Sniper Ghost Warrior Review, Test of Patience

Operation Flashpoint 2 was supposed to be a fascinating shooter, but it met the fate of  near extinction. Although its gameplay and shooting mechanics weren’t that bad, the fact that you had to crouch for ages just to make a small sound, and everything is blown away with you having to start the checkpoint from start, was more then annoying for many.
Similar case is with Sniper Ghost Warrior, the concept of the game is unique but there are some loose ends that the developers must have tightened up to make the game a better First Person Shooter than its current state.

You are supposed to act as an elite sniper with a team to an American country where Local Government has been overtaken by some Hostile forces. You will also have to play as a Delta Force Operator for missions where better shooting rather than stealth is required.

So there is a dual role for you to play in the game. Although its sniping for most of the times, but the later role adds some color to the game.

For the gameplay, they have tried to make it extra ordinarily realistic and in effort of doing so, have ruined flavor of the game to some extent. The game has nice impression on the player once it starts, but after that at certain point, you find it quite rough and annoying. I had to complete the first mission in the game after repetitive attempts, talk about patience lessons.

It’s nice to kill some enemies and blow their heads off with your sniper rifle but it gets really annoying when you are going for objective and alarm sounds off when you thought you had cleared all the targets. But its always nice to see the bullet animation as it blows the two heads off in the line of fire.

Game mechanics in an attempt for perfection ended up being complex, poor AI in a sense that the enemy will spot you at anyplace anywhere anytime or they won’t even bother.  Extreme difficulty just adds more to all this. You have to be patient, way too patient, to reach your objective safely, just to know that you have missed something and you have to go back again where enemies are still waiting for you.

Graphics are descent and Chrome Engine 4 has delivered the goods to a large extent. Although the characters are not that detailed but still the lush green environment overcomes the other shortcomings.

Sound is a critical factor when it comes to stealth and long range shooting.Even the smallest of the sounds should be distinguished from the other sounds.

To be honest, at certain points of the game, sound effects are good while at some places enemies are alerted even if you are trying to be ultra stealthy. So beware of the sound, it betrays.

Singleplayer may not be as satisfying as you desire but its multiplayer may make you buy this game as it has most, probably all the goods of a good multiplayer game.

Old school game modes like “Deathmatch” and “Team Deathmacth” have been included with relatively a new mode called VIP. Here one player in a team act as a VIP making it a more vulnerable target.

For closing comments, Sniper Ghost Warrior can be a real feast if you are a die hard fan of either sniping or stealth based shooting games with some serious challenges. If you are not impressed by either, don’t bother.