Ghost Recon Future Soldier Multi Player Impressions

[undercovergeek]

Started new thread so it doesnt clash with JH's initial thoughts one:-

Its 19:15 Sunday evening - me and my MP buddy switched on at Friday 22:00, and now its Sunday evening, im unsure of where the 48 hours in between has gone!
Awesome game - the game ive wanted multi player shooters to be for years - whilst my buddies have always been the guys firing rockets, throwing flash bangs and grenades, whilst jumping through the air while i look at the game pad and ask 'is it triangle to fire this thing' and then get shot in the face.

This is 'revenge of the geeks', a tip of the hat, a nod of the head towards all of us turtlers out there who run from cover to cover, carefully watching the flanks and supporting the team only for some spotty youth to leap over the factory wall behind us, shoot us between the eyes from an impossible angle yelling 'NOOB' before he disappears round the corner. Well SEE THEM NOW leaping into the fire from my sub machine gun as i use my expertly chosen cover, see them running up the middle of the street with their misplaced Call Of Duty cloak of indestructibility and getting cut to ribbons by the old geezer collective! No more a contest of the fastest to the button, no more a dash to the biggest, meanest gun - this is proper (well, Tom Clancy tells me it is!) war - use the cover, advance in coordinated leaps and covering bounds - this is squad based MP action delivered straight to me from heaven and i love it!

Of the 3 classes available i think i prefer scout, i want to prefer scout - its cool, the optical armour is an amazing concept but it has a minor flaw (more on that later), i also like rifleman with his mid range gun and extra explosive attack with a frag grenade, the engineer im not sure about - the sensor grenades are very very useful for displaying enemy positions, but beyond that im not sure now that hes just an underpowered support guy, especially bearing in mind i can just stun a guy with the stun gun, download the position of all his friends and upload those positions to my team for all to see (how cool is that?) and then dispatch prone, stunned enemy with a shot to the head - we'll see. The optical armour for the scout should be the sexiest toy out there, and im sure in single player it is - im sure in single player you can tip toe past an enemy very happy with your stealthy powers, and im almost certain the AI routines read something like IF SCOUT = ACTIVE ARMOUR THEN AI BADDIES = CANT SEE SNEAKY SCOUT HUMAN PLAYER, but in MP it doesnt work that way. The human eye is attracted to movement, if you move a muscle when an opponent is near you or thinks he can see you he'll sense it and shoot you, armour active or not. Ive been in super stealth mode, cloaked to the max, have peeped round a box to see if an enemy is approaching and taken a shot in the teeth because even cloaked and all Predator on his ass he can still see me because a human knows the 6 foot high watery looking prescence next to him has to be an enemy, not so the AI. So onto the rifle man then, and in truth i saw this glacial shift over the weekend, everyone starts as a scout and then slowly figures out youre not as invisible as the leaflet that comes with the armour instructions suggests! The rifle man is the most powerful of the lot (if there is such a thing) he has an assault rifle, and at that range where youre on the limit of an SMGs capability (the scout gun, if he hasnt picked a sniper rifle) his rifle still has plenty of reach. The rifle man is the only one who can throw a frag grenade over a wall or into a bunker to weed out those stubborn defenders and has extra body armour.

The maps are great from the Mill (my favourite) an outdoors sleepy village kind of map, the Market with corridors and open plazas, to Sandstorm, a big open desert map with, you guessed it, a sandstorm (now this one is perfect for the optical armour as its really dark and cloudy in some parts of the map) and other great indoor and outdoor maps.

I commented previously in JH's thread about not being able to hit anything, or use a full mag on an oppenent - after looking at the net there are 2 main reasons for this - a) im s*** and couldnt hit a cows ass with a banjo, after watching a number of kill cams its clear not every bullet strikes home like i thought it would, and b) lag - sometimes the lag is horrendous, you can be left emptying round after round into a guy in front of you and youll get all the right messages youre doing it right - jerking body, lots of blood, but the guy never goes down - truth is, he isnt there but your screen hasnt caught up with him yet. In one famous, controller biting, rage inducing incident i spotted a guy, shot him, and shot him, and shot him, and then he disappeared, as i stopped firing to 'muh?' at the world he reappeared in front of me and slit my throat - YOU MOTHER******* GODDAM BAST**** ARS***** and so it went on!

The game modes are outstanding. I know this because for some reason in the UK or maybe everywhere in the world there doesnt appear to be enough empty games available so as you search and search for a conflict game you never get a hit on a server so youre left with choosing 'any game' and this will eventually deliver a spare game, and therefore by luck or chance ive managed to play all game types!! My favourite?? 5 minute games with no respawn, one life, one chance - oh man see everyone become stealthy, cover seeking proper fighters then - i raise a middle finger to you MW3, this is the game ive been hoping for for years, god bless you Tom Clancy and PS3

[W8taminute]

Outstanding report.  I'm in total agreement with your second paragraph, 'revenge of the geeks'.  I'm one of those old farts who always gets killed but not in this game!  Here, the player with the biggest brain is the winner.  Unless you stumble into someone and are forced to shoot faster than your opponent. 

I'm glad you're enjoying the game, I knew you would.  I'd play with you but I bought mine for Xbox.  If the game goes on sale though, I'd pick up a copy for my PS3 as well.

[undercovergeek]

look forward to it - theres a distinct possibility we'll be so stealthy we may never say each other before the times up!

[W8taminute]

Played some more MP last night.  I chose Conflict again as the game type.  The first round was bad for me, I got no kills and 4 deaths.  The second round was better with 6 kills and 10 deaths.

During the first match this guy sends me a voice message over Xbox's messaging system telling me to stop being a douche and go for the objectives.  I sent him a voice reply using my best retarded voice that sounded like I was crying like a little girl telling him step away.  He replied to that with a text message saying his was gus. 

Gusington, if you're reading this, did you play Ghost Recon on Xbox last night and taunt me?   :)

[undercovergeek]

ha - brilliant - what class are you defaulting to?

[W8taminute]

^I'm working on getting all the classes up to level 4, then quickly getting all of them to level 5 thus unlocking a cheevo I'm going after.  But so far I think I prefer scout class.  It suits my style the best.  I notice with soldier and engineer you are either much more involved directly with the fighting or else needed to capture the objectives.  Scout is a class that allows the individual to choose to play as lone wolf, or support his brothers with stealthy flanking attacks.  I definitely like the scout the best.

What class are you playing mostly?

[undercovergeek]

i started with the exact same principles and thoughts as you but kept losing time after time after time in head to head confrontations, the SMGs for the scout just dont square up to the assault rifles of the Rifleman well - now, there is an arguement that says if the game is about positioning and thought then you will be behind your opponent and it doesnt matter about the weapon difference - you will kill him before he even sees you, but on some maps when there is no way round and its corridor fighting (rig, cargo) i like the big ACR and after familiarising myself with some of the maps there are good approaches to play like a scout but have the bigger gun! i usually play saboteur - i find for my play style conflict is a bit ' go here, get shot, go there, get shot, go there get shot some more', yet with the single objective of the bomb it concentrates my play - im not a multi tasker!

my colleague got to level 35 with the rifleman and man he had some toys and nice guns - ubisoft somehow, like others have wiped his progress, hes level 3 and not happy!

[jomni]

Nice impressions.  Actually sounds like Metal Gear Online.