Early on in Ubisoft's new shooter, you may find yourself in a sticky situation. I certainly did - and I was almost blown away.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a game that tries to blend Grand Theft Auto's open world with Call of Duty action and the drug tale told in Netflix's Narcos. It's big, ambitious, violent, cliched, dumb and ridiculous.
Occasionally it works wondrously. Often it doesn't. That's because Wildlands is so damned big. You take charge of a group of big-talking American military types attempting to take down the Santa Blanca drug cartel in Bolivia.
They're guys who yell things like "shitballs" during firefights and think nothing of joking about torture or hanging off the side of a helicopter with a loaded weapon dangling around their ankles. If you're looking for the definition of a cardboard-cutout soldier, you'll find it here.
As the game's opening montage of train heists, drug takedowns, shoot outs, explosions and tactical warfare shows, your job is to pick the cartel apart piece by piece. The game's many missions can be tackled a number of ways. Stealth, drones, snipers or guns blazing, it's worth investigating them all.
