Generic 3rd person rubbish.
Gone is the tension of GR, the pacing is out the window and we're left with another generic 3rd person shooter that fails to satisfy, let me explain.
The graphics look terrible, some of the cutscenes simply aren't finished and the bland, dull palette of colours gives the game a washed out look. The character models in cutscenes are poor and the animations belong to a N64 game, we waited years for this? The amount of information on screen at certain times is enough to give you a fit, objectives, players and floating information clog the view.
The loading, the game has a lot, even after instillation on the HD the game is load heavy and with a lot of "instant mission failure" messages you will be seeing that loading screen time and time again. The guns in "gunsmith" take a good 3 seconds to load onto the screen and again the models are poor, the inclusion of Kinect support is a gimmick and is virtually useless.
The sound is horrendous, there is little to no atmosphere generated by the sound and you're simply bombarded with a wall of sound on most levels that only serves to annoy. Surround sound users rejoice because you can switch off the game and listen to sweet music on it!
Gone is the tactical nature of GR, a more linear experience you won't find. The game holds your hand through just about every step of the campaign with little chance to flank or explore different avenues. Then the laziest form of game development rears it's ugly head, time limits. Game developers take note, time limits in games DO NOT add tension to scenarios, it's annoying and ridiculous to think you have to rush through a section of the game that you have never seen before to complete an objective you have no idea about throwing caution to the wind. Tactical my foot. The pacing of the game is wrong, you never really get to recon anything and with time limits, planes taking off, more planes taking off and targets getting away you never get a chance to plan ahead, it's OK because the linear nature of the game doesn't expect you to. I hate to dredge up the past but where is the big map with objectives and the chance to plan a strategy, take out said objectives and extract safely all through your cunning and wit? Dead and buried.
The AI in the game does an adequate job for the most part but I think I'm up to about 8 reloads now thanks to team-mates getting stuck on the maps, running in place against a wall, stuck whilst crawling under stuff, necessitating you to reload to your last checkpoint. A hardcore crack team of soldiers wouldn't overlook enemy soldiers running past them would they? Your team-mates do, stay behind them at all times because if you're on point don't expect any help to take out flanking enemies, scripted or stupid? The game plays better with friends in place of the AI but bad luck if you're not online, then you have no choice.
Ok the campaign is rubbish, the story incoherent at best and filled with the usual suspects, Brits, Russians and bad guy Africans abusing the masses, it's like they took every game cliche and tossed it into a hat and that's how they made the story, surely in this day and age we can expect a half decent (read plausible) story that doesn't end up with America saving the world? No we can't.
On to the multi-player...Here have a tiny map, have the ability to spawn onto your team-mates, move the objectives around tiny map and uh....back to Battlefield.
I was looking forward to this game for a long time, somewhere deep down I was hoping the past GR games would resurface and give me the freedom I wanted, I wanted to hide in the bushes and watch the movements of an enemy patrol to work out it's pattern. I wanted to RECON the objectives and make my own decisions on what to take out first. I wanted to the game to have tension and pace befitting the GR name. I wanted to chose my squad and grow with them, not be part of yet another crack squad of Americans saving the world yet again. I wanted open vista's of rolling hills and deep forests, not urban rehashed rubbish complete with a time limit and respawning enemies running out of an empty building. Personally I think Gamespot was a little generous with their review score, nothing to see here, move along.
Footnote: I originally gave the game a 4.5 but a mere 24 hours after release the ubisoft servers are down with no explanation or schedule for when it will be working again, poor form UBISOFT when you can't even have your game working when released....you get a 3.5 now. Not having the ability to host co-op with friends, or guerilla mode or multiplayer removes about two thirds of the content within the game....so I rushed out and bought a game for approx 1/3 of the content.....
After being "forced" to play offline single player campaign I removed another point to make it 2.5, the campaign is rubbish. The stealth is rubbish, instant mission failures combined with time limits and fleeing enemies just make it more ridiculous than first impressions, your in game allies are telling you to take it slow whilst the glaring time limit forces you to run and gun. This isn't ghost recon, it's a poor mans clone of "army of two" and that, by the way, was a horrid game to start with. Disappointment isn't a word I would use, more like disgust. Ubisoft still hasn't fixed the server issues and the single player game isn't worth playing. What have we got left then, a shiny disc for chopping cheese and that's about all, another great franchise dead and buried. The amount of glitches and bugs in the game defies belief, how the testers didn't pick up on tears in the map, animation glitches etc is a joke. Falling through the map whilst playing the campaign is inexcusable, just crossed rainbow six off my list along with everything else UBISOFT puts out...utter crap.