Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands brought the series into a sprawling open world set in a fictional Bolivia, where a four-member elite Ghost unit fights the powerful Santa Blanca drug cartel. Players could run the operation solo with AI teammates or in full cooperation with up to four human players, making the game one of the most ambitious attempts of its time at an open tactical action world.

Gameplay-wise, the game was built on freedom of approach. Missions against individual cartel commanders could be completed in any order and with a variety of tactics, from silent infiltration with long-range sniping, through vehicles and drones for reconnaissance, to open firefights. The sprawling map of Bolivia offered a varied range of environments, from mountains and salt flats to rainforests and cities, and on PS4 it managed to render impressive long-distance views, albeit with some compromises in texture detail and vegetation density compared to more powerful platforms. The synchronized-kill and target-marking system allowed for deliberate team coordination that rewarded patience and planning before action.

The audio design and the atmosphere of the South American cartel war, complemented by radio chatter, news broadcasts, and local music, gave the world of Bolivia credibility, although the game deliberately avoided treating the politically sensitive drug issue too literally. Gradually unlocking skills and specializations let players tailor a soldier to the role of sniper, engineer, or support medic, which, in cooperation with three other players, led to a well thought-out division of roles within the team.

Wildlands received mixed reactions at launch due to its at times repetitive mission structure and lighter enemy AI, but thanks to its extensive cooperative content and the genuine joy of moving freely across a huge world it found a loyal community of players. The game showed that the concept of tactical action could be successfully expanded into the open-world format, and this direction later steered the series toward its next entry, Breakpoint.

Why play it: For fans of cooperative play and free movement across a huge open world, Wildlands is a showcase of how tactical action can be successfully expanded into the open-world format, despite its more repetitive missions.