To celebrate the Ghost Recon games turning 20 years old next month, Ubisoft last night announced Ghost Recon frontline, a free-to-play battle royale shooter. But they haven't entirely forgotten the roots of the tactical shooter series, because they're giving the first game away free for keepsies right now. You've got a few days to grab 2001's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon and remember the good ol' days. Ubi are giving away some DLC for the latest games too.
]]>With its sequel, Breakpoint, just a few months off, Ubisoft have one last gift for Ghost Recon Wildlands players that stuck around, launching free on July 18th. Mercenaries is an eight-player multiplayer mode and a radical departure from the regular game. Part survival challenge, part mini battle royale (with respawns), it reminds me of Survival mode from The Division, but on a much larger scale. Starting with just a knife, players race to clear NPC-held camps, activate transmitters and call in an evac helicopter with just one free seat. Below, a trailer explaining how it all works.
]]>We hear a lot about level designers in games. Voice actors, concept artists, big directors. Kate Edwards is none of those things. She is a geographer. It seems like an odd job for the games industry, but the more you learn about her work, the more it feels essential. Edwards is hired by studios to cast her geo-eye over the shuffling NPCs of sci-fi space stations, to examine tiny markings in the giant buildings of first-person shooters, and inspect the maps of sprawling fantasy realms. She’s there to ask one thing: is this game being ignorant? The answer is often “yes”.
]]>Let me level with you: Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was mostly on my E3 schedule out of obligation. It’s the next big shooty Ubisoft game with all the military folk, sequel to the previous big shooty Ubisoft game with all the military folk. But now we're in the future, and it's got that bloke who plays the Punisher in it.
Point being, I wasn't expecting much from the Ghost Recon: Wildlands followup. After creeping my way through an hour at E3, though, I'm keen to creep through some more.
]]>Ubisoft, who make RPGs about a 3000-year-long battle between freedom and order, FPSs about liberating occupied lands, and military shooters so jingoistic they cause governmental complaints, have been arguing for a long time that their games aren’t political. Yesterday, they posted an interview with Tommy Francois, vice president of editorial, in an attempt to clarify their position. It did not help.
]]>A fictional Pacific archipelago, a mega-corporation and an army of killbot-assisted high-tech mercs. Ghost Recon Breakpoint, announced today and out on October 4th, looks largely like we expected from Ubisoft's leak last night. A sequel to sandbox shooter Ghost Recon Wildlands, trading the ethically sketchy 'US covert ops fighting the drug war' setting for a more videogamey near-future scenario. As with its predecessor, it's a co-op focused game playable solo or with up to three buddies, optional PvP, and even plans for a post-release raid on a villain's volcano lair. See the debut trailer and a quarter-hour of action below.
]]>Ubisoft's attempts to drum up hype for a Ghost Recon announcement tomorrow have been a tad undermined by their own store back-end, revealing the game's title: Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Pre-order details for a collector's edition of the game were snapped and posted on Reddit, although have since been removed. If the leak is accurate, then Breakpoint will continue the story started by the latest Ghost Recon Wildlands DLC mission, Operation Oracle, featuring Punisher actor Jon Bernthal as unstable Ghost leader Cole D. Walker. The leak described the game as a "story-driven four-player experience", which sounds like a Wildlands sequel to me.
]]>Hey, remember the good old days? Those giddy times I like to think of as last week? When the Charts felt fresh and new, filled with potential, as if any interesting game could take a top spot? Well, forget all that because it's all gone to shit again.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>With Steam's big VR Spring Sale on, obviously the charts are a bit full of... ha ha ha, no of course not. No one wants VR. Same old same old.
]]>Poor Sam Fisher really deserves a break, but Ubisoft's grey and grumpy stealth agent is coming back via Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands this week. Confirming the first operation of Year 2 as being Splinter Cell themed, Fisher is going to be teaming up with the Ghosts to stop a rogue CIA agent from selling intel to the Bolivian cartels. Wildlands' rules of engagement being what they are, I doubt this mission will involve much sassy dialogue with soon-to-be-knocked-out guards.
]]>Good, bad or otherwise, you can't keep an online, service-focused Ubigame down. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands is the latest in the publisher's stable of multiplayer games to be signed on for a second season's worth of content updates. Much of it looks to be free, which is always a reasonable price.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>We've told you about the most overlooked games and what has us excited for next year, but we haven't had a good grump yet on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. So this week the team discuss the worst games they played in 2017. John thinks the misogyny of House Party puts it firmly in the bin, and Brendan is still wiping the red dust from his eyes after woeful survival game Rokh. But Matt can't bring himself to call any game terrible, not even Star Wars Battlefront 2.
It's not all negative vibes, however. We've also been smiling at pretty and poignant Gorogoa, climbing a mountain in Getting Over It, and shooting our way through Destiny 2's Curse of Osiris expansion. We're only a bit scroogey.
