Ghost Recon Future Soldier

For many gamers the ghost recon franchise is as important to them as say the Counterstrike or Battlefield games.  The Ghost games had great multi player to them and with the latest installment it brings it back to the forefront with more of a high octane movie feel than a video game feel.  Fear not however, Future Soldier is not simply a call of duty rip off, in fact I believe more care was put into this game than the latest Call Of Duty shovel ware.  As expected you play as a four team ghost squad sent on various mission tackling various targets and objectives.  Whether you're in Russia investigating a "deactivated base" or trying to rescue a CIA operative the game delivers a grand spectacle of death and bullets, without sacrificing what is true to the series, strategy.  Within your four team group you can designate targets and line up your shots together.  Doing this is incredibly satisfying, made better by a slow motion death shot when all four members have the shot at the same time.  Your team is dependent on you as are you them.  The friendly AI is rather well done.  Your teammates come to heal you quickly when you fall, and with adequate tagging they can be quite the force to be reckon with.

My issue is the cut scenes in between missions.  I understand that the developers wanted to give these guys more of a back story and make the player more attached to the team, but they kind of failed.  The cut scenes to be honest look like shit.  Facial detail as wells as overall look is muddled and dull.  I don't know why they didn't just use the in game graphics for cut scenes, instead they used pre rendered cut scenes.  It does not pay off.  Other than that Future Soldier is a great looking game.  Character models are well done and environments for the most part are great (except for some shitty looking grass details) The world is big, and most times you have to traverse it to get to the objective.  I couldn't help but feel like I was in the movie tears of the sun for a few missions to be honest, it had they morality complex going for it.  You want to stop them from murdering Innocent people yet it will jeopardize and end your mission.

 As its called future soldier you do get some cool toys, my favorite is the sensor grenade.  Toss one of these bad boys and not only can you see all the enemies but they have no idea you're there.  If you crouch you enable your adaptive camouflage.  If yo get to close they can still see you, but lets face it if you're a bad ass soldier your mission isn't to talk things over.  With that said you can do stealth kills both by hand or simple put a bullet in their head at close range.  Did I mention this game is violent?  No?  Well it is both in physical violence as well as subject matter.  Another cool gadget is the flying drone, with this you can send it ahead to see how many enemies you get to kill coming up as well as you can tag them so your team can have some fun.

Multi player is a little odd, there is no death match of any kind which is a little off putting but I can understand the idea of setting this game away from the mainstream shoot you in the face that has become the norm amongst shooters.  Instead we are given four modes as well as a horde mode containing 50 levels of pure death.  The four modes are as follows.

Conflict- this mode is my favorite.  Each team is given the location of a target.  The first team to capture it then has to defend it.  If you are playing with friends its great, you can coordinate nicely and hold it down for a while.

Saboteur- This mode is pretty cool, each team is trying to plant a bomb on the other teams base.  The catch is there is only one bomb and its in the center of the map, good luck

Siege- This mode is most frustrating only because there is no re spawn.  One team has to transport Intel while the other has to stop them if all members of your team die you lose that round.

Decoy- possibly the coolest idea goes to this mode.  There are three locations given that you must take over, the rick is only one is the real one.  With neither team knowing which the real one is fun is abound.

Overall I really like Future Soldier, is it the greatest game ever?  No, but its different, its violent, and its a hell of a lot of fun.  If you're a big multi player guy id buy it, if you are more campaign just rent it.