Believe it or not, I’m actually having a lot of fun with the latest installment of Ghost Recon. From the rich lush tropical environments to the well-designed enemy bases, Breakpoint didn’t fail to be gorgeously jaw-dropping. But it is far from a perfect game in itself. If you’ve been keeping up, Breakpoint, unfortunately, has some serious flaws that players might consider not buying it if it persists.
For starters, the infamous online prerequisite if you want to even play the game. Make no mistake, it’s clear that Breakpoint is meant to be a multiplayer experience despite not being an MMO. In sharp contrast to its story where Nomad is a sole survivor of his unit and carries the tasks alone, Breakpoint encourages cooperative play with its class system. While this isn’t a bad thing in itself, the way Ubisoft goes about encouraging multiplayer by forcing the players to always be online is the wrong way to go about it.
After playing the game for more than ten hours on a harder difficulty, I can safely say that you can accomplish missions on your own. Though it is alarmingly more challenging, it did force me to strategize my approach much more carefully. Which brings to the question, why Ubisoft wanted an always-online experience to begin with. Due to my flaky internet connection, I’ve gotten kicked out of the game at least three times. This is a massive issue that nobody is comfortable with when it comes to games like Ghost Recon. And Ubisoft needs to be aware that being always connected online is never a desirable trait.
I’ve heard some justifications for this, but never any good ones that really convince me. One justification was that with an always-online connectivity the game’s store can always be refreshed every day and it will also help developers stop players from cheating.
To me, this excuse enforces Ubisoft’s agenda in milking the game off as much money as possible. Other games have stores that refresh stocks without an online connection. But since Breakpoint is monetized, Ubisoft seems to want to encourage players to keep spending real-world money. And if the online connectivity is really there stop players from cheating, there’s a logical fallacy in that other players wouldn’t meet cheaters if they were never online in the first place. One would think that always being online would discourage players from purchasing a game that has otherwise no reason for the requirement.
It seems that Ubisoft is testing the waters with how far they can get away with. As much I enjoy playing Breakpoint, I do have to voice my distaste for this kind of business practice that does nothing for the consumers.
Breakpoint has a few bugs & glitches. One of which involved me carrying an invisible weapon after leaving the bivouac (a temporary camp where players can change classes, get temporary buffs, and etc). While none of the bugs & glitches I encountered was ever game-breaking or an outright deal-breaker, it did take me out of immersion more than once when I see an NPC float through the character I was talking to on a cutscene.
The menu is also a clustered mess. It almost discouraged me from pressing the touchpad or the options button out of having to scroll through a messy menu screen. While I finally got used to it after a few hours, I still have the opinion that the menu isn’t rather user-friendly. It’s hard to navigate and is noticeably slower compared to other games.
Another noticeable bug in the game is that Breakpoint sometimes will have the screen be completely pitch black for no reason. I can still access the menu screens or hear the background noise, but once I enter the shop or leave the bivouac it would sometimes give me a black screen for thirty seconds before going back to normal. Thankfully, I’ve only ever seldom encountered this.
Don’t get me wrong, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is a fantastic fun game. It’s fun, it’s fluid, and it never gets boring. But there are so many things about the game that spun up some controversy which unfortunately drove people who would otherwise buy the game into staying away. It seems that Ubisoft is taking a step forward into monetizing their own games as much as they’re allowed to get away with which I frown upon. I hope that Ubisoft will address these flaws in the future to attract more players into purchasing the game.
I will review the game soon. If you’re interested in seeing my full thoughts of the game, then please wait for the full review to be released. Breakpoint surprisingly has a lot of content for me to talk about.