]]>Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Wildlands this week introduces the Predator to the sandbox stealth-o-shooter. Yes, Predator, like the movies about headhunting aliens. Players will get to fight a Predator in a special challenge as well collect and use Predator items. As odd as this may be, it does make Wildlands more interesting to me as I'll take a monster mash over oh-so-serious imperialist fantasy any day. And the Predators and Ghosts do have a lot in common: they both enjoy sneaking around jungles, casually slaughtering anyone they consider beneath themselves.
]]>Wotcha gang. Your old chum Alice here for this week's charts, as everyone else has been fired. Out of a cannon. Blown into a jillion little pieces. Hence the Apocalyptic yellow tone to the skies today. Hold your breath when outside, and hold your breath while we count down last week's top ten of the top-selling games on Steam.
]]>Something for the weekend, madam? Invading anywhere nice? You might want to consider rounding up some chums to maraud across Bolivia in Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site], as the full game is free to play this weekend. Or you could play the open-world sneak-o-shooter on your tod, I suppose. Or against other warmen, as Ubisoft added PvP with the new Ghost War mode this week. Brendan and Graham enjoyed playing co-op together for a few hours, so it might be a lark even if you don't fancy the full game. A few hours of fun for free is an acceptable prospect.
]]>While it is a wailing shame that the name 'Ghost War' has been claimed by a game which features not one single spectre, apparition, manifestation, phantasm, or g-g-g-ghost!, introducing competitive multiplayer to the sandbox world of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] could turn out interesting. The 4v4 team deathmatch mode Ghost War will hit Ubisoft's open-world imperialism 'em up sometime this autumn, but an open beta will let all and sundry try it for free this weekend. Preloading of the standalone test client has now begun and you needn't own Wildlands to play it.
]]>The promised PvP multiplayer mode for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] will arrive in autumn, Ubisoft confirmed today, and be preceded by an open beta test this summer. If rolling around invading a country with the lads isn't enough japery for you, you'll be able to team up to shoot a squad of four rival blokes. With the scale, vehicles, and different playstyles of Wildlands, 4v4 could be a pretty interesting prospect on a big-enough map. Unfortunately, Ubisoft have named the mode Ghost War, which has me hoping for something quite different. Still, at least they didn't name it World War G. Here, watch this:
]]>War on drugs simulator Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] is getting its second expansion on June 6. In Fallen Ghosts you fight against a well-equipped band of nasty folk called Los Extranjeros ("the Foreigners"), who rise out of the brewing civil war that has erupted after you’ve taken down the game’s original baddies, the Santa Blanca cartel. It’s almost as if sending four gung-ho gringos to fight narcotrafficantes with helicopters and grenade spam doesn’t actually stabilise a country. Who could have foreseen this? Sad!
]]>In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion checks to see which ten games sold best on Steam over the past week. He just can't sleep until he knows whether Prey made it to number one or not.
]]>Did you know: the weekly Steam charts, in which we round-up the ten games which sold best on Steam over the previous week, are broadly the most-read articles on RPS these days?
That means I can never stop. Never. Stop.
]]>Vivendi, former parent company of Activision and Blizzard, have been trying to snaffle up fellow French firm Ubisoft for several years now, against the latter's own wishes. That's what they call a hostile takeover, kids. And now they've signalled that they're making a move to acquire the whole kit and kaboodle this year.
]]>You woke up this morning, got yourself a gun, Mama always said you'd be the chosen one to write the weekly Steam charts. These are the games which sold best on Steam last week.
This week: order returns. OBEY OBEY OBEY OBEY OBEY OBEY OBEY
]]>Alec is still away, ostensibly on holiday but presumed dead. Ride in peace, Alec Meer. All that remains of last week's chart caretaker is a selection of small bones John coughed up, so it's my turn. It's a good week in the charts!
We've some new games, some familiar faces, and at least one familiar face with a new game. It's a shame Mass Effect: Andromeda's Origin exclusivity keeps it out of this comparison. Not to ruin the suspension but: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the new early access Hunger Royale game, is riding high at the top of the hit parade.
]]>Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands [offiical site] has inhaled a big bag of fixes and tweaks today with the release of Title Update 2. They range from fixing the framerate while the game saves to adding an option to mute every radio in the game. Sure, Wildlands might be a small spin on an increasingly tired formula but it is one with co-op, and we don't have many options for AAA-pretty open-world murderfriends. So yes, splendid, let's shake off some of these bugs.
]]>Alec is away this week. I fear that if he can't find a wifi signal on his travels he might resort to haruspicy to try and find the truths contained within the weekly Steam charts. These round-ups of the ten games with the most cumulative sales over the past week are his obsession and his curse.
This week: while the cat's away...
]]>Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. So its disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. It must be a creature of the night, black, terrible... it's only the weekly Steam charts! These are the ten games with the most cumulative sales over the past week.
