Created by a smaller game development company, Sniper: Ghost Warrior is a budget game, which retails for roughly 30-40 dollars in major stores around Australia. More often than not, these cheapies aren’t really worth the money you pay for them despite their low price but City Interactive have turned the tables of stereotypes to bring us a game worth playing.
When you first hear the name you say to yourself, “Oh my God, another Sniper game that will fail miserably”. Two other games which begin with ‘Sniper’ (Sniper Elite, and Sniper Art of Victory), have fallen well short of the mark. There is some sort of weird obsession with Snipers which draws people to the game, fortunately if you have been enticed by it, this time it’s a decent buy and you won’t have wasted you hard earned money.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior takes place in the modern day Jungles of an unknown country where the protagonist, dressed in Ghilly suit, goes around trying to takedown a drug lord. I was hoping for there to be a range of missions, in different settings, but it seems that it is all based in the steamy, humid tropical Jungle. As in most budget games, there is no depth in the storyline, and the first sentence of this paragraph basically sums it all up you. You begin by botching the one clear sniper shot you have on the general, then spending the rest of the game playing a game of brandy with bullets with him.
The game is based on the Chrome 4 Engine which is rather like the source engine, which in turn, gives an extremely artificial feel towards the movement of the characters. In addition, the invisible boundaries have been cheaply and quickly constructed to stop you going out of the map. This leads to frustration at times as your see this amazing sniper who kills some absurd amount of enemies, unable to jump over a rock about 20 cm off the ground. Coupled with other glitches which makes your realise that it’s only a game, is the fact that you can be puffing extremely loudly while talking in a calm voice, or conversing with over the radio while you hold your breath. Might I also add the voice acting is definitely subpar, but hey, that’s what you get for a 30 buck game. Yea they may be simple little things that don’t affect the playability of the game, but they sure are annoying when you notice them.
The weapons in the game do not vary much and another annoying factor is that you can only carry one main weapon at a time. Therefore once you switch from your sniper to an assault, you are basically stuck with using your sound flare for the rest of the mission as sniper rifles are hard to come by. Another impeding factor of this game is the fact that the AI is not wired properly and once alerted, the enemies are able to shoot you as though they were the winners of the recent alienware call of duty 4 tournament with godlike precision and aim . They also have some way of seeing you without thermal goggles, through all the bushes, trees and shrubbery. These superhuman bots, then force you to keep using these med syringes which help your recover health, and yes, it is a health bar system out of 100, but at least when you get lower than 30 you can regenerate your health back to a maximum of 30. However if you are playing an assault mission, you will find yourself jabbing your arm with syringes constantly like a heroin addict and wondering why you having died of a heart attack cause by the copious amounts of adrenaline forced into your bloodstream.
The Call of Duty franchise as we know and love, is one of the most godly figures in the gaming industry. City Interactive have gotten down on their knees and prayed a prayer; “What would Call of Duty do, if they had to make a game.” After their prayer, they had a devine revelation that perhaps they should include throwing knifes and ‘secrets’ to the game. However the throwing knife plays absolutely no purpose with the short range it has (you may as well use your silenced pistol) and the secrets, little laptops, give you nothing at all except something to read in the main menu. It would have been better if they were left out, so we didn’t get the impression it is a call of duty wannabe game.
Ok so there’s my rant torturing out the very worst aspects of the game, well, it’s time for my rant of what was actually good about the game and why I said it wasn’t a complete waste of money. The Sniper Rifle feel is extremely nice and the implementation of wind speed and direction, gravity and even the corriolis effect (for those insanely long shots) adds an extra depth to it. This is definitely a huge plus for it as not many games have done this nicely and it gives it that true sniper feel. You can hold your breath to decrease hand movement, but immediately after, your heart rate will increase and you will have to wait to get your breath back. City interactive and not forgot that sprinting effects heart rate but surprisingly turned a blind eye to jumping... doesn’t really make sense but whatever. Even the other weapons handle extremely nicely (for a low budget game) and each weapon has a different feel to it. The sounds of the game are quite nice with the ambience of the jungle being present in most of the game. Waterfalls will sound like waterfalls, silenced bullets will sound like silenced bullets.
