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Did Ubisoft Jump the Shark? Ghost Recon Breakpoint Channels Battle Royale Scum Fortnite

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Matthew Proffitt
Last Updated

By CCN.com: An ethereal Wall of Death, Guns, and Adrenaline—sounds like Fortnite, right? This time, you are wrong. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint has adopted “The Wall” in 4v4 Player combat. In other games, it has made sense. Apex Legends and Fortnite use shielding tech, there may be something in the universe which makes sense for The Wall.

The Wall for Breakpoint? You get random radiation. What kind? From where? Why does it seemingly pause in its progression over the map? Nobody knows. At least Blackout had poison gas that got released in stages. Sure, it spread after release, but it didn’t really have quite the same WTF?! Factor.

How Does The Wall Impact Breakpoint?

In a more realistic tactical, team-based third-person shooter, it just feels gimmicky. Were it exchanged for explosions, napalm, landmines, close air support, or even sniper fire, it might seem to fit the genre. Unfortunately, an otherwise stunning opportunity to expand a genre looks to have been completely wasted.

What Does Breakpoint Do Right?

Breakpoint does, however, improve on a number of genres by proposing a balance-testable solution to the cross-mode progress problem. If players have tens or hundreds of hours worth of content to play, they mostly won’t play it if they have to restart from Player Level One.

The Ghost War mode which imported The Wall from mainstream battle royale titles such as Fortnite and Apex Legends is essentially a 4v4 Search and Destroy playlist with no primary objectives on the map—so basically, elimination with a twist.

via GIPHY 

What Should Fans Of The Series Expect?

Plan for a storm of gimmicky, battle royale features stuffed into a tactical shooter. It satisfies many core tropes of the tactical shooter genre, but it has muddied itself with center objectives with no direct requirement to the game. Yes, they put a secondary objective at the middle of the map. If you don’t capture it, sure, your enemy has an easier time killing you, but it doesn’t necessarily kill you.

Oh, and snipers. Expect LOTS of snipers.

via GIPHY 

Unlike Fortnite and or Halo which balance the impact of long-range weapons by restricting them to luck or objective locations, Breakpoint hands them out to players all over the place.