This weekend, Ubisoft unleashed the multiplayer beta for the upcoming Ghost Recon: Future Solider to anxious gamers. Access to the beta was done via invite only, or for gamers who already preordered the game. The beta is available on both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and runs through May 2.
After 3 days now with the Ghost Recon: Future Solider multiplayer beta, one thing is for certain, this is the future of the third-person shooter genre. Even with the game still in beta, the graphics were among the best we’ve ever seen. Animations were smooth and lifelike. On the Xbox 360, the shadows and textures were very lifelike. The two maps available, Mill and Pipeline, showed two very different types of environments, each showing very well. Mill is a map of what appears to be a European village with a lot of organic elements such as trees and foliage. On the contrary, Pipeline shows an industrial area (obviously a pipeline related structure), with very little organic elements.
Being a third-person shooter, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier provides you all the same action of Call Of Duty, without the feeling of disorientation and the headaches that come with a traditional first-person shooter (FPS). Using an over-the-shoulder view, you get a better feel of where you are in the environment and spatial awareness within the game. Pushing down on the left joystick also gives you the ability to switch from one shoulder to another. Of course, one challenge for developers with third-person shooters is the ability to accurately animate your character’s movements. Ubisoft’s team for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has appeared to not only pull this off, but do it with almost pinpoint accuracy. The way your soldier takes cover, runs, climbs ladders, and jumps down from ledges are all top-notch works of extremely good coding. The realistic animations will appeal to any fan of the military shooter genre.
Another great facet of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s multiplayer is the ability to customize your weapons in almost every way imaginable. After selecting your base model of weapon, you can then change anything from the optics to the trigger, or the stock to the barrel. This in-game experience will only be greater once Ubisoft releases the promised smartphone integration for gunsmithing.
Otherwise, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier players can expect the same basic mutliplayer elements found in other modern multiplayer shooters such as Call Of Duty and Battlefield. Players earned experience points (XP) by completing objectives and racking up kill counts. As you earn more XP, your character is leveled up which unlocks new weapon upgrades, abilities, and other goodies.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is releasing on May 22, and appears to be a must-have game for any fan of the military shooter genre. After just this very small bit of what is shaping up to be a much larger game, its impressive beta début signals what is going to be hopefully a great single and multiplayer experience. Check out below for the most recent screenshots from Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
[...] Dying for a chance to play Ghost Recon: Future Soldier? We don’t blame you, it’s an awesome game! [...]
I found the graphics really basic (it’s definitely sub-hd) and the movements stunted and jerky. It feels like a game made 6-7 years ago and I felt a sense of being locked into animations. Traversal and transitions from cover while initially promising seem poorly executed. I get the odd glimpse of that “team play feeling” but in the end it just doesn’t come together.
The menus and the overall UI are blurry and poorly constructed, they’re also running in sub-hd for some reason, functionality and response through the menus is very poor.
I found the whole beta to be an absolute car crash; I tend not to let betas put me off of games as they’re beta tests and not demos, but this just feels like an incohesive pile of junk as a whole, I don’t know what they were thinking.