The Digest: A first person shooter that’s main focus is set on sniping. The game, though a good idea, doesn’t stack up to today’s blockbuster titles.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: June 29th, 2010
PUBLISHER: City Interactive
DEVELOPER: City Interactive
ESRB RATING: “M” for Mature
GENRE: First Person Shooter

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:
Sniper: Ghost Warrior delivers an extended stealth gameplay experience that challenges players with a variety of strategic and tactical choices that affects how they approach their objectives and eliminate their targets.

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• The most realistic sniping experience in a videogame ever, right down to managing your breathing for increased accuracy of sniper shots.
• Enjoy a fully realistic ballistic system that accounts for bullet trajectory, including bullet drop and environmental affects such as wind, fog, and rain.
• Pull off the perfect headshot and watch your bullet strike the enemy with pin-point accuracy in Bullet Cam mode.
• 4 types of sniper rifles

Sniper Ghost Warrior is one of those games that you skim past while looking for Halo. In the midst of all the “Triple A” first person shooters out there, this game just doesn’t stand up with the rest. The story of City Interactive’s game is simple, the democratic government of Isla Trueno has been overthrown and a military regime comes into power. The country becomes a theater of influence war. You are sent as one of the covert commandos to support the rebels fighting their oppressor.

You, and one occasion another sniper, are sent out to silently infiltrate and handle the situation. Unfortunately, something that could have been fairly exciting fell on its face. The game boasts a realistic sniping ballistic sniping system that requires you to take the distance fall off and environmental elements, such as wind into effect. On the easier modes, a red dot will even indicate where the bullet will hit. On the hardest difficulty, that helpful red dot isn’t there, making the game next to impossible to play. Only hardcore fans of these games will welcome the challenge, but everyone else should definitely stay clear of that difficulty.  After the training, you’ll be a fully fledged “Ghost Warrior” and your sniping skills will be needed.

By the 4th level of the campaign, you figure out how the game is going to be and it doesn’t steer too far from that path. The game does break up the sniping with a bit of run-and-gun gameplay called “Assault Team”. At first it’s a breath of fresh air, but it quickly feels tacked on in a force effort to break up the redundancy. In the end it just doesn’t work.  Ghost Warrior’s gameplay, just gets dull and repetitive too quickly which is unfortunate because a game focused solely on sniping could be great.

An important part of this game is the stealth dynamic. Crawling through brush, debris, and the utilization of silenced weapons are essential for this game. The only problem is that the stealth mechanic doesn’t work very well. If the enemy is facing the opposite direction, you’ll have no problem, but if you’re crawling through the grass slowly and hiding in what seems like a concealed area (like training shows you) it’s ineffective. The enemy spots you before you spot them making it difficult to be stealthy in the first place and when you’re spotted, it’s almost impossible to stay alive.  And to have nothing but this for 16 levels each of which are only about 15 minutes long, you’ve got a short game on your hands.

Visually the game looks pretty good. The scenery and backdrops are very lush and the recreation of some of the South American rainforests is nice to see as well. The game uses the Chrome Engine, which was used on Call of Juarez. There are problems with some of the lighting though and at times you will notice quite a bit of flickering in the shadows. It seems like nitpicking, but when it’s a sniping game and movement is what you’re looking for, it can be a bit distracting.

Multiplayer for Ghost Warrior was something that started out to be something somewhat fun, but declined with each bullet fired. The whole game is focused on everyone sniping, so if you’re not a fan of people camping, don’t play the multiplayer. You’ll just get upset. As soon as the game starts, you essentially want to run, hide, and wait. When you do spot someone it’s kind of exhilarating at first, but since the multiplayer doesn’t have that handy red dot that tells you where the bullet is going to go, it’s turns into a big guessing game. Shoot a bit above and it goes left due to the wind. So you aim a bit more to the right but it’s too far over. It’s frustrating. When you do miss, and that will be a lot, the bullet hitting a surface is pretty noticeable so it does help. The worst part is when you and another sniper notice each other. You both start to shoot frantically and it’s based off luck at that point. The multiplayer is forgettable and the 15 minutes it took to find one game isn’t enjoyable either.

Conclusion: Sniper Ghost Warrior is a game that was destined to go into the bargain bin as soon as it released. With a troubled single player, generic story and some forgettable multiplayer, you have a game that was forgotten as soon as it was announced. Sniper Ghost Warrior could have been a great game. It’s not a common thing to recreate a militaristic sniper “simulator” and I applaud City Interactive for that. The execution was just not as fully developed as we have become accustomed to.

Single Player: 2/10 | Multi-Player: 3/10

Special thanks to City Interactive for providing us with a copy of the game for review.