holyyyyyyyyyy

An above average game. The gameplay is dumbed down in favour of a more story-centric playthrough, which is a shame since the story isn't much better than the ones in the games preceding this game - just more cinematic. In essence, it is the same story with Russians as the bad guys - like so many games from that era. If you've meticulously played through the original games, you will will recognise the characters you play, which is a nice touch - but that is all the similarity it has with the games that came before.

This game, is in fact, more Gears of War than Ghost Recon. All of the mechanics of cover-to-cover combat is a slightly inferior version of Gears of War, with the traversal mechanics being one of the worst I've played. Tactics play little part here, save for some (not all) forced stealth sections. Moreover, the stealth mechanics are a joke, with the enemies having Assassin's Creed levels of awareness. The only challenging stealth section was the part where we needed to sneak past a tank in the mission after the solo stealth mission. The drone, when acquired is a straight up cheat code which is better not used if any semblance of a challenge is desired. The later missions also necessitates overuse of the magnetic goggles/night goggles, which is a shame since the asset designs here were really nice. That being said, most of the set-pieces are really nice, my favourite ones being the Pakistan sections and the solo stealth section.

As I said, it is an above average game which didn't make me feel anything throughout the game. So although it would get a score above 5 for me, I don't know for what I'd recommend this for. And it isn't like it is a product of its time. I'd argue that even for its time - it was just an above average game. I believe this would be an unpopular opinion, but it is what it is.