Before you buy Tom Clancy Breakpoint (2019)

Storyline of Tom Clancy Breakpoint

As the leader of an elite unit, we are shot down over an idyllic group of islands. Seriously injured, we quickly find out that the island is not the paradise that it made before. Because most of our comrades died in the crash and there are soldiers who do not hesitate to shoot us. If the cardboard comrades are done, we meet the first tough opponents. 

A still nameless group of elite soldiers have to escape and find some of the few survivors of the crash. The survivors and some other islanders have set up a hidden camp. 

This camp serves as a starting point for many missions or as a meeting point for informants. The hiding place is also sorely needed, because everyone who does not work for the local security company or the company is potential cannon fodder. Anyone who tries to escape from the island is killed by drones, so many have no choice but to live in secret. 

Behind all of this is an old friend: ex-ghost soldier Cole D. Walker. Walker was once your friend and fought with you at your side. The archenemy embodied by Jon Bernthal (Punisher, The Walking Dead) has set up a private army and it’s up to you to stop him.

Gameplay

The new effort from Ubisoft Paris is nothing more than a third-person shooter with tactical elements, equipped of a smooth, non-keypress cover system that can be played from start to finish alone or in the company of three other friends. 

As it was for Bolivia, in Tom Clancy Breakpoint the main gameplay element is once again the meticulous planning and execution of the attacks on the outposts controlled by the Wolves and the Sentinel contractors, which dot the 21 provinces in which the Auroa archipelago.

The preparatory phase that precedes an assault still sees the reconnaissance drone as the undisputed protagonist, which can identify and mark the enemies that are marked on the map with a generic red halo. In these phases the HUD becomes a very precious ally, with which to keep an eye on the position of hostile soldiers and information on weapons and equipment. 

While the use of brute force is always an option, the widely recognized practice in the Ghost Recon franchise requires players to operate in religious silence, and it is in these situations that the game is at its best.

While the enemies are not adequately characterized and we will meet them during the exploration in very few variations, a big gameplay variable is the massive presence of drones, technological chimeras built by Skell Technology and that populate the game in many different models . In addition to small and medium-sized drones, the Behemoths, the deadliest machines ever made by the company, are hidden in some places in the archipelago, used to defend priceless treasures. Tackling them will be very challenging, but also incredibly rewarding.

Disappointing AI in Tom Clancy Breakpoint

You always have an advantage over the AI ​​opponents, because the soldiers rarely act tactically. If they are shot at, they either hide behind a tree and cannot get out, or they run towards you across an open field. In both cases it is not a problem to transport them to the hereafter. If a group of opponents is keeping a close eye on you and you are unlikely to be able to defeat them, you can just hide. Either in the tall grass or you lie down on the ground and smear yourself with dirt. A new cool feature from Tom Clancy Breakpoint, but it’s too strong. 

Because opponents are so right in front of you and can’t see you. Even if you are a brown bunch, in an otherwise very hilly area. Should the opponents discover you anyway, brute force usually helps. Because as an elite soldier you have a perfect command of all weapons. And that’s why the guns feel too strong. With Tom Clancy Breakpoint, Ubisoft wanted to focus on realism. Which means that head hits are always fatal, but this means that even the most blatant opponents can be killed with the starting weapons from the starting area. Although you can find a new gun on every corner.

Class System

A great novelty is also represented by the introduction of classes, which follow the roles that everyone ends up playing in the field. There are four classes, Field Medic, Assault, Panther and Marksman, and they give access to a series of specific skills and perks that help make team gameplay significantly more varied. Each class offers a unique ability and gadget, which in the Medic class are naturally oriented towards healing companions, in the Assault class to reduce the damage taken and make the Soldier more lethal, in the Panther to be more stealthy and in that Shooter to more effectively view and eliminate distant enemies.

By completing a series of tasks it will also be possible to level a class to unlock additional perks, an aspect that favors the identification of the player in his role. Of course, both in PvE and in PvP we will be able to switch at any time from one class to another, without suffering any penalties. In short, choosing the one that suits your style of play will be one of the pleasures offered by Tom Clancy Breakpoint, which in this respect manages to offer a new mechanic with an undisputed charm.

In addition to the leveling of the classes, the player can climb as many as 30 levels by obtaining skill points from time to time, which can be invested in the branches of a skill tree not unlike that of Wildlands but much, much thicker, consisting of over 50 perks. active and passive with which to further customize the performance of our soldier. 

