Recent reviews by slizer

You're a kickass dwarf that shoots mutant insects and collects valuable minerals for minimal pay that you spend on gear upgrades. You can also make craft beers. 11/10 enjoy playing as a hipster dwarf with a huge range of customisable beards.

Say you walk past a room that has 4 guards and one of them spots you. “Crap!” You may think, you’re only armed with a knife. Fortunately, you can pause the game and take all the time in the world to figure out what to do next.

• Step 1: Use knife to stab Guard 1.
  
• Step 2: Pick up Guard 1’s gun.
  
• Step 3: Fire gun at Guard 2.
  
• Step 4: Pick up Guard 2’s wrench.
  
• Step 5: Knock out Guard 3 with Guard 2’s wrench.
  
• Step 6: Pick up Guard 3’s wrench.

But, oh no! Guard 4 is out of range of the wrench’s swing and the rest of the items you grabbed are on cooldown. Once you unpause there will only be a fraction of a second before that guard shouts “INTRUDER!” at the top of his voice, alerting the whole ship.
What do?
These kinds of situations are where Heat Signature shines. The next thing in the chain is

• Step 7: Throw Guard 3’s wrench at Guard 4, beaning him and knocking him out cold.

The game is filled with moments like this and there is a huge selection of modifiers to change the dynamics of the weapons and items.

• Huge range of items to suit any play style. Want to go loud and proud? Take an armour piercing shotgun! Want to be nothing more than a ghost? Take a stealth shield and some teleporters! Want to really annoy the guards? Hack their turrets so they turn on their masters!
  
• Excellent sense of humour. The game is created by Tom Francis, mastermind behind Gunpoint. If you enjoyed the writing of that, you’ll find many similarities here.
  
• The gameplay is really not that difficult. When enemies spot you the game goes into slow-motion, giving you more time to react. You can pause the game at any time to assess the situation and mouse-over guards to see what they’re holding and their alert status. Even when you get detected the game gives you a timer within which you can; A) Escape, or B) Knock out the pilot to stop the countdown.
  
• Failure is a temporary inconvenience. There’s no penalty if you fail a mission and if you play missions with clauses (e.g. “Bloodless” – don’t kill anyone) and you happen to fail the clause, you’ll still get paid if you complete the main objective. Even getting a character captured by the enemies is a temporary affair, as you can then use another character to go and rescue them.
  
• Characters are not persistent but the galaxy is. The more you play with a certain character, the less you will be rewarded. Instead, you are expected to retire that character once you complete their personal mission and move on to someone new, meaning you don’t have to worry about the cool gear they have, as everything you have unlocked can be purchased by the next character.
  
• Sharing items and characters between friends. When you retire a character, you have the opportunity to pass on a single item with a customised name. These items then have a chance to be found in crates or bought from stores in both yours and your Steam friends’ galaxies. Likewise, if a character is captured by the enemy one of your friends can save them! (Beware though, if a friend saves them before you can, they get to keep that character and all the items. You lose them.)
  
• Different enemy factions (Offworld Security, the Glitchers, Sovereign, and the Foundry) use different items and have different ship layouts, varying the gameplay. Higher difficulty missions also give these enemies extra buffs like shields, teleporters, armour and armour that explodes[i/]!
  
• Excellent sound design and music. Each item has a distinct sound so you know exactly what’s going on. The music transitions between bright and peppy, grand and echoing and dramatic and fast-paced without ever seeming jarring.

• Limited level design. The ships all share the same basic concepts: small rooms with barriers, large empty rooms, long twisting corridors, etc. It also becomes easy to infer how the interior of the ship will look based on its exterior shape. If the ship is a long rectangle it will most likely have some long corridors with few rooms. If the ship is a triangle it will have many small rooms with corridors twisting between them.
  
• Confusing/frustrating ships. Some ships just have long, winding corridors that are annoying to navigate when under a strict time limit. Other ships, especially those belonging to the Glitchers faction, are a jumbled mess of conflicting colours and objects that make it difficult to understand where enemies are located and what parts of the room you can actually stand in or hide behind.

