The Wildlands are calling on their way back from the fire...
What’s this got to do with Duran Duran? Nothing. But as usual we
needed a prompt to get the writing juices making us, well, write.
Especially when we wanted to keep playing this tactical third-person
shooter, as we kept finding bits we liked, then bits we didn’t, then
bits we did and...
The 413th* Tom Clancy game from Ubisoft,
Wildlands (Wildlands! Wildlands! AGH!
Stop it, Simon!) offers a chance to partake of Bolivia’s finest in a
collision of the Far Cry games and The Expendables
movies. Which is definitely preferable to a collision of the Far
Cry
movie and The Expendables games.
It’s a big open
world thing, with more Bolivian countryside to savour than has ended
up in the nostrils of North Americans – which incidentally you are,
of the ghostly Special Forces persuasion. As is de rigueur
these days you have main missions and side missions, as you aim to
eliminate the dastardly Santa Bianca cartel and its big cheese, El
Sueño. Oh, and collectibles! Fucktonnes of collectibles! Stealth is
handy, bullets are handier, vehicles are often even handier (get to
da choppa!) and patience for many a tailing mission is saintly. If
the latter pissed you off up, down and sideways in the
Assassin’s Creed games then, erm, maybe you should look
elsewhere for shooty-shooty thrills.
You’ve some fun toys to
aid your missions, with drones being the most funk-laden. You can
use them to tag baddies, and let loose rather satisfying ‘sync shot’
bullet hell.
Hit South America in co-op and it can be more
engaging, assuming you’re not saddled with amoebic-minded online
dick fritters – who are all too often encountered.
There’s good,
there’s bad, but ultimately if you like repetitive shooting to the
tune of an often (unintentionally?) hilarious B-movie story then on
the razor’s edge you’ll trail. Because there’s murder by the
roadside in a sore afraid new world...