Ghost Recon: Wildlands - The War on Drugs!

By Sam Coles:  

Open world and Ubisoft are usually met with the same reaction if you were to say chicken nuggets dipped in milkshake, usually a few coughs mixed with a bit of vomit. Anyway, oddly specific and vulgar analogy aside people seem to hate Ubisoft games before they have played them and to be honest, I don’t understand why, they are mostly harmless and rather engaging games. Are the innovative? No, but not everything in gaming has to push boundaries they are there to present a good world and story no matter how complex they are. So, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, a game that I played all the way through on Xbox Game Pass recently and it was a blast!  

Ghost Recon: Wildlands takes place in Bolivia, where you play as the titular Ghosts who are tasked with taking down a local drug cartel called Santa Blanca. It’s not a particular engaging narrative, it gives you a thin layer of context for the chaos you are about to cause within South America. If you are thinking “Wow, this has a Narcos vibe”, then you would be right as it was released right at the height of the Netflix show’s popularity, which makes sense with its themes.  

Anyway, the story is not the reason why we play this game it is the gameplay! I have to say, when Ubisoft first said they are making Ghost Recon an open world game I wasn’t sure but it makes sense if you go back to the series routes. The Ghost Recon games were an evolution of the old Rainbow Six games, similar gameplay however they took place outside in wide open spaces. The more I thought about it and when I finally played it, it clicks as an open world game where you can tackle objectives in any order you want with a variety of gadgets and weapons.  

With a brief introduction the game will dump you in the open world, explaining the bosses and sub-bosses you can take down, in order to get to the leader of the cartel. It is a completely free form experience; you can do the main objectives taking down the sub-bosses or you can go around the open world causing havoc as you do your bit for the war on drugs.  

The game does motivate you to take each mission in a stealth manner, but if I am given the option to strap a grenade launcher to the underbarrel of my M4, what do you think I am going to do? The answer is, blow everything up in sight because of course it is! However, that is the beauty of Ghost Recon Wildlands, it doesn’t penalise you for going loud but it will make encounters harder, with reinforcements among other things. There are only a handful times where the game expects you to do a mission without detection, but those moments are minimal.  

What I like about the gameplay is that you can fully customise your loadout, as this brings back the gunsmith system from Future Soldier. With this system you can customise your weapon to your heart’s desire, from the buttstock all the way down to the trigger with a satisfying animation that takes the gun apart to show the inner workings. It is a gun nut’s wet dream this system.  

You can also fully customise your operator’s appearance, you can make your appearance as serious or silly as you want. You can look like a fully equipped marine or a caricature of the average American, but I digress.  It is fun to play dress up with your character, and plus you can unlock more clothing options the more side missions you do, same applies to weapons and attachments.  

Visually this game looks fantastic, it is hard to believe this game came out in 2017 but here we are and it still looks beautiful. The environments look absolutely stunning and they are varied too, from the lush and humid jungles to the salt flats you can drive as fast as you can. Something this game does not lack is variety with its environments, I will never tire flying over the map in a helicopter as I witness the sun set on the coke fueled countryside.  

Ghost Recon Wildlands is a fun open world game, it is fun to explore Bolivia and get up to no good as you blow stuff up all in the name of the “War on Drugs”. It is super cheap these days, so it is a no brainer to pick it up if you are looking for a great open world game to sink your teeth into.  

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy Definitive Edition - Classic games in a clunky form.

(Nintendo Switch code provided by Rockstar Games)

By Sam Coles:  

Grand Theft Auto, a title that doesn’t really need any introduction! Often marred in controversary since its inception all the way back in 1997, it is a series that has pushed the boundaries not only with adult content in games but the open world genre as we know it today. The PS2 era of games is where the series go a lot of attention, from critical acclaim to concerned parents due to them buying it for their under-age child.  

Anyway, in 2021 they released a remastered trilogy for the PS4/5 Xbox One/Series S|X and Nintendo Switch, and to say they were messy is being generous. They introduced bugs that were not in the original, as they used Unreal Engine 4 for the remaster as well as A.I. Machine learning to clean up textures, and it wasn’t great. Fast forward 3 years, and they are in a much better state, but they still have niggling issues.  

Each game takes place in a different city, you have Liberty City which is a fictional version of New York, Vice City in 1980s Florida and finally the state of San Andreas based on California mostly with a little sprinkle of Nevada. Great places to explore, as they all feel unique not only for their different geographical locations but the fact they are set in different time periods such as the 1980s, early 90s and what was current day when GTA III came out.  

Each game sees you take control of a criminal rising through from rags to riches, from the silent protagonist of GTA III, the blood thirsty tones of Tommy from Vice City to CJ who is a bit more reasonable with his approach in the gang life in San Andreas. Minus GTA III, the protagonists are unique and different with excellent voice acting from an all-star cast throughout. From Burt Reynolds, Samuel. L Jackson, James Woods to at the time relevant adult film star Jenna Jameson (I was a teenager once) playing a similar role in Vice City. All the characters are fun and over the top, where they fit perfectly within each time period.  

Now the gameplay is something that most are drawn to, as these games are sandboxes for you to do anything you want with some restrictions. Let’s start with the controls, now I have seen a lot of people online say the shooting is not great in these versions, however the shooting was never that good in GTA until GTA IV they were always clunky I think a lot were blinded by nostalgia in this regard. However, I will agree they have completely botched the auto targeting while shooting, in the old games on PS2 you used to be able to snap to targets quickly. Not the case anymore, you slowly switch targets, or in most cases for me it would target a pedestrian half way down the street. The lock on system is a pain compared to the originals, but to reiterate the shooting was never that good in the original versions.   

