I dabbled a bit in some Ghost Recon over the weekend. I’ll be honest, me and the game got off on the wrong foot. After launching it, it switched my audio output and then forced itself to default to my secondary display (my drawing apparatus, clearly identified as secondary in Windows). Switching my audio back was no problem, but the options in-game refused to recognize my primary display, so I had to window the game and drag it over.

So right off the bat I was a little irritated with the experience. Oh and also, you know, fucking Uplay.

Anyway, made my soldier and hopped directly into some matchmaking, which was… also not a fantastic experience. Ghost Recond Wildlands gives you all the tools to execute some seriously tactical shit… but you have to have the teammates to utilize it. On the more average difficulties, there’s just no reason to. You’re always going to get some asshole who jacks a truck, barrels it full-speed into the middle of the enemy camp and just starts gun blazing like–

Ok, it was me. I did that. At its most basic, the game feels like GTA in camoflauge, so it can be very easy to slip into that mode. Which is incredibly frustrating to anyone trying to play it the other way.

I have watched some streams, though, and read some posts and I think I’ve now arrived at the belief that the best way to play Ghost Recon Wildlands is on the hardest difficulty with markers off. Take a bullet to the head, you’re dead. A couple bullets anywhere else, you’re done. No UI helping you from place to place. That is the way to encourage the careful, tactical gameplay that GRW was so clearly designed for. That’s the way I’m going to play it next.

However, watching streams and reading posts, I’ve also started to come to the belief that GRW may have a serious longevity problem on its hands. This is something only launch and time will tell for sure, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be set up with long-term replayability in mind, a la The Division (the good parts of The Division, I mean. It had its problems, but they were at least trying to create an end-game).

I’m not sure GRW is a launch-play title for me… Horizon and Breath of the Wild pretty much have my slate claimed for the next stretch. But I’m interested to see what they do to keep the game alive.