This week: DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER.
]]>Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] is Ubisoft’s latest open-world co-op narco war. I played some of it during the beta, along with Graham, and I came out of it feeling like a tub of old bath water. Lukewarm and slightly dirty. I only knew for certain that I actively disliked it when I was stricken down by one of its insta-fail stealth missions. Cast away from my carefully selected sniping spot on a sandy ridge because of a single stray bullet and dumped on the other side of the mission area, where I would have to repeat the cautious approach, the enemy spotting and the multiple silent kills all over again. It is 2017 and insta-fail stealth missions still exist. Why?
]]>Framed for murder, now they prowl the badlands, an outlaw hunting outlaws, a bounty hunter, a renegade, it's only the weekly Steam charts! These are the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.
]]>With Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] unlocking tonight, here's a newsblast rounding up a few odds and ends:
1) We shan't tell you Wot We Think at launch, as we only received code today 2) We will aim (aim, like aiming a gun) to have something up as soon as possible and a review by the end of the week 3) Pre-loading is now live for pre-orderers (never pre-order etc.) but when it actually unlocks and launches is determined by where you buy it 4) Nvidia are blabbing about their fancy Nvidia-exclusive graphics effects 5) Yup, patches have fixed some problems since the beta 6) The government of Bolivia have officially protested Wildlands' portrayal of their country as lawless and ruled by druglords
Onwards to details!
]]>While Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] might seem sooo serious about its imperialist fantasy, apparently Ubisoft are saving some cracking japes for DLC. A series of missions will have players poke at something called 'The Unidad Conspiracy', which I can only imagine is a supernatural entity composed of hundreds of dads twisted and merged into one flesh. Clad in a vast cardigan, the Unidad lumbers across Bolivia telling those naughty drugmen it's past their bedtime. I imagine that even the Ghosts eventually face daddification and must fight back. That's probably it.
Oh, and Ubisoft also plan to release a 4v4 PvP mode in a free update, and two paid expansions, and... the point is, imagine that giant dad! He's going to be amazing.
]]>You tell me: why am I your outboard memory? Why do you need me, today, to remind you that the four-day open beta test for sandbox stealth-o-shooter Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] is now live? We told you when it was coming, then we told you it was preloading, and now here I am telling you that it's started. Why? Why is this on me? You could've written on your hand in marker: "THURS 11am: START KILLING." Gone around muttering "Gonna kill 'em all on Thursday." Set a voice alarm. Wrapped an elastic band around your wrist so your grotesque swollen purple hand would remind you. But no, here I am. The free Wildlands open beta is now live. You're welcome.
]]>All you RPS historical reenactors out there: you can now pre-load the open beta client for Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] to prepare for recreating Brendan and Graham's closed beta adventures. But who plays Graham and who plays Brendan? Which one of you feel hopeful about the squad-based stealth-o-shooter and who will get a bit bored? Who plays Scottish and who does Irish? You can sort these questions out as the 30GB download rolls ahead of this weekend's open beta. I trust that you already have plaid shirts and beards sorted out from your other RPS reenactments.
]]>Graham and I have already shot drugmen in the head in perfect sync when we played the closed beta of Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] together. But there was only two of us. What we really needed were some friends – and now it looks like we’ll get thousands! The open beta is soon going to be available to anyone who wants to crack skulls and advance the US agenda in cartel-torn Bolivia. It’s running from February 23 to 27.
]]>The Cartel's Don Winslow (he wrote the novel) and The Cartel's Shane Salerno (he's doing the movie adaptation) have been announced as writers on Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site]. The narrative will apparently be "cartel-themed" which, I mean, sure.
I'd actually forgotten that the game isn't out yet as I think I saw a version of it at E3 in 2015 (my notes on that build read "can't ride llamas" and a sad face - a note which also explains why I stopped keeping tabs on the game). But with a release date of 7 March details for the open-world Bolivian drugland co-op experience are being fed out and Winslow and Salerno's involvement will provide a hook for people who enjoy their take on drug-war thrillers.
]]>Good Coop, Bad Coop is our series in which Graham and Brendan will be bonding in co-operative games through teamwork, friendship and shared trauma. This time, the Bolivian druglands of the Ghost Recon Wildlands closed beta.
Graham: Wildlands isn't out yet, but we finagled our way into this past weekend's closed beta so that we could contribute in the war on drugs. My impression is that it is Tom Clancy's Far Cry, with co-op, and I am mostly very pleased with this. You?
Brendan: My impression is that you are right, it's Clancy’s open-world love child. But I’m less enthusiastic about it. That might be because I kept playing after you left our game. I’m sorry.
Graham: *gasp* You hussy!
