Stick together, use the ‘regroup’ and ‘go to’ commands to move your squad slowly and try to find the UNIDAD troops, using either your binoculars or the small, remote controlled drone (don’t fly it too far away, or it will lose signal) to mark them on your map before engaging. So approach the orange areas with confidence, the purple ones with caution. And when you’ve sent your three pals off on their own, that can spell a quick death. These guys have armour, shields, snipers and tend to gang up on you. More dangerous, though, are the UNIDAD private contractors, denoted by the purple map splodges.
The all-important ‘fire command sends your team-mates pretty much off on their own – the fussy order system from previous Ghost Recon games has been streamlined in Wildlands, and each of your AI comrades operates pretty much autonomously, fanning out across a wide area to pop bad guys you yourself may not have spotted. These are basic grunts and you and your squad ought to be able to take them out easily enough. Orange means there are cartel soldiers nearby. On your mini-map, you’ll often see nearby areas highlighted either orange or purple. Order your squad to ‘fire’ – again, by holding the F key – and when the lead car rolls over your C4, hit the detonator then watch as your buddies neatly pop a bullet through the truck’s windscreen and into the driver’s face. Pull in front of the convoy (the 4×4, strangely, seems to be one of Wildlands’ fastest vehicles, though you can also hijack a sports car) and lob a couple of charges into the road. A better tactic is to finish the first two missions, bump your character to level 2 and use one of the in-game hubs to purchase C4. Simply pulling up alongside the convoy and ordering your squad to open fire – which you can do with a single press of the F key – almost uniformly results in failure. But in Wildlands, especially at the game’s beginning, the guys guarding the convoy trucks are much better armed than you are and move very, very quickly. Simply pile your car into the target vehicle then hop out and gun down the remaining enemies. In past Ubisoft games – and in games generally, actually – missions like these are straightforward. Be particularly careful of the ‘convoy’ assignments, wherein you have to stop a truck of cartel supplies from reaching its destination and put down its entire escort of armed guards.
Side-missions however can be very tricky. Also, story missions often result in areas of the map becoming cleared out of all cartel goons, allowing you to freely access other goodies, which we’ll get into later, and fast travel between a greater amount of waypoints. Intel folders, typically, are located right next to story missions, so instead of traipsing back and forth around the map, doing the main jobs one-by-one carries you and your squad along a natural route around each district. So, there are two ways you can about each district: either you collect all the intel and then finish the story missions on the bounce, before facing the cartel boss proper, or do them one by one. By collecting intelligence (marked on your map as a small brown dossier and generally guarded by only a handful of enemies) you unlock the bigger, more difficult story missions. Wildlands’ enormous map is divided into 21 districts and the objective within each is to force a local cartel boss out of hiding and then assassinate them.