Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands

[nexor]

Two shooter games I thoroughly enjoyed is Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Medal Of Honor.
Ok, they are in a sense linear but also not as linear as Battlefield 3 and the Call Of Duty series

[fragger]

One of my long-time favourite shooters, and one I even still dip into from time to time, is Call of Duty 2. No unfolding storyline, no lengthy cutscenes, just raw gutsy WW2 action, and plenty of it (as in pretty much non-stop). There is some scripting but it's minimal and is seamlessly incorporated into the flow of the action. Even after 11 years, the graphics are still on a par with most games today (the game still has some of the best smoke effects ever, imo). The game is mission-based, 27 missions in all divided among Russian, British and American campaigns. They have to be played in sequence first time through but you can jump into any mission that you've completed at least once. Very authentic with meticulous attention to historical detail, in fact two of the American missions recreate the assault on Pointe Du Hoc on D-Day. Not only did the dev team go to Pointe Du Hoc to accurately map out the area (it has been preserved as it was back then)  but they had as a technical adviser a veteran from the 2nd Rangers Battalion who took part in the real assault. He later said he was highly impressed with the accuracy of the finished product, both in looks and sequence of events.

CoD 2 was everything a good shooter should be. It's not open-world, but doesn't pretend to be. The action was full-on but managed to never got frenetic, like Doom-styled games. The environments were rich in terms of graphic and sound, and featured scored music performed by an orchestra, not sampled. The missions were pretty linear (though not all were) but the game was so immersive that it didn't really matter too much. The missions are down-to-earth with the sort of objectives that real WW2 soldiers were tasked with, not far-fetched nonsense (although a couple of missions push it a bit). There are very few negative things I can say about it. Maybe the linearity is the biggest drawback, but I can put up with it in this title because everything else is so well done. There are about 30 different weapons you can use - Russian, British, American and German. You never play as the Germans, only the Allies, but you can pick up and use any dropped weapon, including German ones. Realistically, you can only carry two weapons at any one time, and no more than 4 frag grenades and 4 smoke grenades (smoke is quite useful in this game). Obviously you won't find all weapons in a single mission, like Russian and American ones together. The modelling and feel of the weapons is terrific (you can almost feel the recoil) and while the sounds they make are of excellent quality, they aren't authentic (I do actually know what an M1 Garand and an M1A1 Carbine sound like, and the ones in the game are nothing like it).

This was the highlight of the CoD series for me, before it got dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era with the Modern Warfare and Black Ops variants. They went briefly back into WW2 territory with World At War (CoD 5) but the excessive scripting, the weak-sounding weapons, some silly missions and the overall shortness of the game made it a "play once then forget" affair.

[Binnatics]

I've only played Black Ops I from the entire CoD franchise. I was equalle impressed by that game. I remember how hard it was to manage the game. You had to learn how the weapons act and how you can spot and aim at the enemies. When I started I thought I was a pretty good shooter, but I kept dying. The things I learned on my way managing the game really felt natural and real.
Although I don't know s#!t about real life warfare and weaponry I do believe they did an excellent job there. Maybe I should try CoD2 once. I've heard before that it is the number one of this franchise indeed.

[OWGKID]

The weapons sound pretty good in CoD 2 (watched a YT video), but they are nowhere good compared to the ones in Black Ops 3 and BF3/BF4. The CoD community wants this game (along with the rest of the WWII games) remastered for the PS4 and Xbox One. I guess Activi$ion doesn't care that much about remasters as Microsoft do :(

[OWGKID]

If any of you are interested in this game, you can sign up for the beta. I might give this a try.

[PZ]

Definitely let us know how it goes  :-X

[Binnatics]

I forgot my password :-D

[OWGKID]

 

[OWGKID]

Beta will start on 2nd February according to Ubi's twitter. Haven't received a beta code yet, they might roll them out soon

[OWGKID]

Watched Noobwork (Norwegian YouTuber best known for his Minecraft gameplays) play this game at an Ubi event in Paris. Gameplay-wise, lots of driving a la FC2, FC3/4/WD skills in play again and some WD2 gagdetry in play. You can tag enemies with a drone. Helicopters are also pilotable in the game. Let's hope they have an AS50 (or any .50 cal rifle), I wouldn't be surprised that PZ takes out his enemies with a bang, err, thunder >:D Again, no radio towers, thank god that Ubi dropped that  ^-^

Graphically good/decent, but I wouldn't be surprised with performance issues on day 1. One noticeable thing was obvious texture pop-ins (notably shadows) and screen tearing again... But, GTA V levels of draw distance means something can be sacrificed though. This gameplay was on a PotatoPlayStation 4. Oh, you can play as a female  :-D

[fragger]

Thanks for the neat reports thus far, GKID :)

Re GTA V and graphics performance: You'd think that if Rockstar can achieve excellent draw distances and great frame rates given the incredible amount of detail and constant animated activity in that game, like crowds of widely diverse pedestrians, dense traffic, aircraft flying overhead, trains rolling past, constantly changing skies, realistic wave action on water, ever-changing light and shadow, and so on and so on and so on, why can't other devs do likewise?


Like YOU, Hello Games \:/ with your No Man's Sky. The presence of just a few animals and bunches of non-animated plants turns the frame rate into a slideshow. Unacceptable.


Anyway, it's still beta days for this Ghost Recon title though, so hopefully there will be more streamlining and optimizing before release time.

[OWGKID]

I never said that other devs cannot do that 8-X I just believe Ubi already have hit this console gen's limitations and it shows somewhat obvious in the footage I saw ;) Indeed, I guess Ubi are going the same path as WD2, the release version looked better than the pre-release :)

The draw distance in GTA V is impressive, but objects close to the player still pops in. Again, very impressive feat to render the landscape that far on decade old hardware :-X Let's hope R* have improved this in RDR2, being free from last gen limitations (512 MB of RAM vs 8 GB in the consoles now). I guess it comes to a deliberate choice when dealing with underpowered hardware. Either cripple long range render distance just to have all objects close to you look good or just show how beautiful the in-game world is by trying to render as far as possible?

I hope the PC version is solid, a la WD2's port, lot's of options and other tweaks. Oh, and proper DX12 support without Nvidia's Bloatworks messing this up.

[OWGKID]

Unfortunately, no beta code for me...

[Art Blade]

go get 'em. :-D

[OWGKID]

Like, hacking Ubi's HQ for one? :-()

[Art Blade]

whatever rocks the boat. :-D

[Binnatics]

Do it! And sign with D.J.T. >:D

[OWGKID]

 >:D >:D

[OWGKID]

Well, I checked a benchmark done by PCgameshardware.de and you need a Titan X to play this game at 1080p ultra/very high and get 60 frames. My current GPU would yield 30 fps average. I assume Ubi is going towards Crysis-levels of graphics. Or, they simply are going back to AC: Unity levels of "optimization"  8-X

[Art Blade]

I feel haunted. Almost every post I read these days has got at least a reference or is entirely about UBI-iiiaaaaarrgh