Ghost Recon Breakpoint Review: Not even Jon Bernthal can rescue this mess of a game
Not even Jon Bernthal can save Ubisoft's latest Ghost Recon game.
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is developed by Ubisoft Paris.
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is a game that has downsides to match every single one of its upsides. This is a broken, buggy and clearly unfinished game that absolutely should not have been released in this state. Even beneath all those bugs and glitches is a game that is still fundamentally generic, infested with microtransactions and lacking an overall identity of its own.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it
You play as Nomad - a character who has some history with the villain of this game.
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint’s story begins with Nomad and a team of Ghost Recon soldiers deploying to the island of Auroa. Nomad and her squadmates get shot down over the island, immediately learning that former Ghost Cole D. Walker has taken it over with his army of ‘Wolves’.
Stuck without backup and proper equipment, Nomad has to liberate the island and its citizens of their newfound dictators, and find out what exactly the Wolves are after. This is the beginning of the game, and unfortunately is just about as interesting as it gets for a very long time. This is in part due to how bloated the campaign is.
Breakpoint’s story missions feel unnecessarily stretched out, like most of them exist simply to extend the game’s runtime or to provide equipment for players to level up their gear score (we’ll get into that later). Most of the time, quests and side-quests revolve around you going to a part of the map, finding an enemy base, getting information or rescuing someone, and getting out. Every base is so sloppily put together as well, with clearly cut-and-paste buildings all over the entire map. That’s as good as Auroa’s world design gets, too.
This game has some pretty poor customisation options. You'll have to work pretty hard to make a character that even looks slightly decent.
Thus, the story never actually feels interesting enough for you to invest in. There’s a way to do shooter campaigns right, and most developers realise that it’s not by repeatedly throwing players into the same room with the same enemies again and again. When I think of Titanfall 2, I think of the superb time-travel level. When I think of Far Cry 3 even, I think of Vaas and his speech about insanity.
When I think of Ghost: Recon Breakpoint, nothing comes to mind besides the hundred enemy bases. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint never has any standout moments like those aforementioned games. It certainly tries, with Jon Bernthal doing his best at portraying the villainous Walker. But even Bernthal isn’t capable of lifting this game’s story beyond anything dull and generic, especially when he barely appears in the game besides in hamfisted flashbacks.
*Tap, tap* Is this thing broken?
This game is jam-packed with all sorts of bugs and glitches!
I am actually appalled that Ubisoft decided to release Ghost Recon: Breakpoint in this state. I imagine the list of bugs in this game may go well into the hundreds, and that’s after the Day One Patch that supposedly fixed many of its issues. I played this game before, during and after release and let me assure you - this is still a broken game.
I encountered all manner of fun bugs and glitches, including but not limited to; limbs randomly separating from NPC’s bodies, Nomad holding invisible guns, lighting glitches, audio issues, bad texture pop-ins and enemies that see through walls. My personal favourite was when I somehow broke the entire game’s day-and-night cycle, leading to the sun and moon hurtling through Auroa’s sky at a hundred miles an hour... forever.
Human enemies are a joke in this game, too. Enemy AI is hilariously dumb and/or broken, depending on how lucky you are. If you throw a grenade, enemies will stare at it until it explodes. If they see you run behind a wall, you will have magically vanished in their eyes. Sometimes, they just give up and walk in circles.
Welp, those textures clearly haven't loaded in.
NPCs aren’t any better either. Character animations and voice acting are hilariously terrible. Nomad and Walker are exceptions, with good-enough facial and character animations, while other characters walk and talk like planks of wood. It all feels incredibly outdated and unfinished by a 2019 game’s standards, especially when you consider that Assassin’s Creed Origins from 2017 (also from Ubisoft) looked miles better than this in every way.
We’re not quite at Fallout 76 levels of faultiness here, but this is still pretty impressive by Ubisoft standards. The company actually has a great reputation for fixing their games post-release, so I have no doubt that this one will be playable with at least 70% less issues in maybe a year or two. Hopefully by then, the game will have a price drop that’s in keeping with its actual quality.
Terminator: Breakpoint
It can actually feel good to get in and out of a base without alerting enemies.
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint’s gameplay loop of eliminating enemies with an admittedly fun variety of weaponry is fun enough for the first couple hours. Eventually however, RPG mechanics and pesky robots caused my patience with this game to wear thin. Like I said before, nothing good in this game comes without a downside.
First of all, adding RPG mechanics to this game makes it feel more or less like a spin-off of Ubisoft’s own Division games, rather than an actual Ghost Recon sequel. These mechanics didn’t make sense in games like Far Cry: New Dawn or Wolfenstein: Youngblood earlier this year, and they certainly don’t make sense here. Level-gating prevents you from entering certain areas until you have a high enough gear score - something that is new to Ghost Recon games.
RPG mechanics have been showing in every Ubisoft game recently, to the point where they're starting to feel hollow and unnecessary.
Your gear score is the average level of all your weapons and equipment, so you’ll constantly have to scavenge for higher level stuff throughout the entire game. Find a gun you like? Keep it at your own peril, because unless you pick up that other dumb gun with a higher gear score - you’re going to get toasted in gunfights.
Now, it’s true that one headshot will always take down all human enemies, but this game doesn’t have ONLY human enemies. During story missions, you’ll often be tasked with infiltrating bases that have drones and small tanks guarding them. These robots are straight up bullet sponges, soaking up all your grenades, rockets and bullets UNLESS you have a gear score that’s up to par with the area. Breakpoint is going to introduce raids soon - and that’s where I imagine these drones will actually feel well-placed in this game.
Conclusion
The game is utterly broken - but that hasn't stopped Ubisoft from selling an insane amount of in-game microtransactions.
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint isn’t even close to being a good, worthwhile or even functional game at its S$79.90 price point. It’s a broken, unfinished mess that doesn’t even have a story or world worth exploring, for however humongous Auroa is. Breakpoint is by far the worst mainline game Ubisoft has released in the past few years, and it boggles my mind that they even thought it was ready for release in this state. Wait for a massive sale to pick this one up.
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