]]>Pre-loading has started for the Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] closed beta test that'll kick off tomorrow. Keys are still going out in waves so if you signed up for a chance to play, check the beta registration page to see your status. If you haven't signed up, hey, folks who are accepted do get to invite three of their pals too, so start bugging your warbuds. Wildlands is curious one, taking the open-world style of modern Far Cries, taking it to third-person tactical action, giving you squadmates, and amping up the imperialism. Gameplay videos make it look a bit of a lark, at least.
]]>My favourite part of Far Cry 4, a game I liked very much, was its co-operative mode in which you and a friend could take on the outposts and forts of the open world. I am therefore excited for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site], which seems to be entirely about tackling larger fort-like compounds in Bolivia in up to four-player co-op. There's a new walkthrough video below of the game being played solo, with AI teammates you can order about like I do with Adam.
]]>As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we're looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one - in the world of games at least - but, ever the optimists, we're hoping next year will be even better.
]]>Oye! Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] has a new 12-minute trailer showing off a stealthy night-time mission. We last saw Ubisoft’s latest Clancy-em-up at E3 when they went through the same level during the daytime in a slightly louder and more explosive manner. I am happy to report that this one is much quieter. And by that I mean there is no phony banter and combat chatter between the players. Only a nice man with a nice voice explaining things as the team goes about their silent killing spree. Come watch it and nod approvingly.
]]>There are strange things going on with the buggy I’m driving. I’m in a field, somewhere in Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ digital Bolivia, and the vehicle is transforming while I drive it. The power, suspension, steering – everything’s changing. It’s not a bug. Next to me, the driving team at Ubisoft Reflections are fiddling with my poor ride using their vehicle editing tool, which lamentably doesn’t have a fancy name.
Reflections have been making driving games since 1995’s smashing Destruction Derby and are probably best known for the Driver series, the last of which was Driver: San Francisco, popping into existence all the way back in 2011. A dedicated driving team still exists at the studio, but now they're using their expertise in games like Watch Dogs 2 and the latest Tom Clancy romp.
]]>E3 2016 has been finished for a couple of weeks, giving us time to wash the taste of LA smog from our mouths and reflect upon the games we saw there. This seems like a good time to talk about what we want to see from those games next, when they no doubt appear at Gamescom 2016 in August. What games are we most hoping to play, to see new trailers of, or hoping will reveal a different side of themselves in Cologne?
]]>Ghost Recon: Wildlands [official site] captured the scale of its outdoor environments well enough to distract me completely from the noise and lights of E3’s gargantuan South Hall. Lying prone on a hill, scanning an enemy encampment in the valley below, I was reminded of a game I haven’t thought about for a long time. Delta Force, released by NovaLogic back in the late nineties, used a voxel-based engine to implement enormous draw distances. I’d never seen anything quite like it back in 1998 and while Wildlands doesn’t seem quite as fresh to older eyes, it’s a game that won me over within minutes of setting my hands on a controller.
]]>If you judged each of E3 2016's conferences by the volcanic applause following each announcement, no matter how minuscule or massive, then you probably think everything the developers said was written by God himself on a stone script. But you're smarter than that. I know you are. So, in continuation of our 'anti-E3' coverage, here are some of the moments when the creators and executives of the show were misleading, vague or "economical with the truth".
]]>Ghost Recon: Wildlands [official site] will bring another open murderworld to us on March 7th, 2017, Ubisoft have announced during their big E3 shindig. They also released a new gameplay trailer with nine minutes of armymen romping around a foreign country, infiltrating a cartel compound to extract a chap with a knack for making bodies vanish. Don't worry, the four-man co-op squad and their awkward banter manage to squeeze in a helicopter chase and a few explosions. Watch:
]]>Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site] is a far cry from ye olde Ghost Recon games but... oh no, I'm appalled by having accidentally punned yet pleased by how fitting it is. We only saw a little when Ubisoft announced the open-world shooter at E3 last June, but it reminded us of a po-faced take on Far Cry's outposts or Just Cause. Which sounds like a lark, especially considering it supports four-player co-op. With E3 coming back around, Ubi have dropped a new trailer with parachutes, dirt bikes, sniper rifles, explosions, and buggies with miniguns on top - all of which I welcome.
]]>It was Ubisoft's turn yesterday to report to their investors, and they laid out their release plans between now and March 2017. Those plans include the arrival of four games we know about - Watch_Dogs 2, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, For Honor - and, perhaps more excitingly, one we do not. That new game won't be a sequel but a "new AAA IP".
]]>Four-player co-op man-shooting action (stop me if you've heard this one before) is coming from Ubisoft in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site], a game I called "po-faced Just Cause" in our tree house but Graham more optimistically declared "Co-op Far Cry Outposts: The Game." It's an open-world third-person shooter which'll see US Special Forces roaming around Bolivia to take on a drug cartel. The US Army really does not like cocaine or people who make it.
Here, come have a peep at the announcement trailer:
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