E3 2019 - Hands on with Ghost Recon Breakpoint

The very last game at E3 2019 that I got to play was ghost recon break point and I'm glad it was the final game because I walked out of that demo absolutely enamoured bye what the team had managed to create and can't wait for the release in October

If you played wildlands then most of what Breakpoint offers is going to feel very similar, there is little way to avoid that given that they both Open-World games, with up to four players. The biggest change of course is that you're no longer hunting your average criminal, inside a generic criminal organisation but former members and friends of the ghost themselves, which means all the tactics and skills that your characters have, they have, but more than that they also have kickass drones. When I got to sit down and play the game it was myself, another journalist and two of the developers, and you might think that meant we were going to be completely OK, given that we had people making a game playing with us, it did not turn out that way.

Before we even got started we were at our campsite which is a new feature in Breakpoint, at any location where you can, you can set up camp and reallocate resources on your team, the biggest change for this is that you can now assign perks that last for half an hour that will give you a boost in one specific area, which is perfect for an upcoming mission. these boosts can be anything from faster medical recovery or faster pick up of down allies and so with this level of planning, it is bringing the series back to the Ghost Recon that I love which is the more tactical nature. While I do love Wildlands, I felt more like you were just running from point to point and tactics only mattered during the fight not beforehand. With this we also got an introduction to the characters we were playing at there was the all-rounder, the sniper, the stealth, really the usual sort of classes that you might find in a shooter these days and once we are gotta custom 2 our new characters we were given the simple instruction that we would only be addressed by our character name so for me that was fury and we set out on our first mission.

First mission was simple and it's the same one that we saw in the debut trailer break into a compound extract a scientist and get them to safety, pretty easy mission I thought. before we even got to the compound there were a group of soldiers on the road between us and it which needed to be taken out first, the only problem was more cars kept going up and down the road as we were waiting. when we decided that we had the perfect window to make a move the enemy highlight feature made a reappearance if you remember this from wildlands it was well you could tag enemies with specific letters and then highlight your friends which one they were going to take down, with our enemies tag we got a countdown from our team lead and we each took the shot. there is something intrinsically satisfying about taking down enemies they have no idea where you are the problem that we had is that we loitered, and another car came down the road and spotted us and a quick gun fight broke out.

We quickly dispatched of those guys and continue on our mission to the compound and this is where things went completely out the window, we surveyed from the outside with drones established where the enemies were and came up with an infiltration plan, but as the saying goes no plan survives first contact with the enemy. It turns out there was somebody inside a building that we didn't tag and as myself and the team leader climbing up to the roof of a building to line up shots the solider spotted us and because we didn't see them but they saw us first they were able to call in reinforcements; which basically dragged every single enemy in the compound back to our location including the drones. It also had the unfortunate side effects of drawing attention outside the compound and that road we were near had more people driving on it and another draw which left two people outside the compound trying to defend themselves there while myself and the team lead inside the compound were trying to take down enemy after enemy after enemy. Eventually though we had cleared out the compound rescue the scientist and got out of there, but as it was an E3 build we didn't actually have to deliver the scientist anywhere we just had to take off in the helicopter it was pretty straight forward from that point we flew to the next location took up the next mission everyone fell to enemy fire, but eventually the drone that was taking some of us down was taken out by our sniper and because we were able to get through that second mission so much faster than expected we moved on the last one.

This mission though it was hard, and we barely made it, there was a giant drone tank rolling around a field, the range that it had on it sensors for us was incredibly large, which meant we had to approach slowly and cautiously. Which didn't happen somehow it spotted us pretty early on and then it became a free for all fight to try and destroy this tank my character had a rocket launcher,  but what happened was the two devs didn't help us out the first attempt they just let it be which is why we got wiped when we trying for the second time that when they said “Hey just letting you know you have a rocket launcher”. I wanna say that turn the fighting out favour pretty quickly but I didn't the drone was strong it doubt out damage like you wouldn't believe and it was fast so even remaining prone on the ground trying to avoid being seen didn't mean you didn't get run over which happened to most of the squad. Eventually though the fight came to an end and while it took a few heals and some revives and many, many rockets but we victorious.

Ghost recon break point is a game dad is building up on the foundations that was established with wildlands, there is a lot of familiarity in this one and that's okay. While I'm hoping that there are more missions that change up the gameplay, what we know so far about it and from what I played makes me want more I'm grateful that we only have to wait a few more months until the game is released.