Sniping. I can sit here, and honestly tell you that, given the opportunity, I would refuse to be a sniper on most ‘realistic’ shooting games. I’m happy to pop some heads in Halo, Gears of War and the like, but I’d much prefer to take charge of an assault rifle or an SMG in most ‘real life’ war based shooters.
If I was to envisage what should be the main essence of a game based around sniping. I would say it should, nay needs to be a game that portrays what must be an extremely nervy and tense type of warfare. It would need to revolve around stealth, operating in silence and shooting skill. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 dances with some of these ideas, but doesn’t fully realise them.
The game begins with you controlling Hernandez with spotting partner Diaz as company, you set out to try and recover a Bio Weapon that if activated, will apparently make the Black Death seem like child’s play. Sounds lovely! FPS fans will fall straight into the control mechanics, with everything here as you’d come to expect from the genre. The campaign itself isn’t particularly long, and you can expect to finish the less than exciting story in 6 hours or under.
It becomes quickly apparent that the game’s locations and story are all a quick disguise for what is a fancy shooting gallery. For the majority you are told who to shoot, and in what order, which takes away any challenge of figuring out your environment, and working out your enemy’s locations and patrols. This isn’t true for the entirety of the game, there are times when you will need to pick your timing, and order of shooting, but even then they all have red markers on their head, and positions come up on your mini map. This leads to some horribly linear gameplay. There is little to no scope to do things your own way, and you will spend them game going through the motions. If you do mess up a shot though, you will soon know about it, once the enemies know your position you’ll quickly be restarting from a checkpoint as there is little to defend yourself with from an oncoming hail of full automatic bullets (on any difficulty mode).
Talking about the difficulty mode brings me swiftly on to the shooting skill required. You’re made to believe that you’ll always need to take the distance and wind speed into account. And it is completely true, if you’re playing on the hard difficulty. On normal, while their effect is still present, hover over a target for long enough and you’ll be greeted by a nice round red circle, showing where your bullet is likely to land. Taking this in mind, if you want a more ‘authentic’ (if you can call it that) sniping experience hard mode will be the only way to go.
The game is very inconsistent with what you can get away with regarding what enemies can see/hear. There were times where I needed to replay certain areas, one time I was able to hide in the bush with no one seeing me at all, another I’d hide in the exact same place and I’d be spotted straight away. Anywhere else I seemed to move I’d get spotted as well. After a few more tried I’d go back to the original spot and all would be find again. The same can be said for shooting certain enemies. I’d fly through some sections picking off people when they weren’t in eye sight, and doing the exact same thing the next time round would have me being caught. I was doing as the game told me to do (as previously mentioned it is the way you have to do it) and I was still being punished for it. It was very frustrating.
Stealth as expected is present. With stealth knife kills an option that can be pursued at times. But for sinpers that are meant to have a silencer, they sure sound a bit too loud at times. And how some of the enemies can still remain oblivious to what is going on despite the noise coming out of my barrel is beyond me.
Visually, it is a poor use of CryEngine 3. Sniper looks like it could have been released a few years back, and even then it wouldn’t have looked great. With games like Crysis 3 showing what the latest CryEngine can do, it is a shame that the results here are well below par.
I would love to be able to give a review of the multiplayer section of the game, but after multiple attempts I couldn’t get in to a game. I’m not convinced that this is a bad thing though. With only one game mode available – the less than imaginative team deathmatch, and only two maps present, it makes you wonder why they bothered. And, assuming it’s just snipers and pistols available, I’m not sure I’m missing out on anything particularly adrenaline fuelled.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 then, has stumbled at nearly every characteristic I’d expect of a sniping game. It is by no means unplayable, if you are happy to have your hand held through a game, and follow instruction in a linear fashion you will find something here for you. I for one hope this will be the last game of this series that is released, or they seriously buck their ideas up.