• Minimal amount of story. For some people, story is the highest priority, others don’t care. Heat Signature has just enough narrative to justify its existence and make it interesting, but it’s much more about the experiences you have using all the different items and how you get yourself out of sticky situations.
  
• Simplistic nature. The overarching goal is to complete enough missions in order to liberate all the space stations and stop the galactic war. Considering a character can be started and completed in about an hour, less if you are skilled or particularly lucky, and the fact that there are many space stations, you’re going to be grinding for a while if your only goal is to complete the game.

Overall, I am a big fan of Heat Signature. I’ve been following its development from the beginning and seeing how it has changed is quite interesting. The game is well worth playing, witty banter between characters, a wide variety of armaments and gadgets with which you can complete your assigned tasks and that classic Tom Francis flair of knocking people out of windows.

Please check the end of this review for my conclusion.

• The story takes place just after the base game story, instead of being completely disconnected like Narco Road. It completes the narrative on what happens when a foreign force is sent to destabilise another country, regardless of the reasons why.
  
• The new enemy types from the factions Los Extranjeros really add some more variety to the game. The covert ops in particular increases the danger of infiltrating bases as they can sneak up on you if you aren’t actively looking for them. The jammers are also quite dangerous, as getting too close will deactivate your HUD, markers and night/thermal vision as well as your drone.
  
• Has 6 genuinely new weapons. 2 assault rifles, the R4 and the MDR; 1 SMG, the PDR; 2 sniper rifles, the PSG-1 and the BFG-50A; and a crossbow. Each weapon has a standard variant and a pre-modified variant, meaning that you are able to fully customise the new weapons. The crossbow is the only exception with the only difference between the two being a scope and a small change in stats.
  
• A new skill tree has been added and the level cap has been raised to 35. The new skills focus on allowing you to become stealthier and attack your enemies with ease. In particular one of the skills allows you to fire up to 4 bullets with your drone. The master skill for this tree is a decrease in reload time, allowing you to absolutely decimate the enemies.
  
• Due to the new enemy types, the game has a slight difficulty bump. This is good, as the base game was far too easy even on extreme difficulty.

• The largest disappointment is definitely the length of the expansion campaign. You are limited to 3 provinces, each with 5 missions. Add to this the opening mission and the final boss and you only have 17 objectives to complete and most of them can be done with very little time and effort. If you were playing in co-op, especially with 4 players, the campaign time would be laughably short. I was able to complete the story in just over a day by myself.
  
• Just like in Narco Road you have to create another character. Fortunately, you start at level 30 and don’t have to re-earn any of the old skills.
  
• The weapon selection from the base game is quite small, only having a few from each category. However, this selection is augmented by some new weapons.
  
• Some of the Los Extranjeros enemy types are quite plain. While the covert ops and jammer add new challenges to the game, the other enemies, the elite sniper and elite armoured heavy, are just beefed up versions of their base game counterparts. The elite sniper has a phenomenal detection range and devastating power and the armoured heavy can only be killed with headshots. In the middle of a firefight, these two enemies quickly become frustrating.
  
• The final mission was incredibly lacklustre. The final boss is hidden inside a shipping container on top of a heavily-fortified enemy-controlled bridge. It is very easy to bypass the majority of these enemies, especially if you have attained the level 35 cap and gained all skills, and the boss can be killed with a single melee attack without him ever realising you were there. In retrospect, this means the player is a fantastic Ghost, but it does not make for very compelling gameplay.
  
  
  CONCLUSION
  I genuinely enjoyed playing through the Fallen Ghosts campaign, despite the short play time and disappointing ending. The new weapons are cool and the enemies add some fresh gameplay to a game that was sorely vanilla. Overall it was a great experience and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone that found the base game too easy and the liked the stealth components.

Please check the end of the review for the conclusion.
tl;dr This is not Ghost Recon.

