Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Ubisoft's latest offering in the long-running military-shooter series, expands on the formula of its predecessor, Wildlands. The island of Auroa, the game's setting, is a wild, lonely place, full of very unfriendly mercenaries lead by a man most often recognized as the Punisher. In other words, someone not to be crossed.
To help players survive in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint's khaki-clad universe, they can select from four classes to specialize in the field. There's the stealthy Panther, the support-orientated Field Medic, the rough-and-tumble Assault, and the long-ranged Sharpshooter. However, players picking the latter class may wonder why their cross-hairs are waving wildly whenever they try and focus on a target.
Taking a Breath
The answer is breath, too much of it to be precise. Like a lot of the military shooter genre, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint boasts a holding breath mechanic, whereby a prospective sniper can steady their breathing in order to line up the smoothest shot possible. This is done by pressing either the Spacebar for keyboards, or the Left Trigger for those using a controller.
The mechanic is especially helpful when using any of the game's longer ranged scopes, such as the one found on the FRF2, as the tiniest sway when a player is sitting on a hill half a mile from their target can result in a shot going wide by several feet.
Making the Shot
Once a Sharpshooter has lined up their target, and pressed the Hold Breath key, it actually takes a moment before the mechanic kicks in. This can make it difficult to take snap-shots, and turns hitting moving targets into a game of timing with a little luck and guesswork thrown in for good measure. Complicating this problem is the fact that the game's protagonist, Nomad, can't seem to hold his breath for long by default, and players will need to take Sharpshooter perks to improve his ability if they're planning on lining up a shot for more than a couple seconds.
Without these skills under their belt, Sharpshooters can get stuck into the game's open-world. However, despite following in the footsteps of the fairly successful Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Breakpoint seems to have taken a few wrong turns. With the game already on sale just days after its release, and with controversial microtransactions having to be scrubbed by Ubisoft after a public backlash, the latest title in the veteran series just hasn't arrived with the bang that many predicted.
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.