New Weapon System

Just like the classes, the new weapon system has managed to convince us and is a candidate to become a standard for the future of the series. We know how Ubisoft has a habit of frequently having its development studios collaborate all over the world, and it is therefore not surprising that in Tom Clancy Breakpoint makes its debut a mechanism of loot not very different from those already seen in The Division 2 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Nomad’s equipment is divided into three slots for weapons and five for clothing, and each object we find in the game world will have a specific value, defined by its Equipment Level.

Nomad’s Equipment Level is calculated on the arithmetic average of the values ​​of weapons and clothes inserted in the 8 equipment slots, and conditions the effectiveness of the protagonist when facing enemies, who also have a level. The damage modifiers inflicted and received depend largely on the difficulty selected from the four available (Arcade, Regular, Advanced and Extreme), yet even in Arcade if you were to face opponents with a level higher than yours, you will notice that they they will definitely hurt you more than usual and will need more hits to be knocked out.

In Tom Clancy Breakpoint we also find revolutionized the process that leads to obtaining weapons, which can be purchased from the store, found in the chests hidden in Auroa’s points of interest or received as a random drop from killed enemies. Since it is through the drops that Nomad level up Equipment, you will often have to update your setup and use a large number of guns, which are divided between assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns, light sniper rifles, DMRs and pistols.

Playtime and Side Missions

We came to conclude the main story after about 18 hours of play and, despite the brilliant start, the plot struggles to take off in the central part and has a fairly predictable outcome in the ending, an incomprehensible lost opportunity if we consider the delicious characterization of the character played by Jon Bernthal, who could be used to craft a goosebumps narrative line.

The events on the screen fail to involve the user also because the 28 missions of the main quest are all identical to each other and never offer, with a few rare exceptions, anything actually different from the routine of assaults on enemy gatherings .

Around the main campaign we find many secondary missions, most of them connected to the two factions of the island (Settlers and Excluded) which during the post-launch support will evolve with new narrative ideas. The only element that manages to break the monotony of the missions is the investigative cut that the Parisian studio wanted to apply to most of the activities, which requires the player to find clues, evidence and testimonies that can lead him to the next phase of the mission. In the main menu there is even a section dedicated to solving the great mysteries of Auroa, which can be solved by finding collectibles and other clues in the vast game world of Tom Clancy Breakpoint

Graphics

From the point of view of the technical realization the game suffers from many, too many problems for a triple A of its caliber, proposing some important things but failing on a vast front that goes from the AI ​​of the enemies to the animations of Nomad. In some situations, Ghost Recon even manages to appear very visually pleasing, particularly for a remarkable lighting system, but nevertheless we are often faced with coarse textures and careless models, except for those of Nomad and Walker who naturally they enjoy greater attention.

Bugs and glitches with comic implications are the order of the day and we also report some problems related to the animations of Nomad, especially when the player is dealing with steep surfaces or when it collides with moving vehicles. In general it seems that the AnvilNext 2.0 struggles, at least on Xbox One X, to support a game world as rich in detail as that of Tom Clancy Breakpoint, and the fact that the pop-up effects are really too frequent proves it.

The graphic uncertainties are not in the least comparable to what is undoubtedly the most serious problem of the entire production, namely the artificial intelligence of the enemies. When they discover the player, the soldiers flock to his position in single file, ending up stuck in bottlenecks that can be exploited to take out each hostile, one at a time. For a video game that makes realism and tactics its strengths, watching certain scenes kills the immersion and the fun very quickly.

Bottomline

The new chapter of the Ghost Recon dynasty manages to offer something new and interesting compared to the previous chapter, and it does so by embracing a well-established loot system, the son of other intellectual properties of the French publisher. Those who buy Tom Clancy Breakpoint know they are going against hours and hours of fun with friends in the immense virtual playground that is the Auroa archipelago, which will then expand over time with the massive post-launch support promised by Ubisoft, free for all. users.

Facing an enemy contingent as a team can even be exciting, but the monotony of certain dynamics and a flat and bite-free main campaign inevitably penalize the experience, further damaged in the gameplay by a gooey artificial intelligence.

At present, Tom Clancy Breakpoint is aimed exclusively at enthusiasts of the genre, while it will risk boring after a few hours anyone looking for something deeper. We do not think we are against the direction taken by the Ghost Recon series, but it takes much more to bring the franchise back to the old glories of the past.

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