One thing that impressed me is the detail of the scenery and the graphics of this game. You really don’t expect much but this game will give you a shock. Of course it’s not as good as Crysis, but if you have the game on max settings, it really does give games such as call of duty a run for its money. My favourite part of the graphics would definitely be the water which really does hold its own against more expensive retail games created by enormous capitalistic gaming companies.
For a cheapy budget game, this is worth your dollar. Sure, it’s not the best game out, but it will keep you entertained for hours, and for a steal at 30 dollars from EB, why not?
Written by Geoff Yam.
Not every "bad game" deserves its reputation, some are just misunderstood because they were too ambitious, over hyped or heavily plagued by a bad development cycle.
Shut your mouth.
No Mans Sky first trailer looked like this epic world of exploration and conflict.
Reality was - barren waste lands with creatures looking straight out of Gary's Mod.
No Mans Sky also promised the ability to play with friends which all was said during talk show interviews.
Reality Was - Absolutely zero multiplayer found inside the game, there were even sketchy moments of discoveries disappearing if you happened to travel far enough into the center of the universe.
The developers also promised a really cool ending to the game once you reached the center of the universe.
Reality Was - ...just YouTube the ending and realize how much of a shit show this game is.
They EVEN came back with some base making update.
Reality Was - They first sold you on a game of massive nearly endless space exploration, though they came back out with an expansion pack based on base-making which promotes squatting on a damn planet and doing very little.
Stahp.
MP as you claim was never, ever promised. In fact, it was explained in 2014, 2015, and 2016 that the game wasn't MP.
Lack of reading comprehension (GI's "Stop Thinking of No Man's Sky as a Multiplayer Game" 2014) isn't the fault of the developer.
Are some promised things missing from the game? Yes. Are some unpromised things in the game. Yes. Were there lies written by hack journalists and repeated in echo chambers touted as truths (no large scale space battles)? Yes
There are two endings to the game, in reality.
Reality is, you haven't played the new update. Your base and every single space station has a teleporter to quickly move between your base and the space station. That means you can move across the galaxy in the blink of an eye.
My take away from this is something I cling to religiously. Price will often time dictate my expectations levels and perhaps rightly so.
Something priced at $15 to $20 bucks will receive a less critical (not a pass) eye as opposed to a $60 dollar one.
When I put down $60 im expecting a life changing experience. When I give you $10 to $15 bucks I understand that this project may be something personal, or very niche or perhaps even vaguely resemble a game as I know it in its traditional sense.
time and price give one the ability to experience a game quietly and without reservations.
This is not great for developers, especially indie ones, but sometimes it's all you can do to truly enjoy something.
Daikatana was crap, though, not even time can help that mess. Everything else on that list I can mostly agree with.
Why is there a picture of No Man's Sky? The piece doesn't even mention that game at all.
DSOGaming writes: "Even though City Interactive has not revealed the latest sales numbers of Sniper: Ghost Warrior, GameStop revealed that City Interactive's first sniper title has managed to sell over 3 million copies worldwide."
I think this game got a strong PC following, but I would never buy this with that high standard arma3.
It like Aliens: Colonial Marines means f***-all chance of improvement in the industry. A publisher just has to use the right name and they can sell literal sh*t.
I thought the game was awesome. I played the later PS3 version and didn't notice many technical issues.
Yeh S:GW sold like 1.5m on the PC beating out the PS3/360 sales combined!
Sniper Ghost warrior 2 doesn't look to be doing so good right now but I don't know the Digital sales figures yet.
and when i say not good it's sucking on all 3 platforms!
The COD crowd foamed at the mouth for a game chock full of "quickscoping."
Little did they know: the game was nothing like that.
This was all a joke, by the way.
If anyone didn't play the game avoid this.
SPOILER
Remember that ending to the game? Worst ending to any of the games I've ever played. After that last shot in the last mission, The End. Absolute worst ending lol.
Exactly.
"Oh, look, you shot the antagonist. GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!"
And then the game cuts off. Din't even let us manually get out. It just says, "The End" right after she tells you to get out of there.
By the way, my campaign completion time, if I remember correctly was 3:38:45. Truly, a long game, right?
Today sees the re-release of the surprisingly popular Sniper: Ghost Warrior in a brand new retail package, known as the Sniper: Ghost Warrior – Extended Edition. Available now for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the Sniper: Ghost Warrior – Extended Edition includes a number of new bonus features.