• Monster trucking is genuinely fun. The trucks handle well and can climb pretty much anything. Every one of them is also equipped with a boost.
  
• One of the new side missions has you use kingslayer files to determine the location of the objective, rather than just giving you a waypoint.
  
• Unlike the base game, NR has missions separated into multiple parts. They are quite long and also more challenging, especially if you try to maintain the stealth approach.

• More progression is earned through collectibles than the story itself. If you were to play and not pick up a single weapon/skill point/bonus medal you would end with about 40% complete.
  
• Reuses the premise from The Crew, another Ubisoft title. Essentially, you join a criminal gang and then do driving based activities to gain their trust.
  
• Reuses the follower mechanic from Watch_Dogs 2. Takes it a step further as some intel (like skill point and weapon locations) is locked until you get a certain amount of followers. Furthermore, gaining these social media followers is the only way to draw out the main boss.
  
• One of the new side mission types is literally crop dusting.
  
• Another side mission has you driving a rolling drug lab while on a time limit. The vehicle is extremely unstable and taking too many hits will cause it to explode. Couple this with being shot by Unidad mini guns and passengers in the van causing it to veer off the road into obstacles and down cliffs and you have a seriously frustrating distraction.
  
• Promises "9 new weapons" that are actually just variants of old weapons with preset attachments and skins. To go along with this, your weapon choice is now limited to these "new" weapons, as well as a handful of old ones.
  
• Forces you to create a new character, but then starts you at level 20 with almost every skill. This is done to force you to have some kind of level progression, despite the fact that it was superfluous in the base game too.
  
• Trials style stunt challenges are scattered around the map. Unfortunately, motorcycles are the worst handling vehicle in the game and doing these challenges is an absolute chore.
  
• The monster trucks, while fun to drive, seem to get stuck on objects more than the normal cars do, and frequently end up hanging over fences, etc. with their large wheels.
  
• Plane handling is now much worse. Fortunately, this change is limited to the DLC only and does not affect the base game.
  
• Repurposes a very small area of the map and changes up the borders to try to make it feel "new". Unfortunately, all the land marks are still there and it doesn't feel any different.
  
• The biggest disappointment is, by far, the ending. It ends in a thinly-veiled twist: Your informant is the big bad. After that, it gets even more disappointing: You kick in the guy's door after he has been found, then put a single .50 cal in him. No speech or conflict of morals, just bang, end game.

I really love the base game, but this is an absolute miss. Narco Road bears no resemblance to Ghost Recon gameplay and the tactical, stealth-action world that was previously built is completely thrown out the window. The developers have stated that Narco Road was always intentioned to be a standalone experience, but if you really want what it has to offer, you could get it from Trials, The Crew or Watch_Dogs 2.

Check the end of this review for the conclusion and also look at the separate reviews for each DLC on their respective store pages.

Ghost Packs

• Adds unique costumes and weapons to play the roles of Unidad, Santa Blanca and the Rebels.

The Peruvian Connection

• Addition of "The Peruvian Connection" missions to increase the total amount of activities.

Narco Road

• One of the new side missions requires you to look at some intel and then, based on the clues it gives you, determine where on the map your objective is located. This provides a more involved experience compared to just being given a target location.

Fallen Ghosts

• The new enemy types add more variety to the game and their strengths force you to modify your play style. Elite armoured an elite sniper enemies are scaled up versions of their normal counterparts; some enemies that carry portable jammers that deactivate drones, your HUD and minimap and enemy markers; and covert ops that wear active camouflage and cannot be spotted unless you use thermal vision.
  
• Genuinely has new weapons. 2 assault rifles, a SMG, 2 sniper rifles, and a crossbow. Each of the new weapons also has a pre-modified variant.
  
• A new skill tree is added, allowing you to become stealthier, reload weapons faster, unlock a drone that can fire bullets and many other things. The level cap is increased to 35 to facilitate this.
  
• The expansion is more difficult than the base game (though not by a large amount), meaning it's harder to just rush through areas with your weapons blazing.

