Ghost Recon Future Soldier preview, new screens and hands-on

Why should you care about another modern shooter? It’s a tough question, and one I’m not sure Ghost Recon: Future Soldier can answer convincingly, even if Jeremy Paxman were giving it a grilling. Some of its environments look ominously COD-like, and those are big toes to step on. But under the generic visuals lies the ace up Future Soldier’s sleeve: deadly gadgets and gizmos galore. Basically, this is Sam Fisher doing Modern Warfare.

Take the drone – hitting down on the D-pad sends a camera-cum-chopper into the air and switches the view to an infra-red tracking cam. Scouting around with it gives you a drone’s-eye view of how many men you’re about to silently kill, and you can even mark them up for your team-mates to take aim at.

Or, if you’re feeling particularly unprofessional, just swoop the thing right into someone’s face and provide them with one of the more surreal moments of their (short and comedically ended) life.

Once a group of up to four enemies has been marked for death by targeting them and tapping u, holding it down tells your squadmates to take aim and fire in unison, prompting a slow-mo slaughter sequence and no small amount of satisfaction. A bit like the marking mechanic in Splinter Cell: Conviction. You know, the one on that X-thingy console we don’t talk about…

The Splinter Cell parallels don’t end there. They’re evident in everything from the Minority Report-inspired 3D UI and stealth-kill animations, to the radar grenade that flags up foes from behind walls. Stay hidden for a few seconds and your optical camo engages – that’s right, you’re freaking invisible.

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