Great game - I would say If I was making my review looking only all the things that were promised before the release.
Imagine that what you were promised a car for your 18th birthday and you were waiting for it for so long, now finally it's your birthday and your parents say "sorry buddy we didn't save up enough money to get you one, we will buy it for you on Christmas" frustrated but without a choice you accept to wait until then just to find out that the car your parents bought you is a 20 year old Ford with a different colour painted doors. And the worst thing is that while waiting your parents kept on lying to you how awesome the car will be and how many features it will have.
I remember my though when I first saw the gameplay from E3 2011, it was something like "OH BOY, the company that has made games like Ghost Recon Advanced War fighter 1 and 2, Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 and Splinter Cell Conviction is making a new game where they hopefully will take the best bits from each game and put it to one." In theory they have, you still get the futuristic weapons and equipment like in GRAW, you can customize your weapon and you character like in R6:V and you get the cover swapping and movement techniques from SCC.
Then they made a few more trailers and a short movie (don't worry, I will get to the point shortly) after delaying the release date of the game by almost half a year. The trailers were amazing and the movie was decent as you would expect. Surely that got everyone on the edge of the seats, when finally the game comes out…
Now this is where I explain why the entire prelude. You see most of the things promised are either stripped down, or just absent.
The teaser gameplay during E32011, the whole level doesn't exist, as well as a few strategies utilised during the gameplay such as shooting a guy at the machine gun and holding him up so that the passing patrol doesn't suspect anything.
The little movie trailer that doesn't have a connection to the game and they introduce the machine on wheels thingy that doesn't make an appearance in the game.
The next trailer show casing the sync shot also has a few misleading things, you can't plant a c4 and your drone doesn't shoot.
The movie called GR:Alpha also where a few things are misleading, your camo suit is integrated in the clothes you wear in game not put on like invisible cloak from Harry Potter, you don't have a shoulder cannon, your drone doesn't shoot, not to mention defend a position from foes and that mechanised dog on wheels makes an appearance again.
All that put together with their outdated information regarding split screen that the "forgot" to take down from their website makes a nice huge hype about a game that isn't what it was pictured at first. While everyone expects a stealth based tactical shooter they deploy a shooter with a few stealthy objectives and a tactical options complicated only for a 2 year old.
I guess that is a marketing problem. So if I was to score a game, I would take a point or two down for misleading people and making them buy something they think is different. It's like if you buy Battlefield 3 and find a Viva Piñata disk inside the box.
Let's pretend that we were living under a rock for past 2 years and we never heard of this game coming out and how awesome it was supposed to be. Let's just imagine that we went to the store and the store clerk told us to take this game, so now we can evaluate the game for what we have not what was promised.
Before we picked up a game we had a choice before us whether to take just the game or the signature edition of that same game for just 5 extra quid (comparing that to every other game's signature edition this is not that bad). So let's see what comes in that signature edition… Bunch of head skins that in reality are not different skins but just different colours of the existing non signature ones that look all the same anyway… 2 guns, im not a gun nut so whatever is given to me and whatever can make a person die on the other side of that gun is good enough for me and a map for a guerrilla mode that is not worth the money as it is a horrible map for a horrible game mode that I will mention later. Oh and also it came with a metal casing that I guess was sweet, but will it add up to the price when I will be selling the game… So if you are not filled with all the hype around this game like I was I would save those 5 pounds for something worth a while.
When you start the game it would ask you to input a code that you would have inside of the box and that cannot be used twice, so if you got yourself a pre-owned game, pray that a person before you didn't have internet or just read some hateful reviews like mine and decided to return the game for its full price (and yes -greedy ubisoft bastards). The only reason I found this to be worth a while to mention is because even though you will input or buy that damn code it won't work straight away, you have to restart the game few times or just give the server some time to realise that your code was legit. You will have to put in an extras code that you got in signature edition if you didn't follow my advice and even there they give you misleading information on the brochure where the code is on where to input that code.
As you can see we didn't get to the actual game yet and we are already full of frustration.
