From Russia, with bullets.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a game that I wish I had more time to play, so the release of the first DLC pack, Arctic Strike, is the perfect excuse to get back in touch with my squad. You and your fellow Ghosts will be introduced to new maps, new guns and a new game type in this DLC so I deployed deep inside enemy lines to try out some of the new content.
Should have worn my ‘Team Ghost’ thermal underwear.
What You Get
I’m still not exactly sure why this DLC is called Arctic Strike, there’s really only one map that has anything to do with the Arctic and that’s the new Guerilla mode map; Arctic Base. Those of you who have been enjoying Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s co-op mode will love this new addition. Arctic Base centers around one medium-sized building which will house your HQ for the first part of the match and offers a great mix of smaller buildings, low cover and wide open spaces. Blowing snow adds a limited visibility element to the map, at times, and things can go from under control to SNAFU’ed in short order.
The three new adversarial maps were designed, based on player feedback, to be a bit larger than your average map from the core game. Where I found that a lot of the original maps boiled down to one or two choke points as the main battlegrounds, the Arctic Strike maps feel more open. Skyline takes place on the roof of a very large building, among the duct work, solar panels and outbuildings where you’ll find a number of areas in which a good team can work together to cover all of the angles.
We got these stairs on lock.
Riot and Evicted both take place much closer to the ground and offer a run through the streets of Russia. Riot takes place in the bombed out city streets, with wrecked cars for cover and a number of buildings to duck in and out of. Evicted takes place among a series of residential high rises, with a lot of low cover objects, and provides some of the most intense matches with the new Stockade game mode.
Stockade is a new game mode that places downed players in a re-spawn queue, or stockade. When your team scores a kill, one of your teammates can then re-spawn. Periodically, objectives will pop up, much like they do in Conflict mode. Completing an objective will release your entire team from the Stockade and earn you a big score. Some people may not have the patience to wait around to re-spawn, as sometimes it can take a few minutes, but those that do will be rewarded with an intense and tactical game mode.
The Arctic Strike pack also comes with six new guns and a level cap increase of +10.
Verdict
I’m going to recommend that every fan of Future Soldier grab this map pack. You’ll get three great, new adversarial maps, my new favorite Guerilla mode map and a new game mode for $10. I had a great time with the Arctic Strike content and I’m going to play a few more matches right now.
