While previewing the latest build of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier recently, I saw first hand just why the game has been subject to delays. During my demo I encountered a series of bugs and glitches, none of which are especially worrying and all of which can be easily rectified. But one issue stuck in my mind.

You can check out my full preview of the game here, but read on for an example of a slightly different problem – an element of the game's design that's both illogical and antithetical to it's notion of player choice. Remember though, this isn't a doom-mongering post. This is merely an indication of the kind of tweaks and fixes Ubisoft Paris will have to implement before Future Soldier's May launch.

All hell had broken lose. Deep within a Colombian refugee camp, a firefight had erupted between my team of Ghosts and a warlord's well-armed militia. Grenades, gunfire and screams rang out.

Methodically making our way through the camp, the militia fell one by one until we reached the last aggressor. He was popping in and out of cover on top of a single-storey, flat-roofed hut. Easy pickings, I thought. Trouble is, every time I tried to gun him down he would suppress me, with the screen shaking so wildly it was difficult to get a shot off.

To make matters worse, when I wasn't being suppressed I was being downed, meaning an agonising wait for an AI teammate to revive me. Some of the Ubisoft Paris developers watched over my shoulder as I played.

After about five more minutes of public humiliation (I'm sure I got him that time! - I thought), one of the devs tapped me on the shoulder. “Why don't you tag him? Then your teammates can get him,” he said. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier draws upon team orders, just as in the previous games.

“No no, he's mine. I can feel it,” I foolishly replied, stubbornly digging myself deeper into a hole that the game wouldn't let me out of. Besides, my teammates had been shooting at this dude too, shouldn't they have got him by now anyway?

Easily another five minutes passed. Maybe ten. Maybe it was days. I lobbed grenades up onto the roof right next to him. That didn't help. Perhaps I was further away than I thought. I landed what felt like glancing, but fatal headshots. That didn't work either.

Eventually, the developer tapped me on the shoulder again. “I've just had a word with the person that actually designed this level,” he said. “You can't progress until you've tagged the enemy and a teammate has made the shot. Whether that's a good design decision or not...” he tailed off.

Between us, my teammates and I had probably pumped enough lead, explosives and shrapnel into this warlord's henchman to kill him ten times over, but he had barely flinched. It would only recognise a hit once I had clicked a certain button.

Plenty of games prevent you from shooting allies. Often they take certain aspects of control away from you. But in the heat of a firefight, with one standard enemy in front of you being shot repeatedly in the face, you expect him to go down. Or at very least, you expect to be prompted with the desired approach.

Yet that wasn't the case. One of the targets of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is to provide an experience that you can approach as you see fit. Want to take it slow and stealthy? Fine. Want to go in all guns blazing? That's cool too. But here, in this instance, everything crumpled to the floor. You could only do one specific, illogical thing to progress.

This issue wasn't a bug, or a glitch – it was an integral part of the game's design. So the decision to hold back Future Soldier is a wise choice. Ubisoft Paris needs more time to clean this kind of thing up. They need more time to provide the kind of experience that we all expect from the series, while also evolving it. Do that and they'll finally have a game worthy of the Ghost Recon name.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is currently scheduled for release in North America on May 22nd, 2012 and May 25th, 2012 in Europe.