rifle and God as your co-pilot. On our world, you take a wingman. Sometimes a lot of them. Guys you can trust.

And that's the problem with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.

Thanks, Mr. Computer, for telling me the men with guns are bad.

Oh, it's not a bad game, judging by what I've seen so far. I got to play the four-player co-op mission shown during the Ubisoft press conference, and I like the look of it. But a lot of its team-based mechanics crash right into the ground when you join up with other humans, because Ubi forgot to factor something in: People are stupid.

You know what I'm talking about. Even more than other entries in the Ghost Recon series, Future Soldier pushes a stealthy approach to things. You're supposed to sneak up and murder bad people so the other bad people in earshot don't hear their friends dying horribly, allowing you to sneak up on them next. And at several points, the levels give your team opportunities to position themselves for a simultaneous four-man takedown. This makes life a bit easier. At least, for the people who aren't sorta dead.

But if you've ever played an online co-op shooter, you know that's never gonna happen. Not unless you're playing with a few buddies who know what they're doing. Otherwise, I guarantee you'll get stuck with one low-impulse-control jerk who blows your cover in under five seconds.

This is actually the stealth portion of the map.

I didn't need more than a fifth of that time to realize all three of my compadres had never seen or heard of Ghost Recon in their lives. Possibly the term "stealth shooter" simply didn't translate into High Moron. Regardless of the explanation, I can't honestly say I got to play Future Soldier to its fullest extent, because I only played it as a cover-based run-and-gun shooter. And I didn't get to use cover too much, either.

Somehow, I always managed to be the guy on point. So I had three fools behind me popping off rounds at a baddie I didn't quite finish creeping up on, or at a wall, or at some distant figure all the way across a cement bridge. And missing. Guess what happened next? Every enemy on that stage of the map came out of the woodwork. And since I was out in front, I became the primary target in every firefight. I ended up having to gun down everyone in the level. I only wish I could've done the same thing to my team.

It gets worse.

Dear Helicopter: My friends are hiding behind those crates. Please kill them.

The Ghosts in this game use active camouflage, and the effect really looks much cooler than the Predator-esque invisible man thing everyone else uses. It's more a slurry of colors as they move from place to place. Good stuff. But your camo isn't button-activated...it's contextual. The game turns it on when you're quiet, and switches it off when you go loud. And my team always went loud. Once that happened, I couldn't simply sneak off and leave my team to their fate while I re-cloaked and flanked the enemy. The game -- and my teammates -- locked me into their decisions, and that made it significantly less fun.

Don't get me wrong...I'm sure it's fine in single player, because bots know what they're doing more often than congenitally stupid people do. But I can't completely leave Ubisoft off the hook, either. They made a co-op game that ignores human nature, with mechanics that impose the lowest common denominator on the whole. In gaming, that's a cardinal sin.

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Tags: Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, E3 2011

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Kai Su

June 11, 2011

I agree with you that co-op missions of this type would probably be nigh impossible to finish or properly play with random people online, but I don't at all agree with that being a bad thing. I would much rather play games of this type (Uncharted 2 co-op missions, COD Spec Ops mode, etc) with friends, and the higher level of communication and execution that's required of players in these modes (usually on higher difficulty levels) make it all the more rewarding. Losing that to make it possible to play with a bunch of schmucks on PSN/XBL who just want to shoot everything in sight is not a trade off that I want to be made.

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Arnar Levi

Yes, the random stranger is the worst kind of idiot but I think it is possible to play a game like this and enjoy it without having to rely on your friends to get the game. None of my friends play shooters in general so I usually result in finding partners in various forums around the web. Strangers are definitely better than random strangers.

Ed Grabowski

What you are saying is not often the case. Most of the time, people who go out and buy a game like Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon are doing so because they know they game. It is an aquired taste, and I doubt it is going to gather many impulse buys. Also, gamers can be pretty smart.

Of course you are going to run into the guys that just want to shoot everything and ignore the helpful gameplay mechanics, but more often than not you are going to get someone who knows what they are doing. In Borderlands, 9 times out of 10 I got a coop partner that didn't try and play the game like they would in single player. They were aware they had a partner, and coordinated attacks with me.

Bashing Ubisoft for having confidence in the intelligence of gamers pretty much goes against everything many core gamers have been fighting against for a long, long time. In a time where every developer and their uncles are watering down games, streamlining every mechanic in sight, and making games shorter/easier, the last thing we want to do is give them MORE reason to think we are incapable of working together.

I don't want to give these developers more of an excuse to continue watering down my favorite core franchises. Before we know it, shooters are going to be aiming and reloading for us, and our only job is to pull the trigger (but don't worry, a big red msg on the screen will warn you when pressing the right trigger may be helpful). We need to fight this downgrade of our favorite franchises, not prove them right.

I for one WANT my convoluted menus in Mass Effect 2. I WANT my overly complicated controls and difficult campaigns. I want to be challenged. I don't want any more streamlined experiences being shoved down my throat. The biggest disappointment of this generation was seeing how Bioware butchered Mass Effect 2. Let's not help anyone else do it again to another franchise.

Rus McLaughlin

June 12, 2011

With a lot of other games, you'd all be right, and I agree...I want a developer talking up to me, not down. But don't forget, I'm talking about this one specific game. I played it, I talked to people who worked on it. There are several core elements predicated on the idea that you'll have no fewer than four with-it guys in your four-man squad. Anything else, and those elements might as well not exist. Other team co-op games like Left 4 Dead don't break down quite so easily. And as for smarter gamers knowing what Ghost Recon is and how to play it? These three chimps got into E3, then waited in line for an hour to play it (I had an appointment and waited five minutes). You'd think maybe at least one of them would be more together than a random online match-up, but no.