Ghost Recon Wildlands free trial weekend starts today

Something for the weekend, madam? Invading anywhere nice? You might want to consider rounding up some chums to maraud across Bolivia in Ghost Recon Wildlands [official site], as the full game is free to play this weekend. Or you could play the open-world sneak-o-shooter on your tod, I suppose. Or against other warmen, as Ubisoft added PvP with the new Ghost War mode this week. Brendan and Graham enjoyed playing co-op together for a few hours, so it might be a lark even if you don't fancy the full game. A few hours of fun for free is an acceptable prospect.

The free weekend starts today and will end on Sunday. It's not live just yet but you can start preloading through Ubisoft's Uplay client. It will be on Steam too. Wildlands already has a free five-hour demo but this is certainly longer.

It's fine if you download a trial and play for a couple days with no interest in picking up the full thing, isn't it? It can be enjoyable in itself rather than being seen as evaluating the full product for potential purchase. A game with an open world, a variety of sneak-o-shooty options, vehicles, and explosions seems like a good place to muck about with some mates for a bit. Brendan's Wildlands review thought that was perhaps the best use for it:

"I'm sure if you have the three pals and a determination to make small roles for yourselves ("Let me drive!" – "Okay, I'll snipe from the hill" – "And I'll be the spotter") you'll find that nugget of enjoyability that the game is selling itself on. The lark of pretending you're all competent and likeable human beings. But I guarantee that before long it will become clear to you what's really going on below the surface level of shooting Latinos in the head – you are all simply doing a checklist together in an open world with none of the madness of the Far Cry series, and certainly none of the inventiveness of MGSV, a game which already perfected the genre of open-world political interference a whole year and a half ago. Imagine if that game had co-op. Herein lies the fatal flaw – previous Far Crys introduced your own friends for extraneous chaos. Wildlands uses your own friends as a crutch."

Potentially fun for a weekend, then?

The full version of Wildlands will also be half-price this weekend, so those who take a shine to it can keep playing. Progress will carry over from the weekend trial.