Narco Road.... Gut Reaction. And my off topic waffle.

So with a break from hospital visits I had the luxury of staying overnight in my own home a few day's ago. After the essentials were taken care of (House still standing, pet cactus watered.... it's a thing!), I got to boot the PC and take a look at a few updates etc. (Damn you Windows 10 creators update!)

With my updates UPlay downloaded the newest DLC "expansion" for Ghost Recon Wildlands. Narco Road.

It's only a small fraction in size compared to the main campaign. Smaller map size yet more challenging in events to complete. Your character starts at level 20 for this DLC. I'm not happy that I had to create a new character for it. Even with my characters recreated there is a disconnect in my mind. I would have liked some sort of character use from the main campaign or at least an import option.

As for the expansion, maybe because I've lost my interest in GTA in the last few years/editions that I'm not that keen on this DLC.

I recreated my first two characters, then played a few missions on the recreated first character.

#1

#2

While this DLC turns the game into a hyper GTA version of itself, living life to the max at full speed. I found that rushing in was not good even if the game itself suggest that it is, as I got killed in what seemed like increasingly convoluted missions. Complex for the sake of it not just to test your skills but hard to actually do in a meaningful way. I think it's the second mission that shows this best so far; Escort the chopper, but you can't ride in it, go by road and your too slow to keep up, even going off road, so you fly, fly as an escort and you get a new objective to remove two anti-air missile sites, yet still need to keep up with the mission chopper, by the time you try and destroy the sites the mission chopper has flown on. It's a mission that could have been done better as a multipart. And all the game gives you for your efforts to try harder is essentially hassle over not having the cojones to do it. No shoulder to cry on here, just a fade to black and try again....

As amusingly rough and off topic as real player co-op can be they are a help in most ways, in this expansion you don't even get the a.i. versions.  At least early on. Anyway I'm a solo carebear first so I want to try it all solo. It's why I have three characters.... Solo once, solo twice, laugh at co-op character three.

So after an hour with the DLC I'm not feeling as compelled to play as I did with the main campaign.

That's my initial gut reaction.

Given my current real world happenings maybe I'm being overly critical and missing the obvious.

While writing this I thought I was harsh but there is this review, which I mostly agree with but have to say I feel the opposite in regard to the way the author feels about the vehicles. In my view the plane is the worst handling and the ground vehicles are feeling a lot better in the expansion. I guess it's all about game settings and perspective.

Here is another review also worth the read:
http://moviesgamesandtech.com/2017/04/25/review-ghost-recon-wildlands-narco-road-dlc/

So abandoning the DLC I went back to what I knew best, the main campaign.
I was a little taken aback when I saw that each of my characters campaign progress was reset to zero!!!!!

But thankfully after logging into each it was showing the proper progression details.

I was again tempted to pick between The Ilama and The Division rifles on my third character. The Ilama is better on paper but in practice I still find The Division rifle "feels" more accurate and effective. A true first world problem. As I said before it also sounds great.

My mood wasn't up to doing anything with serious objectives so I went onto my co-op character and tried some tag along.
Ultimately my mind wasn't with it at all, so it wasn't long before i bailed from the game altogether.

It's going to be a week or more before I get to do anything like that again.

On a side note: Yes a pet cactus, my wife isn't a cat or dog lover so there are compromises(on my part). In truth I saw the cactus in the local hardware place and it looked cool in a bonsai tree way, I had to get it. Comedic love at first sight, I picked "him" up, turned to my wife and said "I shall call him Spikey", then popped "him" into the basket with our other purchases. Another funny moment came a week later when we needed to return an item we had gotten on that day but couldn't find the receipt. I gasped and with a sad face turned to my wife and said "you lost his adoption papers!!"
Well worth the purchase for those two moments alone. :-D