In 2005, a new series was discovered by Rebellion Developments, namely Sniper Elite. A third person shooter with some brutal mechanics that included lots of (satisfying) exploding internal organs as a result of well-placed sniper shots. Of course, other developers ventured out the open gaming world to seek out something even better that could easily compete with this successful series and that’s when City Interactive brought us Sniper Ghost Warrior… but is it a worthy adversary? Let’s scout this out for a moment!
Sniper Elite brought us a third person action packed shooter game where a World War hero took up his sniper rifle and brought havoc to the red army to save the world. It was an excellent game that introduced us this breath holding shooting mechanic where you could follow your bullet from out of the silenced barrel to its biological entry point. It was gruesome but satisfying to watch at the same time. Sniper Ghost Warrior wanted to explore the same idea with some interesting changes such as: implementing the world into a modern-day era, first person perspective and gorgeous graphics. City Interactive succeeded in some aspects of this brand new “gaming idea” but it wasn’t nearly as good as Sniper Elite due to the bland storyline, lack of polish and lots of bugs. Then again, they evolved over the years, made some improvements and this time they’re back again with Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 with a lot more features for us to explore…
Let us begin with the story setting in which our playground has been dropped. Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 takes place in Georgia where a civil war between 3 hostile factions is going on. You take on the role as Jonathan North, an American Marine that has infiltrated the region to prevent the next big war while searching clues about his lost brother, Robert North. You might wonder why? A brotherly mission at a bio-weapon facility went horribly wrong that resulted in the captivation of his beloved brother. This is seen in the prologue the game which is an introduction as well, to learn the basic mechanics as an Elite Sniper. Maybe this intruder has something to do with the disappearance of his older brother?
This prologue tries to show off the bond between the two brothers but in all honesty, it doesn’t add much to the plot in the end. It just seems like a reason for the younger brother to go all out against all the criminal forces in Georgia and find his brother along the way. The main protagonist, the one you’re playing is directly presented as a tough army cookie that’s blinded by revenge and doesn’t get along with all his teammates. It’s a mean sniping killing machine. The story lacks story elements that keeps you interested in playing. There are a lot of classic stereotyped characters with cliché dialogues and voice acting that’s rough on the edges. The lip-synching seems to be okay, it’s acceptable but often seemed rushed.
Normally, the franchise is known for its linear story and straightforward gaming but this time City Interactive tries to do something different and places the story within an open world context, which sounds amazing but becomes less interesting along the way. The open world works in the same way as any other open world kind of game. Story missions, side missions and points of interest are scattered around the world and it’s up to you to approach the game, the way you want it to be. Everything is spread out around your safe house. Your safe house is a place to rest and regain your health, buy upgrades, refill your ammo stockings and even craft mechanical stuff that can ease up the confrontation with the intruders of the region. Story missions must be selected from your laptop before you can continue your playthrough… but the game offers you the chance to leave the main story in the background for a while and explore the region for collectibles, resources and hostages in need of rescue. By doing some exploration, you’ll earn experience that eventually will grant you skill points to improve your character’s way of killing.
These missions/ activities within the region is all about killing targets, infiltrate highly defended outposts, infiltrate satellite dishes, save civilians and retrieve resources for them. It’s a good way of passing the time but it quickly feels like you’re doing the same thing over and over again and believe me it’s not that rewarding.
It’s also worth mentioning that the game offers you the chance to play it as you see fit. The game’s title is: Sniper Warrior Ghost 3. These names refer to your 3 different skill trees: Sniper, Ghost and Warrior. Each tree can be accessed easily and offer you abilities to improve your gameplay. However, skill points can only be obtained by collecting experience. Depending on how you kill enemies – stealthy melee kills, shooting from afar and go all-out with guns blazing – helps you gain points in one of the three skill trees.
Another feature is Scout Mode which kind of resembles Detective Mode in the Batman Arkham Series. This feature doesn’t really help you with finding some clues about the whereabouts about your brother but it can help with finding the best sniping vantage points and tracking down mission goals. It’s a helpful feature but it’s not necessary to “win” at this game. Using a drone to track your enemies is a very helpful tool as well, and this one is definitely something you’ll use often. It will smoothen the gameplay.
All these things seem to add up perfectly to the new philosophy of City Interacive: to play by your rules. Unfortunately, “to play by your rules” quickly resolves into using the same tactic repeatedly. I couldn’t help but notice that I was using only one tactic: get out my drone, tag as many enemies as possible, kill them all with the bullet time mechanic, complete my objective and be on my way to exhilarate. It was a standard but effective method to complete my mission objectives with ease. If you’re not into the “more easy way”, you can still pump up the difficulty setting, that has a tremendous effect on your breath gauge and wind velocity.
Of course, this brings to mind how important scope weapons are in Sniper Warrior Ghost 3. Just pick out the best sniping spot, to pick off your enemies one by one without panicking about their awareness status because there awareness is still easily triggered and that’s why I never really used my secondary rifle, unless I really had to. Aiming with this secondary did feel somewhat clunky but it’s a good thing that the sniping mechanic worked perfectly.
Your safe house also offers a lot of customization options when it comes to modifying your gadgets, armor or guns. It’s an okay variety between the offered items. Special bullets can be crafted such as lure bullets ( causes distraction), tagging bullets, exploding bullets, … Your drone can be upgraded as well with features such as night vision, luring and hacking abilities,…They’re definitely useable but nothing out of the ordinary.
Using the map was okay, some of the symbols were hard to figure out in the beginning but eventually, you’ll get it. It’s a good thing that Fast Travel Points were included because the region has some ground to cover. It’s also a big plus that your vehicle is transported to your chosen FTP as well. This lightens the burden to go to the infiltration area. The driving was okay but it didn’t feel very smooth. There was also the lack of a third person view which annoyed me big time. I wanted to enjoy my surroundings while driving because Sniper does live up the hype when it comes to visuals. There’s an enormous variety between the areas that fits the setting perfectly: autumn like forests, snowy mountains, military outposts, … all of them detailed in their own way and they all use awesome lighting and particle effects. Can you imagine what a high end PC would offer?? Unfortunately, there were also a lot of graphical hiccups like texture pop-ups, color changing scopes, bodies/ ground disappearing, frame stuttering, … etc., nothing “major” that a patch can’t fix. I hope they fix the loading times because they can last up to 5 minutes… and that’s a looooonnng time. However, once loaded the game’s responsiveness is acceptable.
Conclusion:
While the game offers a lot of new features… in the end, it doesn’t stay as interesting as it should be. The game looks amazing at most times when it’s not suffering from graphical texture hiccups, frame stuttering, … but this can be fixed in the future. No worries there. However, other features such as the open world missions, the story, driving mechanics, … are features that make “the game” what it is and these aren’t easily replaced. If you’re looking for a good sniper game, I would recommend Sniper Elite 4. It’s a more linear driven game but still with enough playground to go through and some extra content categories like multiplayer. The game also offers a far more interesting story, deeper customization options and a lot more brutal kills which result in great satisfaction. Wait until Sniper Ghost Warrior drops its price, before you give it a go.