The driving mechanics haven’t really changed that much either, in GTA III and Vice City they are very floaty where in San Andreas the driving is the best as the cars have an added weight to them. Again, another complaint I see with this collection is that cars blow up too quickly, and once again that was a problem in the originals. Reviewers with the original releases sight this issue, specifically in GTA III this is not a new issue with the definitive edition. Should it been fixed in the remasters, yes but it is not a new issue like some would have you believe.  

Onto the more contentious part of these remasters, the visuals. The games have been given a bump in Unreal Engine 4 and the character models have stirred things up online. I think what people don’t realise with this trilogy is that it is a remaster and not a remake, PS2 character models for the most part do not look great no matter how much you polish them. This is coming from a person who has a massive PS2 collection and has a deep love for the system, but I would be lying if I said character models look great from that era. Plus, Grand Theft Auto during that era were never really on the bleeding edge in terms of graphics, they were popular because of their non-restrictive gameplay elements.  

Another element that has met criticism is that the character models look cartoonish and they were never meant to be like that, when that was the point of the originals the character models were meant to be exaggerated why do you think the front covers are comic book panels, they are exaggerated and over the top characters which are reflected within the character models. They didn’t shoot for realistic graphics until GTA IV in terms of character models, they were always cartoony and over the top.  

After all the fixes, I think the games look really nice with the new graphical engine, Vice City looks especially good during the night time segments with the neon lights lighting the rain-soaked streets. San Andreas looks a lot better too after the patches, they added fog back in the game so you can no longer see Mount Chiliad all the way from Grove Street which tickled me a bit when I played it at release.  

Now I know this post sounds negative, but to let you know I enjoyed playing through these games especially on my Nintendo Switch. Yes, these games have issues, but a lot of them stem from their original releases and haven’t stood the test of time. I can enjoy them, but I know them like the back of my hand, however for new comers it might turn them off the older games. But I think that is it, it was aimed at us who have already played them with our rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia back when we didn’t have to worry about much except homework that was due the next day. These games are still good, but they haven’t aged as well as some think and this is coming from a die-hard fan of the series. Give them a go by all means, but see if you can get the trilogy cheap or play them on original hardware.  

Crysis Trilogy Switch - "Can it run Crysis"?

(Nintendo Switch code provided by Sandbox Strategies PR/Crytek) 

By Sam Coles:  

“Can it run Crysis” was a popular meme during the mid-2000s when the original Crysis came out in 2007, for good reason too as the game was far beyond than the existing technology. The game has and honestly still looks amazing visually, and now for me to play not only the first but the entire trilogy on my Nintendo Switch which is crazy to think about let alone play. So, I got a chance to play through the entire trilogy of Crysis games on Nintendo Switch, and I have to say I am impressed especially the first game, so is it worth it? In short yes.  

The Crysis series sees you play as different protagonists in each game, in the first you play as Nomad, the second Alcatraz, and in the third Prophet. In each game you are a soldier in a Nano Suit, which increases the wearer’s abilities, from super strength, stealth capabilities as well as tactical awareness in the battlefield. However, these suits are made from alien technology, where the suits themselves become a part of the wearer’s body which ends up infecting them with a virus. So much so, that the virus spreads to New York, and the US military have to also stop an invading force from the alien entities known as the Ceph. It is an interesting plot throughout the trilogy, it is a fun and twisting military/science fiction conspiracy thriller.  

Gameplay wise it seems like another run of the mill first person shooter, but these games give you a variety of ways to tackle a combat scenario especially the first game. The levels are fairly flexible with how you want to approach a situation, so if you want to go in and kick the doors in with alarms blaring you can. However, you can slap on a suppressor, activate your cloak on your suit and go in like the Predator and watch as everyone panics. Anyway, the way you want to approach a combat scenario is completely up to you, you can activate your armour, go in with a light machine and gun anything down that moves or you can equip a bow (in Crysis 3), cloak and take them down like a futuristic Robin Hood.  

I do favour a louder approach in these games as it is more fun, but sometimes especially in the first game I feel as if the game penalises you for going loud and almost wants you to always do a stealth approach. In the first game, it is generally more favaourable to follow a quieter route in combat, as you die very quickly in confrontation even with armour activated. However, as the games go on, they do let you take a more action focused approach, as they do get progressively easier, especially Crysis 3.  

Visually each game looks incredible and runs really well, yes, they run at 30 frames per second, but they stay locked at 30 fps. The game that I thought would have the most trouble running was the first game, as there hasn’t really been a good console port of it if you look back at the not so good 360 port. No, on Switch it looks great, and runs smoothly throughout in both portable and docked mode. Crysis 2 was the next one I had a bit of trepidation about, as that game ran abysmally on the Xbox 360, we are talking sub 20 fps. However, on Nintendo Switch it runs at a locked 30 fps, and I found myself engaging in combat instead of avoiding it like I did on the 360 back in the day as it is now stably running.  

Overall, I had a lot of fun revisiting these titles on Nintendo Switch, if you are looking for a good set of first person shooters to play on the platform you can’t go wrong with Crysis. To answer the question of “Can it run Crysis”? The answer is yes it can!