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

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Unlike Tom Clancy’s other franchise, though, there’s also an emphasis on teamwork – and not just in marking targets for your buddies to shoot, either. If you’re pinned down by enemy fire, the camera starts going haywire, and your movement controls are restricted to indicate that you’re suppressed. To escape, you need to turn the tables by getting your squad to suppress the terrorist pig-dogs in return.

When you’re Oscar Mike with your four-man squad, the third-person view brings a sense of physicality to the game. Your Ghost performs rolls, dives and dodges that’d have you folded up like a cheap deckchair and scrabbling for the Nurofen if you tried them for real.

Ubisoft has captured every scuttle and backwards roll of real-life spec ops soldiers down to the finest detail, and it shows. But when it’s time to take aim and make various future terrorists dance between your hot projectiles, the view switches to a zoomed-in over-shoulder perspective that lets you forget you’re playing a third-person game altogether. A good thing, when there’s precise aiming and split-second reacting to be done.

The COD comparisons will be drawn, thanks to its levels in South American favelas and Middle Eastern streets, but the gadgets and open environments could just give Future Soldier the character and distinctive play style a modern shooter needs to save itself from also-ran status.