• So the first thing I would like to look at is campaign. I should say that the campaign is divided into two sections, one where you will be having fun and the other where you won't. Most likely if you picked up this game you are into the tactical shooters and already are tired of all the Gears of Wars, COD and Battlefield running and gunning, you look for some peaceful "pick one guy, learn his route, wait until he is in the corner where no one hears him scream and pick him of" gameplay. Unfortunately your itch for stealth and tactics will only be scratched as if there is a pillow between you and that annoying pimple. Every mission will have stealthy sections and gunning sections that are scripted and regardless of how good you were at not getting spotted and quietly taking down a whole base of bad guys, alarm will still go off and the whole army will be on your ass and almost every mission ends with "hold them back until backup arrives". Question is if they are going to send a gunship to rescue you after you have taken down almost everyone, why not send it in the beginning of the game to plough down your enemies so you have to just do the "clean-up".
All the levels are spammed with chest high walls and objects and killing badies is a matter of popping out off cover shooting and popping back in… God, its like Gears of War all over again… And although you have all the sweet equipment, you will find yourself not using any one off them apart from the drone. Drone is where your tactical shooter part comes into play, you mark guys and your squad takes them down during stealthy sections or concentrates fire on them when in battle, well that's about all the strategy you get… sometimes you will find yourself craving for 4 targets just so you can shoot one off them yourself as well, because the mark and execute takes away the gameplay away from you… wait, mark and execute was in Splinter Cell… remember what I said earlier about thinking that the game will lend the best from all those game, well it feels like they have deliberately picked the worst parts of the game, like the sonic goggles (magnetic in this game) that takes away the risk of not seeing of what's behind the corner and what's in that building, marking and letting AI kill takes away the danger of dying in a fire fight, the aim aid is ridiculous and they even made the bullets for the sniper rifle the can change direction mid-flight so all you have to do is let it acquire a lock and pull the trigger. All this makes the game silly and unchallenging. The campaign has a few challenges that are slightly challenging and that give rewards, but that's the only reason I see to play through the game again, but even in those I found a frustrating bit, you see if you are challenged to pass the entire section without triggering any alarms and somewhere in the middle of that section your game freezes or you decide to exit, when you reload the game and finally pass the section you won't have the challenge finished, it does the same even with those challenges where you have to shoot a set amount of people from a specific gun, and sometimes when you reload the game your tactical challenges are gone because they don't save unless you finished them all or got to the end of the mission in one go.
You can play with your friends online but not through split screen and that's where I a big problem – you see while your friend who is visiting you wants to go take a leak you can do something as well or you know he is peeing in the bathroom so you know he will be back and you know that if you leave he can just give you a shout that he is back on your couch, when playing online everyone else has their own lives their own problems and for me its very difficult to find a friend online who will be online at the same time as I will playing the same game as I am taking potty brakes the same time I do. I don't mind this, playing games like Battlefield as I don't have to wait for my buddies to continue playing. This is actually not just a complaint towards this game, this is a complaint towards a gaming industry that chooses online coop over split screen, and although I understand the complexity of making your console render things twice at the same time, I still think consoles were built for this (if you don't agree, screw you, go buy a "PERSONAL" computer and play alone as much as you want). I would understand this function not making into a game with visual specs like Battlefield 3(not that I'm praising EA, I'm still angry about them not including split screen into SSX), but honestly GRFS doesn't have all that amazing graphics. I'm not a person who judges a game by its looks, I just think that a game that was built with it could at least run fluently (yes there is some lag as soon as more than just shooting on the screen and occasionally freezes after a loading screen) and include a primitive function like split screen.
The story is not so great either, you are chasing something which I though was the lost nuclear weapons from the movie Alpha, turns out that's not the case, the Russians are the bad guys as the world doesn't have any other counties to threaten the world peace and as a Russian myself I find it funny to hear that the president of Russia in the game speaks worse than anyone else in the game, I am not big on politics, but I was always under an impression that to be a president of a country you have to learn its language first (But that's just me).The problem of this game is that its not connected all that well. At some point in the game I shot a person sitting in the helicopter cabin, and I damned sure made sure he was the only one there, after I shot him the helicopter took off... I know it supposed to be future and all… The ending is equally disappointing, to say without spoiling much. So in conclusion the campaign is fun for its 30% that you are playing stealthily and the rest is just a rip off from the other popular shooter titles.
