Some of the best video game driving experiences are in shooters. Well, if you equate “more visually extreme and abstract” with “best.” I do, and I really want to play the new Tom Clancy Ghost Recon: Breakpoint game after seeing that it’s full of buggies and gun-wielding off-road drones.
If you’re a gamer, you’ve probably already heard of this new Ghost Recon title or read the rundown on Kotaku. For everyone else, it’s the latest in a series of games about sneaking and shooting and stealing various vehicles.
The deeply dramatic trailer pretty much lays it out:
I feel like the narrator’s tone there is, like, two clicks too low for me to take the voiceover seriously but the visuals are stunning. Looks like there are a few off-road vehicles you can use on your quest to battle the baddies. In this short gameplay demonstration, you can see how they look in-game:
I haven’t played a Tom Clancy title myself since XBox 360 was considered cutting-edge, so I’m pretty far behind on the lore and universe. But some cursory research confirmed that these games have historically had a range of drivable vehicles which, in my opinion, not only elevates a “run, hide, find, shoot” game but also kind of creates is own genre.
Off the top of my head, the Far Cry series and Halo series have some of the most fun video game driving I’ve experienced. There’s something about the combination of high-stakes combat, somewhat imprecise controls and dramatic crash physics that makes digital driving in war games exceptionally amusing. Ever drop a sticky grenade on a Warthog and barrel rolled it into oblivion? Yeah, forget Gran Turismo, that’s the good stuff my friends.
So yeah. I hope the buggies are at least a reasonably big part of Breakpoint.