Brief Introduction
I had just started browsing around for new online MMO Shooters, when Ghost Recon: Online caught my eye. So, at terrible downloading and updating speeds, I decided to download it since I had nothing better to do at the time. After a grueling six-hour wait, I fired it up, and here's my review of it.
Technique
Ghost Recon: Online has a technique like no other. It's sort of similar to the Gears of War run, jump hide behind a few walls and shoot technique. On Ghost recon online, by pressing the space button, it enables you to move to nearby cover, this could be a wall, window, whatever floats your boat to be honest, you can hide behind almost anything! And the good part about this is, for example, if you were standing up behind a wall being shot at, you are able to go prone / crouch whilst behind cover, to make yourself less visible to enemies whilst you crawl away with a big grin.
Ghost Recon: Online also features a nice run and slide option. Although it's not much use, it can help you get out of tricky situations on some of the maps. There is a feature which is quite the annoying one, this is running and aiming. Take this as an example scenario. You are being shot at by an opposing player, your running to take cover. You take cover behind a wall, and begin to fire. But oh damn wait, you have a whole second to wait before your gun even becomes 70% accurate . Yep, that's right, if you are running, crawling, even proning, you have to wait a certain amount of time for your hitmarker to return back to it's normal position before you can even think about getting a headshot. (Well, even think about hitting the enemy at all). This feature I think is an interesting one because it balances out gameplay and brings in a sense of real-ness to the game, as all Ghost Recon games do.
Ranks, Weapons & Skills.
Ahh. We've reached the complicated part. At the beginning of Ghost Recon: Online, you are confronted with the choice of three classes. The Recon aka the sniper who can shoot anyone from almost any distance without having to worry about being shot because he has a goddamn ESP and invisible cloak; The Assault, aka run shoot run shoot run shoot duck go prone; or the Support, aka "My LMG will kill you in one shot". As bad as I make all of these classes sound, they aren't as bad. Of course, I chose the class which I knew I would hate to be killed by the most, the Recon.
The skill system goes in a sort of hierarchy. You can choose skills such as becoming invisible(recon) or being able to see enemies through walls 25-30m away(also Recon) as interesting as these skills sound, they are incredibly annoying.
The game shop is very wall balanced for a FTP shooter. You DON'T and I repeat DON'T have to pay to win. You don't have to buy a gun which will give you +1000 damage and +9999 HP for a week. Everything is actually free. The currency that you get ingame is slow to earn, but when you get weapons from the store, it is extremely satisfying.
The Maps
There isn't much to talk about here. Just 3-4 normal maps, from an underground subway to a building complex. They aren't anything special.
Match Making
Also nothing to talk about here. There isn't much to choose from. When you create a new class the only good thing is that you're allowed to go into a boot-camp style match making system, where only under level 7's are allowed. After that, it's every man for himself.
OVERALL RATING
Overall, I give this game a surprising 8/10. It's addictive, the gameplay is fluent and the community makes you feel like you're in an actual war.
Thanks for reading!
Ratings are very good too!
