Ghost Recon Preview: Rebuilding the Future Soldier | Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon®

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier ain't quite what it used to be. When it first broke cover - and when we last took a serious look at it - Ubisoft's tactical shooter series had evolved into something far removed from the games of old, having become an action-heavy third-person shooter starring a soldier who was, in Ubisoft's own words, "an F-16 on legs". It had turned into Gears of Recon, and it proved an unpopular shift in direction for a series once known for its tactical smarts.

"We'd just finished Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, but that was just an iteration of the first Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter," creative director Jean-Marc Geffroy says of Future Soldier's first pass. "The team wanted to renew the game - they wanted to stay faithful, but they wanted to renew as well. And sometimes, when you're like that maybe you go too far in one direction."

Remember the over-powered exoskeleton, the class system and the player tethering discussed at the game's reveal? Forget about it - all of it - as today's version of Future Soldier is a world away from the one first shown in 2010.

"The team was thinking about changing the game, and at the same moment we were working with consultants," says Geffroy on the decision to switch tracks with Future Soldier. "It was interesting - at this time, we needed another view from someone who could tell us that maybe it's a great game, but from a military perspective, it's just s**t.

"It was at this moment where we thought that we're too sci-fi - we had some good input from Special Forces who told us what really is their job. It was the right moment to change. We didn't change the engine, we didn't change a lot of stuff - but we changed the design, the visuals and the mission system."

Welcome to the gun show

First highlighted at Microsoft's E3 conference last year, Gunsmith is where Future Soldier lets you craft the game's tools. It's an incredibly detailed and comprehensive customisation tool that allows you to swap out various elements, from the sights to the barrel and beyond, with each piece coming with its own stats. Finding the right gun should prove a compelling exercise in alchemy, and it's a feature on all versions of Future Soldier. The Xbox 360 gets Kinect functionality that adds a tactile element, and while it's perfectly serviceable, it's hard not to see it as any more than a briefly diverting novelty.

It's one hell of an about-turn, although it's an about-turn that's hardly alien to Ubisoft, nor to Tom Clancy's extended family of games. I Am Alive recently shifted from a sci-fi survival horror to a taut downloadable action game, swapping studios in the process, while Splinter Cell: Conviction famously debuted with a hobo Sam Fisher and an elaborate combat system that were both never to be seen again.

Future Soldier's been taken down a similar path, and in its roundabout journey in the last six years it's ended somewhere near to where the series left off. Having flirted with gung-ho heroics, it's now returned to the considered yet fast-paced tactical shooting of the Advanced Warfighter games - which, if you can recall the brace of Ghost Recon games that came at the dawn of this generation, is no bad thing at all.

Gone is the gung-ho shooting, and in its place is squad-play that's easily directed and pleasing to tinker with. You're one of a team of four - there's no divide between single-player and online co-op in the campaign - sent out to fight in a series of nondescript and slightly over-familiar scenarios.

But - and don't tell poor old Tom this - no-one plays the Clancy games for their gripping stories. It's about technology and battleground wit, both of which empower the action and help elevate it above fellow third-person shooters, including the kind of game that Future Soldier once threatened to be.

The over-the-top technology of Future Soldier's old self has been removed, but in its place is a selection of gadgets that look just as satisfying and that have woven wonderfully into the game. First there's a remote-controlled drone that looks like it's fallen from the pages of the Innovations catalogue - it can be driven across land or flown across a short range, picking out targets and giving the lay of the land. Sensor grenades perform a similar trick, marking out nearby enemies.

Both of these tie into Future Soldier's other key introduction, a feature dubbed 'scan and execute'. It's remarkably similar, both in practice and in name, to Conviction's mark and execute; enemies can be tagged and then taken down, but the ability has been embellished. With the emphasis on co-op play, it's possible to tag kills for squad-mates before giving the order to pull the trigger, at which point the action trickles into bullet-time.