Although the video game market is saturated with military shooters where you play as the Billy Badass who can shoot their way to victory, very few of them touch on the subject of the drug cartels and narco culture as a whole. In Ghost Recon Wildlands, you'll spend your time in Bolivia, a gorgeous and once free country that was recently turned into a narco-state by one of the most ruthless criminal organizations depicted in fiction - the Santa Blanca cartel.

In Wildlands, you play as Nomad, the team leader of a US Special Forces unit known as The Ghosts. Nomad and his team are sent to Bolivia, after an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent is exposed, tortured, and subsequently murdered by the Santa Blanca cartel. To top it all off, the US embassy in Bolivia is bombed in a terror strike. Throughout the game, you roam through the vast open world of this beautiful South American country, dismantling the Santa Blanca cartel with the help of your team, your Central Intelligence Agency handler known as Karen Bowman, and the Katari 26 (Bolivian freedom fighters). The Ghosts also fight a much more powerful group known as La Unidad, a special faction of the Bolivian government created specifically to combat Santa Blanca. The two groups reluctantly end up calling for a truce - Santa Blanca stops killing civilians, and Unidad allows them to produce and sell their cocaine. The odds seem to be stacked against our heroes... Or so it seems.

Ghost Recon Wildlands gives you complete freedom. There are four areas of the Santa Blanca cartel that need to be destabilized: Production, Smuggling, Security, and Influence. Each operation or section plays an important part for the organization, and crippling them is pivotal to your success. All sections are ran by an Underboss, the Head of the section, and four "Buchones", who are more or less high ranking thugs. In order to take down an Underboss and the Head of an operation, all Buchones must be killed or captured (usually, your CIA handler asks you to kill them). In order to go after the leader of the Santa Blanca cartel, you need to take down two Underbosses and two operation Heads, though it's highly recommended that you dismantle the entire cartel. You can attack the Santa Blanca operations in any way you see fit, and the game doesn't force you to follow a predetermined path. I myself destabilized Security, then Influence, Production, and finally Smuggling. You can do it in whatever way you prefer, and you can even partially destabilize an operation, go to a another one, then return. Or go ♥♥♥♥ up another branch of the cartel. The choice is yours.

The gameplay loop of Wildlands consists of exploring the region of the map that you're currently in, searching for intelligence that could give you a lead on the local operation, and once you have the lead, you go to work. You start attacking the objectives one by one in order to draw out the Buchon, and then you strike. Like I said before, once you deal with the four Buchones, it's time to go after bigger fish. Most missions boil down to the same thing: kill a high value target, destroy a location, interrogate a special target, rescue an important person, etc. There's enough flavor in the game to keep you entertained, though, so you won't feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again, until the last three areas of the game (assuming you're going for 100% destabilization).

The most repetitive aspect of the game, however, are the Rebel Ops. There are side missions that need to be completed in order to assist the Katari 26 rebel group, so that they can provide you with better support during gameplay. They can deliver vehicles to you, provide mortar fire during combat, create diversions, and spot for you during stealth. Completing rebel ops reduces the support timer cooldowns and they improve other aspects of their skills.

Wildlands also features a skill point system, where you can earn XP to level up certain skills in different branches. You can upgrade your squad mates so they have more health or so they kill enemies faster. You can upgrade your drone to give it an explosive charge, thermal vision, or a noisemaker to lure enemies. You can upgrade your own skills to reduce the speed at which enemies detect you, increase your health, or upgrade your equipment. Weapons and attachments can be found all over the world by looting boxes in order to add the item you found to your inventory. You can customize Nomad, your character, by changing their clothes, their appearance, and even their gender (though canonically, Nomad is a male).

-Wildlands can be played solo, with AI partners, or you can play with three other friends to help you take down the cartel.
-Sometimes, the map can be too big for it's own good. This is a pattern followed by a few other Ubisoft games. I recommend having the Katari 26 bring you a helicopter for most of the missions in the game. You'll quickly get tired of driving, trust me on that.
-Apparently, the game has a PVP mode called Ghost War. I didn't try it, but you probably could, assuming anyone is playing it.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands is one hell of a game that tends to go on sale quite often, and for a great price. It's a breath of fresh air from most military shooters, and the Wildlands experience gives you freedom to play the game your way, something not many other games truly let you do. Play like a Ghost, sneak in the shadows and make the enemy scared of the dark... Or go in, guns blazing, and destroy everything and everyone with your skills. Whatever play style you prefer matters very little, because you're going to have fun even if you leave your comfort zone to try new tactics.

9/10