Ghost Packs

• XP boosts are basically useless because the level cap is only 30 and you can reach that well before completing even half the game.

The Peruvian Connection

• The missions are so similar to the base game and so bland that I did not realise they were separate content. They just have you trudging around snowy mountains, blowing up some dropped cocaine.

Narco Road

• Promises "9 new weapons" that are actually just non-customisable variants of previous weapons.
  
• One of the new side mission types is literally crop dusting.
  
• Trials style stunt challenges that are focused around motorcycles, the vehicle in the game with the worst handling.
  
• Introduces monster trucks. You'd think that a large vehicle with large wheels would be good for getting around, but in actuality they get stuck more often than the regular cars do.
  
• Planes now handle even worse, but only within the confines of the DLC.
  
• The campaign uses a completely separate character from the base game, but then gives you almost all your skills, bar some of the more useful ones and you only have access to a small selection of weapons with the 9 "new" ones being most of them.
  
• The game reuses the premise of The Crew (infiltrating a criminal organisation by driving and doing challenges relating to driving) while also reusing Watch_Dogs 2's follower mechanic (you do all these stunts and challenges in order to gain social media followers because somehow that draws out the big bad).

Fallen Ghosts

• The campaign has only 15 missions, most of which can be completed with very little effort. I was able to complete the Fallen Ghosts campaign in a matter of hours and that's including time spent searching for weapons cases and skill points. If you were to play this in co-op, the time would fly by very quickly.
  
• You have to start yet another new character. It makes up for this by starting you at level 30 with all skills unlocked except for the FG-specific ones, but forcing you to create another character is just a pain.
  
• The final boss was incredibly lacklustre. It takes place on the Unidad controlled bridge in Caimanes where you would destroy a narco submarine in the base game. There are enemies all over the place that can be distraccted and killed very easily and the final boss was killed with a single melee attack. He did not even know I was there. In retrospect, this means I was an excellent Ghost, but it's not compelling gameplay in the least.

With the inclusion of Narco Road, 50% of the season pass has nothing to do with Ghost Recon or Tom Clancy games in general. With Fallen Ghosts included, the value of the Season Pass increases significantly and would probably be worth getting at a discount. However, you could also just buy Fallen Ghosts separately and that's the path I suggest you take unless you just want to have a laugh with some friends in NR.

25/03/2017
After Patch 2.0, some bugs relating to vehicle and weapon handling have been fixed, the UI has been tweaked, and there is now an option to turn off all in-game radios.
Ubisoft claim that they have improved performance, but I am now seeing lower frame rates with the same high to very high settings I was using prior. In addition, there are more frequent drops to the low 50s, sometimes even into the mid-40s.
18/04/2017
Patch 3.0 has been out for a little while at this point. They claim to have fixed several problems, but there's nothing noticeable. This patch also provides the ground work for the first DLC, Narco Road.
22/04/2017
Narco Road itself isn't that great, and has nothing to do with Ghost Recon, stealth action or realism. For more details, read my reviews on the DLC store page and season pass store page.

• Multiplayer – This is the best way to play the game. You and your friends can fill different roles, take control of whatever vehicles you like, use different weapons and modify them to your taste and take on missions however you choose to.
  
  
• Graphics – On decent hardware the game looks absolutely amazing.
  
  
• Weapon & Character Customisation – Just like in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier most guns (barring reward weapons for completing main missions and obtained from Uplay store packs) can be edited in the Gunsmith. This allows you to customise how the weapon handles in great detail by changing barrel length, trigger type, optics and so forth. The game also adds character creation in the same vein as Tom Clancy’s The Division allowing you to change gender, race, hair style and clothing types as well as colours.
  
  
• Weapons – Despite weapons having different stat bars, they are all very similar. They are so well balanced that, in combination with the stealth-based modifier (see Undecided section), you can run with whatever you want and not be at a disadvantage. The only stats that seem to make too much of a difference are accuracy, handling and noise reduction.

