Tom Clancy siblings Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six have always had a complementary, yin/yang relationship. Where Rainbow is loud, Recon is quiet. While the former is all door-breaches and in-your-face, the latter is a half-click away, lying prone in a bush and about to pull the trigger on its sniper rifle. After the explosive urban combat of the two GRAW games, Future Soldier holds an index finger to its pursed lips, whispers “Shhhh,” and gets the franchise back to its hushed roots — reminding us why we loved it so much in the first place.
As with most Clancy-branded titles, the story is a forgettable, convoluted tale of some evil Eastern European jackass trying to upset the world’s political balance. The extensive cutscenes are a first for the series, and while they’re hardly offensive, they don’t accomplish much in the way of character development either. Heck, we’re still not 100% sure which of your team’s four Ghosts we played as.
The game's Gunsmith mode (not shown) also supports Kinect, with which you can wave your way between weapon attachments and mock-shoot targets on the range. It’s okay, but not a selling point.It hardly matters, though, as Future Soldier’s real stars are its gameplay and its missions. Long-distance firearms — be they sniper rifles or scoped machineguns — are standard-issue (though every weapon is uniquely customizable using the surprisingly rich Gunsmith upgrade system), with suppressors usually attached to help keep the noise down. Tagging up to four foes with RB is lifted straight from Rainbow, but here it’s implemented so that it plays to Recon’s strengths. As soon as you mark a bad guy, one of your A.I.-controlled Ghost teammates will automatically move to line up a clear shot on your target. When the tag turns blue, you’ll know he’s ready to fire. Line up four targets, and when you pull your trigger, the team will follow suit, executing the Sync Shot. Better yet, take to the sky with your drone (a carryover from GRAW), tag three enemies, and hold down RB to issue the fire command to your allies, letting them do the work while you handle the planning. You can play surprisingly long sections of many missions without ever pulling the trigger yourself — a hook we found ironically empowering.
Many levels, in fact, actually require you to avoid detection, and are thus built completely around it. Yes, Future Soldier is a true stealth game...a breath of fresh air in the increasingly loud third-person-shooter genre. It works in large part because the buddy A.I. is so good — only once did we see a friendly Ghost get hung up on something and fail to do his job. Even when you’re pinned down in a heated firefight, marking enemies for your allies to focus on usually results in a terrorist corpse in no time.
Thankfully, the experience doesn’t lose any of its magic when you replace A.I. with humans in four-player campaign co-op. In fact, coordinating Sync Shots with your friends is exhilarating. Admittedly, the enemy intelligence leaves a lot to be desired, but they’re not so stupid as to siphon any of the fun out of the missions. Laudably, the scenarios almost all occur in beautiful places — from sandstorms to blizzards to classic Ghost Recon forests — and to keep you from feeling cheated, these lengthy levels feature some variety (like the occasional helicopter-gun sequence) while avoiding forced or cheesy boss fights.
You won’t get shorted in the competitive multiplayer, either, where class-based warfare rules the 10 gorgeous maps and four game modes. As the Scout, one-shotting someone with a sniper rifle is a treat, while the Engineer is highly valuable because he alone can launch a drone to mark enemies. Because one bullet can kill, intel is as valuable as thumbstick-aiming skills, as having enemy locations tagged on your HUD obviously grants you a massive advantage. All the while, XP gains lead to new skills, weapons, and armor pieces. Even after about six hours of multiplayer, we couldn’t get enough. A four-player, Horde-like Guerrilla mode is also on-hand, although we found we’d rather co-op through the campaign again instead.
Future Soldier’s campaign does lose its stealthy way a bit right at the end, and the presentation can be rough at times, just like the throwaway plot. Ultimately, though, the game shines not only for staying true to Ghost Recon’s roots, but also for doing so while successfully balancing the memories of old fans with the modern expectations of new ones.
The Ghosts have the power to see metal — just like the TSA!PUBLISHER: Ubisoft • DEVELOPERS: Ubisoft Paris/Red Storm/Ubisoft Bucharest • ESRB: Mature • MULTIPLAYER: 16 on Xbox Live or System Link • ACHIEVEMENTS: Mixed bag • COST: $60 • RELEASE DATE: May 22, 2012
+ Deeply satisfying stealth-focused campaign — either solo or in four-person co-op.
+ Equally compelling multiplayer mode with no shortage of maps, modes, or upgrades.
– Presentation is a bit rough in spots; fairly weak enemy A.I.
? Why don’t the subtitles always match the dialogue?
