Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Beta Review - Worst Beta Ever!

Hopefully the title of this review gives away that I’m seriously considering not playing the final version of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s multiplayer mode. I know it’s in Beta phase right now, and that many of the issues I’m having with the multiplayer are probably going to be fixed, but there is a lot wrong with this beta.

I’m going to get all of the bad out. First on my list are the iron sites of the basic weapons. Not only do the weapons kick back so much they’re uncontrollable, but the muzzle flash is so bright that I can barely see opponents when firing at them. If you want a more accurate shot in other first person shooter games, you zoom down your iron site, or scope. If you want a more accurate shot in this game, you’d better hope that you have a better gun to do it, or be using a sniper rifle. Basically when you start the beta, you don’t have a fighting chance until you've earned a better weapon. And when you do earn a better weapon, you’re probably going to be that much happier because of how ridiculously accurate it is. I found myself in situations where I would have a few shots squeezed off on an enemy, whose back was facing me, and seconds later I’d be lying on the ground dead because he had a better weapon than I did.

I’ll get into the details of how the game is set up, customization, and how stylistic this game is in a minute, but first I’d like to complain a bit more. One of your side weapons can be a stun gun. When I first saw that, I thought “Hmm... that’ll be useless!”. I was horribly wrong and extremely angry to find out the effects of this sidearm. When this weapon is shot at an enemy, if they are close enough, it obviously stuns the person being shot. The upside of this is the person shooting the stun gun is able to hover over the downed player and download data useful to his team. The downside is of course the player on the ground who is stunned. If by some odd chance the download is interrupted by a fellow team mate killing the enemy who is uploading the data to his team, then that teammate can revive the fallen soldier. If this doesn’t occur, the information is downloaded, the opposing team has information on everyone’s whereabouts, and he either kills you, or leaves you to spend another 5 seconds on the ground. Eventually you are able to get back up and jump into the battle again, but this entire process takes about 30 to 45 seconds from start to finish. This is way too long, and needs to be looked at being fixed. What was even more irritating about this was people used it way more than they should have. I got way more tired of laying on the ground with someone hovered over me, than I did of actually dying because of how often it happened.

All of the matches I played in the beta have been one sided battles. There are a number of factors as to why, such as the teammate’s skill level, and team work, but for the most part it was due to the opposing team having better weapons because they’ve played longer. I also found myself dying even though I was behind the cover of a solid wall. This game isn’t like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 where you can earn/receive a perk that allows you to shoot through cover; this game is designed so that if you’re behind thick enough cover, you should be safe unless a grenade lands by you, or an enemy gets behind you. While I'm on the subject, spawning in this game is so horrible that you’re either stuck spawning at your original base (which is way too far away from the battle), or, if you choose a random access point, you’re more than likely to spawn around the enemy. I found several times that the enemy would spawn behind or close enough to me, that they’d get the kill faster than I could think about what just happened. One example I can give is when I was lying on the ground as a sniper, had my active camouflage, and out of nowhere three enemies spawned in front of me. I was able to kill two of them immediately, while the third escaped because he had no clue I was behind him, and ran towards the battle. This isn’t something that happened occasionally, this happened countless times.

In most third person shooters I have played, such as Gears of War, and Mass Effect 3, you have the option to tuck and roll out of certain situations. That’s not the case in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, and that can be extremely frustrating, especially when a grenade lands nearby and you have no choice but to try and run. If there was an option to tactically jump and roll out of the way, you’d at least have a fighting chance; as is all you can do is stare at the grenade and get ready to hit the “A” button to respawn.

The final thing I’d like to complain about is that the beta freezes more than any other beta I’ve played. In a one hour span of time, I had to restart my system 3 times due to the game freezing. Once because it froze trying to load the main menu. As stated, I realize a lot of these bugs are probably going to be fixed for the final game, but I have to point them out because it’s affecting my overall feelings towards the game on the whole.

I’ll get off of my soapbox now, and explain everything else about this beta. While there is a lot of bad about it, there is some good. Customization in this game is completely unique to from any other shooter I’ve played. When in the character menu you can choose your soldier’s class, and then customize the selected class to the point of what trigger, barrel, optics, magazine, various barrel attachments, and even colors that class can have for its weapons. Each class has a set of different headsets, and other types of helmets or headgear that can be worn if unlocked. Once unlocked, the player may choose from a large number of primary weapons, sidearms, gadgets, and grenades. One of my favorite gadgets is from the Engineer class. It’s called the “drone”. The player may control a little helicopter type drone and highlight enemies for everyone else on the team to see.


The two maps provided in the beta are decent enough. Aside from the bases being too far away from the battle, the maps are pretty well designed and highly detailed. As some of you may know I’m all about sound, and the sound in this game is great. There are a lot of futuristic sounds that I’m sure Ubisoft had to make up, and they nailed it right on the head. If the sniper class holds still for long enough, his entire body becomes invisible. I caught myself many times just running to cover and watching in awe while this happened, and I love the sound effect that occurs when this happens as well.

Body movement is very fluid and stylistic in this game. The way the player moves as he ducks for cover, drops to the ground, walks as he crouches, hops over obstacles, and even reloads his weapon is smooth as can be. The graphics in this beta are actually much better than I had anticipated. If you read my article on “Ubisoft and Tom Clancy games” then you can see that I was very bummed out about where this game was headed technologically. I felt that it was too far behind because of how many times it had been pushed back, but I am beginning to change my mind on the subject.

Overall I’m very disappointed with the Ghost Recon: Future Soldier beta, and I’m barely hanging on due to the few things that separate it from other shooters. I’m giving this beta a 2.75 out of 5 stars. Let’s hope that Ubisoft gets things fixed for the final game, and the story packs a very, very large punch, because right now things aren’t looking so good.

Until next time, keep on gamin' on!