• On to the multiplayer, since it's based of the campaign and not the fun part of it, I doubt that there is much to say about it. It's a cover based shooter where everyone spams sensor grenades, drones and hacks each other's Intel making you light up like a Christmas light so bright that the enemy can see you through walls. Honestly the whole thing just feels like you are playing in a building made of transparent glass. So where is the fun, you ask me, well not in this mode, I answer. Although they did put in a "new" objective game mode that is not so revolutionary as a matter of fact, which work well enough to spice up the game a bit, but still not enough to avoid comparison to Gears of War and generic shooters. Making you see your enemies through walls and drawing a line of what is the fastest way to get to the objective doesn't make this experience unique, makes it dumbed down for people who can't learn maps and get frustrated when being killed from a hidden position. Frustrating is also that Ubisoft puts some of their achievements into the multiplayer, making the achievement hunters quite angry as no matter how well they play, they won't get an achievement until they find a team that has at least a half of a brain working.
• There is another mode - Guerrilla mode. Games that have those wave minigames are just increasing the replay ability and adding more versatility to the overall package and although those hit the dirt with their face down in most cases, every game seems to have them nowadays. Don't expect this one to be anything different than just an extra chapter they can add to the description of the game, just so their game looks fuller. It's like adding ice to your drink not because you want to make it cold, but because you want to have more of that drink, the glass will look full, but you will end up drinking a watered down beer that will taste like piss. There are 50 waves that you have to hold out against enemies that increase in quantity and/or difficulty, you get perks for having a streak of waves completed… BUT THERE IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES THIS ONE DIFFERENT FROM ALL BILLION WAVE GAMES – says Ubisoft – after every 10 waves you will have to relocate your base and protect the other one by killing the guards around it AND YOU CAN DO IT WITH STEALTH… which is pretty pointless as there are only 4-8 generic guys holding it and gunning them down is really easy, the only thing that gives you a motivation to do so is an achievement and points that improve your final score that is pointLESS... har har I made a joke… But that's what this whole mode is, a huge joke.
I still don't see how when a single bad guy stands on the same spot as 4 of us (coop ghosts) for 10 seconds, our base is recaptured. It the same as if someone paradropped a single troop in the middle of the country, then he would sit behind a wall for 10 seconds while everyone was running around searching for him and once the 10 seconds pass everyone just goes "ok" and leaves the country. I don't really get what is so special about that spot that we have to defend it for 10 waves to abandon it after and to return to that same spot after another 10 waves on a different spot. Did someone loose a contact lens and not sure where exactly he dropped it so we are supposed to protect him while he is tracing back the places he has been to earlier and searching for it?! Refreshing is only that you can exit the game and enter back at the same wave you exited at a price that all your perks and guns will be gone, this works in theory, but imagine my frustration when in the middle of wave 41 which is supposed to be the stealthy one, I decide to leave and do it later, so when I come back only wave 40 is available which is like a badass wave with a vehicle or 2 and you are stuck with whatever weapons there are in the chest and you initial number of claymores and grenades. And yes here is something I forgot to mention in the campaign section that is both equally annoying in guerrilla and campaign, there are no proper anti vehicle weapons. There is a grenade launcher, but that's about it. But fear not, as game developers are aware of absence of those weapons, they made any gun almost effective against any vehicle, if you have enough patience, you can destroy a BTR with a pistol. Isn't this were those sweet shoulder canons were supposed to come in play? And I'm pretty sure at some point they promised us that the pilot could be shot down with a sniper rifle out of the helicopter cabin. I know I said we will be judging the game for its post release deeds but it's so hard to go over something that would make so much sense. To conclude – it's a boring, uneventful, somewhat stupid addition that is worth going for if only you are after 100% of the game and 4 achievements.
• The last part I want to talk about the Gun Smith as the game is so proud of it, in reality it somewhat normal weapon customization with a few gimmicks. I do like the way it looks and the fact that you can customize your weapon, but I honestly don't see the point of all this as an app on your phone or your tablet. Also quite an overhyped feature is Kinect, it's quite cool for a second but then you realise that you will not stand up before every mission just to customize your weapon and so you switch it off. Apart from the time it takes to load those guns in campaign, GunSmith is pretty good feature to have, not innovative as advertised, not revolutionary, nice… that's about it… although my favourite feature of this is that you can test your gun on a firing range straight away and I can give that to Ubi, good job for doing at least one thing right!
To sum up, this game is a proof that we are just a bunch of sheep, that fell for a marketing stunt and no matter how many times Ubisoft "apologizes" for misinforming us regarding its missing features and un updated website information, it was all part of a marketing. The game itself is barely worth anyone's while and if I was to put points for each section I just covered and put it together it would come to 1 point out of 5 (half a point being for that stealthy section in campaign and the other for GunSmith).