• Voice Acting – Honestly, this is the worst part of the game. Every character speaks in a dull, monotonous voice. There is no emotion whatsoever. Even during combat when the characters are yelling to each other there’s no hint of any kind of humanity behind the voices. This is especially apparent when the characters banter or tell jokes while free roaming. The only character I can think of that has any kind of emotion is DJ Perico, but even he is annoying.
  
  
• Dialogue – To go hand in hand with bad voice acting, the dialogue is fairly limited. When spotting enemies before combat, your character will say something along the lines of “Got eyes on a small group of tangos.” Unfortunately, they will say this or an equivalent every time they spot enemies, even if there’s only one. They also only have three or so lines for when they find skill points. The aforementioned DJ Perico has especially stale lines. Every time you get in a vehicle or walk past a radio, you will hear his voice rattling off the same speech repeated ad nauseam.
  
  
• Vehicle Handling – Par for the course in an Ubisoft title. Cars accelerate much too quickly and all steer like big rigs. Motorcycles will turn on a dime every time their wheels hit a fist sized rock, and will then fling you through the air Super Man style, killing you instantly when you hit the ground. Running over a pedestrian at high speed will not harm them, but gently tapping them with the bumper at 2 MPH will kill them. Aircraft handling is by far the worst, it's nigh impossible to aim the mounted guns on a helicopter and the planes have no yaw (left and right) controls. You have to roll a plane to turn it, which is dreadful if you need to make a slight turn to land the plane while near the ground.
  
  
• Friendly AI– There have been several occasions where the rebel faction AI have killed a target that I needed to capture with no provocation, leading to a game over and a mission restart.
  
  
• Weapons & Attachments – For some reason, some weapons of smaller calibre have higher damage and stopping power than weapons of higher calibre. The balancing for optics is odd, as scopes with 2x zoom can increase accuracy more than scopes with 4x zoom.
  
  
• Poor Optimisation – Even with a GTX 1070, some settings can only be on high or very high instead of ultra in order to maintain 60 FPS.
  
  
  
• Level System – The only thing unlocked by levelling up are the higher skills in the trees. Unfortunately, even after you reach max level (30), the costs of these skills are still prohibitively high, making the act of collecting XP superfluous. The levelling system is made redundant even further by the fact that it progresses so easily. Every kill, every new place discovered, every skill point or weapon picked up will grant XP. This being the case, you can get halfway to maximum after completing only two provinces.
  
  
• Uplay Packs – Several optional packs are available on the Uplay store that give you access to a couple extra weapons, clothing items and patches for your hat and backpack. Unfortunately, the packs cost about $10 USD each. The weapons (except the Whisper pistol) are just reskins of other available weapons and have set attachments. It is easy to match and surpass the stats of these weapons by making them yourself with available attachments.

• Story – I enjoy the premise, but you are only exposed to dialogue between characters. In order to actually understand the story, you have to watch optional cut scenes that can be missed, as well as find collectibles to fill in the spaces.
  
  
• Weapons – The game has a stealth-based modifier that increases your weapon damage when you are undetected and lowers it when in open combat. While this provides an incentive to stay quiet, it also puts players who prefer going loud at a disadvantage. Not only that, but enemies that would be killed with a single pistol shot while undetected will suddenly be able to absorb 3-6 more bullets if they spot you sneaking around.
  
  
• Cover System – The cover system is hit and miss. Instead of pressing a button to take cover, your character will automatically flatten themselves against a wall or duck their head when you are crouched behind something. This is good as it means you don't have to fumble for a button to get out of the line of fire. However, because it depends on the game to interpret whether or not what you are behind is cover-worthy, it can lead to situations where you can still be hit even though you should be totally protected, as well as frustratingly stopping you from being able to lean out and return fire.

A fun experience marred by some drawbacks.
There is a lot I like about Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It looks great and plays well. Unfortunately, some of the integral parts of the game, like the XP system and the weapon attachments and vehicle controls, are just plain bad. In spite of this, I do thoroughly enjoy playing and it is a strong recommendation to anyone who wants a game to play with friends.