Hm... Ghost Recon Wildlands? Doesn't ring a bell. At least, that is the reaction to this game being mentioned by most nowadays, because the game was so bland and repetative that I'm pretty sure even Ubisoft forgot about it. Here's the thing about the Ghost Recon franchise Ubi, it was not meant to be an action sandbox game. Waaaaaaaaaay back in the day (the early to mid 2000's) Ghost Recon was a tense tactical shooter with an emphasis on stealth and teamwork over blowing ♥♥♥♥ up. Ubisoft seem to have looked at this idea and thought to themselves "maybe what the fans really want is a boring linear third person cover shooter with some stealth elements?" It was this line of thinking that left us with the snore fest known as Ghost Recon Future Soldier a few years back, but what about Wildlands? Ubisoft threw off the linearity issue by swinging the pendulum so hard the other direction that they lost the point again. Wildlands is an open world action game that is trying to be comparable to Just Cause or Grand Theft Auto, but with none of the freedom offered in those games. You are ostensibly a government agent working on behalf of the United States within Bolivia to take down the Santa Blanca drug cartel. A cool concept but when put into the context of an open world sandbox, it results in the game kneecapping itself to stay consistent. For example, you cannot shoot civilians or you will get a game over. There are also numerous missions that will result in a failure state if you break stealth, which is fine if that's how you want the game to be but there is zero indication based on the available equipment that stealth is the best or even a good option. Yeah, you get suppressors and a drone but most of the upgrades are combat oriented and many weapons cannot mount suppressors. There are also times where the game just alerts the enemies based on a scripted event, so even if you were running a perfect stealth op it gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. The point is that the game never gives you an indication of what to expect so you cannot prepare accordingly.

How is this a ghost recon game exactly? Yeah, I know your unit is called the "ghosts" but they seem awfully under equipped. Like for example, the ghosts in Future Soldier had futuristic active camo, but our ghosts in Wildlands have hoodies? And don't come at me saying "oh they're trying to blend in" when you can wear a plate carrier and a ghillie suit with three guns strapped to you at all times.

But none of that matters if the game is fun. Is the game fun? If you have a full squad of friends, and even then only for probably 15-20 hours max. After a while, you realize that the game is one big repetative loop. Your goal in the game is to take out underbosses to get to overbosses to reach the big boss himself, El Sueno. The problem is that all of these steps take the form of 3 things: kill someone, break something, steal something. Now imagine you are expected to do those same 3 things for upwards of 50 hours to beat the game. Sound boring? You're not wrong my friend.

Look overall, the game is just boring. It's not bad, or broken, or offensive, it's just the gameplay equivelant of plain oatmeal. No variety, no flare, no fun. And what, I ask, is the point of a game if it isn't fun?