Ghost Recon Breakpoint VIDEO REVIEW
Recently I’ve been hankering for a third person shooter a tactical third-person shooter kind of in the vein of Metal Gear Solid V and luckily Ghost Recon Breakpoint was cheap and I picked it up and at first I was disappointed I was like oh this isn't really what I wanted I didn't do too much research on it unfortunately, but after spending about 19 hours now and finishing what I think is originally the actual game it was pretty good I would say that a poor man's Metal Gear Solid V is an apt description. The biggest difference and the thing that I don't like about it is perhaps the open world aspect of it and that everything is connected. I really like more of a mission-based style of game where or chapters whatever you want to call it where you have a pretty specific mission to accomplish at that point now you can do that in this game in terms of “I want to do this mission” that's fine. They all kind of fit within what I consider a pretty weak narrative I don't care for the narrative nor the story at all in this game. It's all within one open world and I just don't feel like this type of game needs to be an open world game, It’ unlike like a Ghost of Tsushima or even like a Breath of the Wild or like an Assassin Creed there's not really anything to discover in this world other than the boxes of loot and like weapon parts and things like that which is really uninteresting. It's not one of those games where I could just pick it a mission and they drop me in right there where I’m supposed to accomplish it. That would be preferred however you have to find the way-point and then you have to get there and I mean it's fairly easy to get there you know you can jump into a helicopter or a car but it's still just wasted time and effort and I rather just get to the point. Finding a helicopter seems pretty cool, driving a vehicle seems pretty cool but really it's like this isn't Grand Theft Auto. I want to just get to the mission I want to do the core gameplay which is the shooting.
Now there are a couple different versions of this game or how you can play this game at least I guess originally when this came out there was a lot of complaints that this was a straight-up looter shooter. There's still a lot of elements to that they think you can still play it that way however there is a new choice to play like in immersive mode which is what I’ve decided to play where you're not just getting “hey here's the box over here go run and acquire it or get the blueprint or whatever.” There are not just a bunch of things all over the all over the screen all the time that's causing you to get distracted and it does it breaks the immersion so I get the immersive mode for sure and so it's a little “more realistic” in terms of like how you would approach this. The core gameplay like what you see here where you are going into to a mission and you're infiltrating a base to get in there you can do it through stealth you could go getting guns a blazing I’ve had basically zero luck of just guns blazing I mean just I’m considering this stealth where I’m sniping people from afar before I go in.
It is the most ideal thing and it's it’s a little more realistic again like Metal Gear Solid V. Eventually in that game you can get pretty overpowered and you can call-in airstrikes and you can you know have rocket launchers and you have your own metal gear that you can use and all that with a companion stuff. The version of that the way they kind of have that in here is through multiplayer which is really it’s fun to play with a buddy and I played for a couple hours. It's more than just going guns blazing you do have to talk. The funny thing was he was playing the non-immersive mode and so he's like how do you not see these guys over here and I was like because they don't just auto tag. You don't see everyone so there I, like you can see I just walked in on this guy because I wasn't sure who's on the other side of the door so there's a little bit more of breach and clear which I actually kind of like and I think that's where this game is at its best is on the interiors of buildings checking your corners slowly going upstairs that kind of thing whereas in that again the open world without guys being tagged it is really hard to pick up the bad guys sometimes. I’ve killed plenty of civilians by accident of course and you know just finding these guys are waiting till they shoot first is it’s pretty common. I have no idea where these shots are coming from I feel like I should have seen this guy where is he's going to come around the corner and that way it keeps you on your toes a little bit. You know you have to stay frosty as they say but it's still really fun and it is rewarding and in that sense. The inventory system however I don't care for I mean you can just procure on site you can pick up someone else's weapon like the weapon I’ve been using basically throughout the game was a really good assault rifle that someone in the pretty early days of the game dropped and I’ve just kept it and I’ve modded it you know and updated it as much as I can. I really haven't found a better weapon but you pick up all these blueprints everywhere and you can spend at the store to open the blueprints but you don't actually see the statistics of a lot of these weapons so you're kind of blind going in and the currency that you use isn't rare but it it's not as prevalent like you do have to kind of be like okay I’m only going to update and see if I can do this one and I don't I just don't care for that I’d rather just have a weapon yeah maybe you have some upgrades on it. But it's more about your skill as a shooter or playing the game than it is just about like okay do you have a powerful weapon do you have powerful perks that kind of thing. That's the other aspect is that you can open up three slots for your perks and you have things like carry more ammo or you know run faster for longer things like that and they definitely help but like it's not something I necessarily need I almost want a third person tactical shooter that is akin to just you know like a call of duty first-person shooter type of thing where yeah there's a little bit of I’d customization there's a little bit of okay these are the weapons I like or I can make better that kind of thing but for the most part it's purely about the experience of the tactical shooting. In that case it would have been the first person shooting to get through it and so while this game does have that all this extra stuff doesn't really add too much to it and it actually kind of makes it worse.
If I was to give this a grade I’d probably say something around like a 7 or a C which is pretty solid. Again if I spent 60 bucks on this I would have been a little more upset but for 13 bucks it's I’d scratching that itch of a tactical third person shooter and which there's just not a lot of. I love Uncharted, all of them basically, I have Guardians of the Galaxy sitting on deck after this, Returnal, those are all technically third person shooters and they're all great but I just kind of wanted that tactical “oh I got to be really careful I could die in any instant” which happens a lot in this game. So if you are looking for a tactical shooter in that vein in like a poor man's MGSV I would definitely recommend Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Scratches an Itch
With third person tactical shooters so rare, Breakpoint served as a scratch to that itch. a decent tactical shooter that has a bloated open world and a less than scintillating narrative that did nothing to create urgency. the inventory system and progression is too much and a pure focus on the great moment to moment gameplay would have served the game best.