Ghost Recon: Wildlands received a complete overhaul to the helicopter controls last month, but that didn’t solve the frustration of weird and fatal landing mechanics.
Wildlands gives you the choice to spawn a pickup truck, a van, an armored SUV, or a helicopter, but the vehicles needed to traverse the mountainous terrain of this open-world game have been less than impressive. The vehicle spawns have been awkward: sometimes, a helicopter might appear too close to a building to take off without destroying the rotor blades. Worst case scenario? Your helicopter kills you.
Dirt bikes seem to be the most reliable way to motor around Bolivia if you can find one on the map, but certain areas contain mountain ranges or canyons where helicopters would be the best option. Unfortunately, it’s a gamble whether or not your helicopter will do weird acrobatics and lead to death.
Seriously: the helicopter might randomly do a quick series of backwards flips and crash during takeoff or landing. Sometimes the helicopter will flip and eject your body, killing you or pushing you through the map. This can be really frustrating when you’ve worked so hard to be stealthy on extreme difficulty, only for your helicopter to kill you and fail the mission.
Player “LocoRocker” shared his frustrations on Reddit alongside a video of his helicopter sending him falling through the map: “Helicopter landing is buggy as hell. This happened to me way too often.”
Wildlands has received several updates to improve the player experience, and the vehicle spawns are a little less ridiculous now, but it seems a little odd to completely overhaul the controls of the helicopters in July’s Title Update 6 and not fix the wacky helicopter movements.
Ubisoft said the changes were made to helicopter controls and handling to “make flying both easier to control and more authentic.” Nothing feels authentic about wacky backflips or falling endless through the ground, and these issues seemed to have only increased since Title Update 6. Naturally, players are venting on social media because the random acrobatics are still happening and destroying their hard-earned progress. Aviators, beware.