Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is the rebirth of the Ghost Recon franchise since its last outing in Advanced Warfighter 2. Of course to say rebirth implies that Future Soldier is in some way correcting a mistake, which it isn’t.

The first Advanced Warfighter won a whole heap of BAFTAs and rightly so, its mix of tactical strategy along with Hollywood style set-pieces makes it a classic shooter that everyone should play at least once.

So why, you must be asking, are we calling it a rebirth? Well for a start Future Soldier is being developed by an entirely new team at Ubisoft, keen to put their stamp on the critically acclaimed series.

Secondly, this new team has drastically changed the way it wants to approach Ghost Recon. Neither of these is a bad thing, but while Advanced Warfighter 2 was excellent, it would be accurate to say that it was brilliant in many ways because it was a carbon copy of the first.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier: Features

Of course when you’re cleaning out the closet some things are going to have to go, and lo and behold, Crosscom has had a facelift. Instead the entire HUD had been replaced with an Augmented-reality layout, as seen no doubt through the eyes of the Ghost. The integration of tactical information along with the conventional HUD is cinematically very impressive.

Second up is the drone. In this respect die-hards will be pleased, if anything they’ve made it better. In a swift throw of the arm you can send the drone flying into the air from where it’ll show you a birds eye view of the surrounding area. Added features such as a range limiter and interference all lend to the reality of the battlefield.

Last but not least is the way you command your men, all now simplified through a few simple presses of the button. Whereas before you would aim at a location, then choose an action and finally give the command, Future Soldier believes that everything should stem from movement, so keeping your men supporting, flanking, and attacking is all actioned with around 50 per cent less button pushing.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier: Gameplay

The levels we played saw us thrown around the world through various stages of the game. While we are aware that it’s a revenge story, anything more than that is a vague haze.

It’s important to note that the general reaction to the demos have been positive but have resulted in one outcome: The graphics needed work. While it’s true that some textures we saw frankly looked archaic, there are elements of the game that demonstrate clearly that these glitches must be bugs still to be worked on.

As proof of this, crouching enables ‘optical camouflage’ allowing you to become invisible. It’s a beautiful thing to behold, and at times looked better than anything available in games today.

Next up is the way Ubisoft has approached realism, we turn a corner and come under heavy fire, the camera instantly begins to toss to and fro in a manner that can only be described as nauseating. It’s an effective reminder for those who wish to approach Ghost Recon with a ‘Rambo’ mentality, and while it was almost unusable in the demo, the developers assured us that by release the camera wobbling will be perfect.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier: Verdict

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is late. Not only is it late but it also doesn’t look finished, and with a May release date it would appear as though Ubisoft has a lot of kinks to iron out. That said, the good far outweighs the bad here, just the fact that they’ve built this game on essentially the same engine as its predecessor is, to be frank, a miracle.

This is not Ghost Recon ‘dumbed down’, the intelligence is still there as are the tactical elements - they’ve just been approached from a new angle, one which potentially could work very well indeed.

So while it clearly has a few teething problems to sort out, Future Soldier is shaping up to be the thriller of the summer, and we didn’t even need to mention Gunsmith.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier availability: 25 May 2012

Ghost Recon price: £TBC
 

Check out the Ghost Recon: Future Soldier trailer...