Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Phantoms

Give it a chance and enough time – and Ghost Recon Online will award you with catchy playability. Camera movements and UI polish are heavily needed. [Oct 2012]

A great tactical shooter, but you'll need to fork out for the best gear to stay competitive. [Nov 2012, p.83]

Even with a far too permissive gameplay and shooting mechanic structure Ghost Recon Online is able to satisfy players looking for a solid Free2Play experience, raising the overall level of digital games.

It's a fun, competitive multiplayer shooter that stands alongside its paid sibling. Now if only more people would learn to play the damn thing.

This free-to-play shooter from Ubisoft looks quite good, when compared to its competitors - Ghost Recon Online has great quality and a fresh, engrossing gameplay that is full of emotions. Unfortunately - good impression is damaged by a lack of polish. The game is imbalanced and clearly favors those choosing to pay, and these things can throw some players off. A few more months of testing would do this game good. In time it will probably be better, but right now it's a bit mediocre.

Ghost Recon Online is and average free-to-play shooter. The game should be appropriate for those who want something that requires more tactics than Call of Duty, but do enjoy a high pace. Unfortunately the maps and classes don't fulfill the balance-requirements that many hardcore PC-gamers will have.

Ghost Recon Online has moments of exciting and tense action, but they're fleeting events in an otherwise drab game that's plagued by minor annoyances and a cash shop that adds a pay-to-win element to proceedings.

Great controls. My only real gripe is people get bogged down in shoot outs but thats ok cuz ill run up on them and bunker them good. Great graphics and not hard to earn free credits to buy the guns. Not really pay to win though it looks like it from the onstart. gg

Being a free to play (with microtransactions) game intended to be able to be run in many computers for friends to play it in different builts, the graphics are not the best but that can be absolutely forgiven. It developed into a pay-to-win, but surely delivered many hours of fun with friends (even If I **** at shooters) with its non-conventional gameplay tactics that allowed for different playing styles and approeaches. And even if it's not a remarkable game, I believe that's a compliment for any shooter.

For starters I have been playing this game for say 3 months or so now and I have really enjoyed it thus far. It is one of the best tactical shooters I have ever played, but it is not without its flaws. First and foremost, it is a Pay 2 Win game. That is right!, to get the best gear, devices and weapons right from the rip you would almost certainly need to buy them to be at a fair advantage with veterans. I myself first started and grinded out my first Tier 4 weapons, if you can not afford to buy the weapons then you can expect to play 20 hours or more grinding to Tier 4 on one character. That part is fine if you are a hardcore type of person, but it will take the average gamer forever and a day to do it. Once you reach Tier 4 and you have at least a Tier 3 Tac suit with upgrades you can now begin to compete somewhat that is. I rolled many decked out players with a Tier 4 **** wasn't **** it is possible if you are a good player. The best way if you are not geared to deal with a person that is geared is to tag team it with a friend or teammate, they are anything but invincible but trust me it can be done with some coordination. Now with all that being said I did like the game enough to purchase all the top Tier weapons and gear (T9) and am now ranked amongst the top 1000 players on the Athena Leaderboards. I have spent around $300 to get all the gear and weapons for all 3 of the classes, so it ain't cheap, but if you enjoy this the way that I do and you are in a good financial position, then its worth supporting the developers or at least in my opinion. It really is a unique game and it does run rather smooth with nice graphics. Now there are 2 distinct things that really piss me off in this game and these are first off: The matchmaking straight up ****. Yes it as bad as BF4 with stacking Vets against the gearless noobs. It is indeed awful ...expect to get steam rolled allot against better geared teams. 2nd of all this game plays really smooth even when you don't have the best ping...I would say it has the best net code I ever seen....except for the fact if someone has a bad ping you almost certainly will loose to them nothing worse than a geared **** whatever reason they have a lag shield. But all and all the game is for sure worth a shot if you have the patience to learn its mechanics and the money to gear up or the time to grind it out. It truly is the only Multiplayer FPS I have ever played with this type of combat system.

Conclusion : You must pay to win... I have spend many many hours to play this game spread to my friends watched pro videos (as a competitive player). Now I rank between "General 1Star - Colonel 5", one of my friend is a total noob he has no idea what strategy aiming or pre-aim camera angle minimap strategy or anything else he just pays and grabs top gear and he is General 4 Star killing people without thinking just rushing forward, it takes me to kill him 5 bullets he kill me with 2... with number crounching you need ~300K AC to get Highest Tier Weapon and 150K AC to get Top Tier armor+inserts 75K AC with your build Devices 150K AC for all devices (they needed for certain situations) "To Max 1 class is about 600K AC with 0 mistake pre-programmed buying..." first 100K AC is easy to earn you can make it in 1 week by playing 1-2 hours a day easyly by leveling 3 classes and spend nothing... then your AC earning / day is aproximateliy 1K/Day you need more AC to repair armor and If you don't count first 100K AC you need 500K AC to max out and it will take about 300-500days if you dont PAY, if you pay its instant... This game should be PAID from start. All would be ok and could become a legend like CounterStrike... but its absolutely no FreetoPlay its FreetoDie...

Ghost Recon: Phantoms doesn't know what it wants to be. The mobility system has you leaning against walls, under barricades, rolling around corners, and even firing while you slide across the ground. Sounds good, until we talk about the accuracy system. Accuracy is severely diminished in a "realistic" or "simulator" type fashion. It doesn't make sense to mix the gears of war style cover + run and gun mobility systems just to slap huge accuracy penalties on mobility. The game also relies heavily on micro-transactions. The type that give you silly advantages some would refer to as"pay to win" or "pay to be competitive.' The first five or six levels will have you fooled, as the matchmaking algorithm is pretty good about matching you with other newbies at that level. Around level 8 or so, you will learn that the player with the biggest wallet has the best score, every round. Micro-transactions are tied to fancier gear like grenades, and even arbitrary things like reload time. That's right, you can pay to reload your weapon faster. Some of the purchasable gear is outright ludicrous and will make you feel as if you are shooting at people with an airsoft gun. This game had an image and an idea, but lost it somewhere along the way. Still, these pay to win type games have shown success in the past, so I wouldn't doubt it if Ubisoft is turning a profit from this game. Continuing the way it is, no legitimate gamer or competitive league will ever take this title seriously. It's a shame there isn't some "Vanilla" game mode, where equipment is normalized. The core gameplay is quite satisfying, despite the movement and accuracy systems contradicting one another. It's a shame greed got in the way of what was once a promising title.