Ghost Recon: Breakpoint

Ghost Recon Breakpoint is the newly released, open-world game from Ubisoft. It’s the sequel to a favorite of mine, Ghost Recon Wildlands. This is a sequel I have been waiting anxiously for, but I am upset that I waited at all. This game tries to be everything you’d expect it to be, but it fails miserably at it. Breakpoint appears to be taking a step backward in every aspect. I was a huge fan of Wildlands and thought that the mechanics, storyline, and replay-ability was there. I envisioned Ubisoft doing incredible, game-breaking things with the sequel. The game itself, when you look at it as an outsider looking in, appears to have everything you’d expect it to, but the truth is… it doesn’t.

You’ll notice almost instantly that the mechanics feel different and the camera view is disgustingly bad. The close up of the camera makes it almost impossible to find enemies in enough time to shoot them before they shoot you. This even more so when you’re playing PVP against someone with a better skill set than a computer. Your character takes up approximately 60% of the screen. This alone limits your point of view (POV). I believe that if Ubisoft added something to the game that allows you to change the POV and create more of a distanced, over the shoulder view, I would enjoy this game so much more. I now dedicate time to finding the right angle to place my character to allow myself to see a larger area of the map. The time it takes for me to find the perfect angle is usually enough time for an enemy to begin shooting me before I even know they’re there. Now I’ve been successful online, but it’s only a matter of time before I’m screaming at the screen because the people shooting me are hidden behind a rock that I never even considered looking at because my screen is forcing me to focus elsewhere.

So the camera view is bad, but so is the overall gaming mechanics. I feel as though there is a delay with my character movements. This is not only because the game is slightly glitchy and needs to be patched, but also because the developers want there to be a delay. For example, if you are not hard aiming down the sites of your weapon and no scope to the side, you will have a second delay so that the character can ready his sites in the direction of your crosshair and then shoot. This is realistic to some extent and I understand their reasoning for it, but when you incorporate this slow mechanic into an already buggy game and you end up with a disaster. Breakpoint does a lot of copy and pasted mechanics from Wildlands and that’s all fine and good, but they end up working terribly. How does a game that launches two years later end up with worse gaming mechanics? The answer is laziness.

The copy and pasted mechanics that I referred to applies to a lot of different things in Breakpoint. You’ll notice, almost instantly, that there is now weighted gear. This gear and the scores with each of them is almost a copy and paste of the gear and score similar to The Division. That game has gear score and is the definition of a loot and shooter, but you bought the game knowing that. If Wildlands and The Division had a baby, it would be Breakpoint. That’s not a compliment because I hated The Division 2 and Wildlands is now over two years old.

In-Game Co-op

Breakpoint’s main selling point is the co-op aspect of the game. So now you have a game that is gear score oriented and this limits you from playing with your friends, who may be dedicating more time to the game and who also don’t want to redo missions. You either play right alongside your friends and increase your gear score together, or you’ll end up having to play by yourself or having a few angry friends who help you gear up to their gear score.

PVP & Gear Score

The only thing Breakpoint does right is they completely eliminate gear score in PVP modes. You are able to play PVP with the same, default gear score as everyone else playing. This limits any overpowering character players in the match, who have been able to play the game more than you because they don’t have a job and spend the majority of time in their mother’s basement. This is something I really do appreciate, but with the good, there is always bad when it comes to Breakpoint. The bad I’m referring to is the PVP weapons. You are only able to use weapons in PVP mode that you’ve either bought in the store or have found in the open world as you play through the story. This means that if there’s an overpowered weapon and the only way to obtain that weapon is to grind the story, then the guy who doesn’t work and stays in his mother’s basement is probably going to destroy you in PVP.

Story

The story itself is great and I’m not going to spoil anything. You just need to be prepared to grind similar missions and know that with each mission you either stealthily take out enemies or go in guns blazing. Either way, you’re killing enemies, going to another area to clear out more enemies, only to go somewhere else and do it all over again. On top of that, while you’re doing all this, collecting loot along the way. This is what you come to expect with this game, so no surprise there. I’m not going to bash this aspect of the game because I bought the game expecting this and am completely okay with that.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint Final Verdict

Overall, the game needs work. This game doesn’t just need work, it needs a complete overhaul of every aspect of the game. I say that with the utmost respect to a developer that I enjoy. Ubisoft is notorious for creating games that you get excited for, just to find out at launch that they have tons of problems. This is no different, so no one should be surprised. I believe with time that Breakpoint can be great. I think that with a patch that tweaks the camera view, gaming mechanics, and physics engine, you will end up with a game that people expected. We waited over two years for Breakpoint and we ended up getting a worse product than Wildlands. This makes absolutely no sense and I’m hopeful that the feedback from this game hits home with them and over the next few months, we see consistent change. This game currently is not worth the money and is only going to be taking up some of my time until Modern Warfare launches at the end of October. I will continue to be hopeful that patches and updates in the future bring me back to the game and have me grinding as much as I did with Wildlands. Save your money now and try and snag this when the price drops on Black Friday and/or Christmas 2019.