Sniper: Ghost Warrior Review

14 Jul 2010 at 11:30:39 by Staff Writers
Systems used to review this title: (360)

I am not going to lie to you, when I got this I had mixed emotions. Primarily I was apprehensive, I'd seen Tim play the preview code and wasn't as keen as Tim was, although I could completely understand his excitement. Then I started to get excited, hoping that my apprehension would wash away as soon as I'd sat down to a good sniping mission or two, and that City Interactive had made a sniper game worth playing.

We don't get many sniper games, you see, and I am a huge believer that there is a market there which can be catered for. Of course it's probably not the best idea for a multiplayer game, but there is some for t(e satisfatfid a bos aimulction of sneaking around maps undetected and stealthily taking out enemies. There doesn't have to be much of a story, as Ghost Warrior has proved, but it's the attention to your role as a sniper which makes the game. Unfortunately, there are two or three occasions where you cease to play the sniper and are part of a larger guerrilla force charging through villages or jungle camps. Although I know this helps beak the gameplay up, I genuinely don't think it was necessary.

The problems then lie in the actual game itself. It all feels a little dated, can be extremely frustrating and also doesn't really have much to offer outside of the campaign mode. For example, there are 24 achievements, all relatively easy to pick up, and after you've played through the game you can expect to have collected 15. Great if you're an achievement hoarder, but not really a challenge. And this is the overriding issue with this game, it challenges you in all the wrong places, namely, it challenges your sanity. There were occasions in the game where I literally spent the best part of an hour trying to get out of a literal in-game rock and hard place. In addition to this I have spent huge amounts of time trying to get on a route, despite being able to see the route in front of me, because I've got a minuscule rock in front of me, or a log. This also happens in the water, if you're swimming around you'll find that all of a sudden you can't move. It's extremely annoying and one of the few things which demonstrate the lack of polish in the game.

But it doesn't stop there. To make the game more unrealistic, the enemy AI is just as stupid, and it feels as though the designers had just given up once the game was fleshed out. AI hardly move, and you can shoot an enemy in a group of two or three others, and they won't react. They'll just stand there, while you pick off their mates. But wait, there's more... The AI is more special than you think. Bizarrely, when you have an enemy in your sights, he is more often than not facing the wrong way, and shooting. This, in any other game, would suggest that you're successful at blending into the environment and that the enemy has no idea where you are. You would, in this case, be wrong. It doesn't matter which way the enemy is facing, as soon has he starts firing that gun, you're screwed. And to top it off, sometimes you can't even see where the gunfire is coming from, which makes it even more difficult to track your targets. Anyone who plays FPS games knows that trailing bullets back to the source is an invaluable skill which can help you identify where your enemy is, especially for a sniper. This seems to have been completely ignored in this game. If it weren't for the enemy awareness meter, which increases if you're in danger of being seen, or goes red when you have been seen, you'd stand no chance and wouldn't have a clue where your enemies were coming from. I used this meter more to confirm the targets who seemed to be shooting into oblivion were actually shooting at me.

But it's not all bad, despite most of it being pretty terrible. There are a few redeeming factors, like the fact that you do have to take into consideration everything from wind speed, breathing, visibility and the like. You're also Ghillied up pretty effectively and you're free to explore the areas and play most missions as you want. There are certain missions where you do have to pay attention to your spotter, but they're just as intense, and again, it's this variation in sniping gameplay which I think City Interactive has nailed. You also play as a spotter for another sniper and mark enemies while you try to make it to a sniping position, and these different game modes really do change the pace of the game. Couple this with a slow-mo bullet-time cut scene when you take someone's head off (not always, but most of the time) that never gets boring to look at, and it really does get the sniper juices flowing.

The major problem here is the game really isn't polished, the story is weak, the campaign is short (completed it in normal difficulty in under seven hours) and there isn't much replayability once completed, especially as there wasn't much thought or effort that went into collectibles or achievements.

Don't get me wrong, City Interactive have a good idea here, and there is definitely potential for the game to be the start of new niche FPS, but not as it currently stands. The game still feels like a preview, it doesn't feel complete and it doesn't look as amazing as some of it's rival titles. But it has potential, and I hope that City Interactive stick with it and make their next Sniper game longer, cleaner and a little bit less frustrating.

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