On one of the very first side missions in the awkwardly-titled Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, you're tasked with stealing a fuel truck from the bad guy Georgian separatists and returning it to the good guy Georgian freedom fighters. (Georgia the country, not Georgia the U.S. state.)
So I go to the point on my map and I scout out the small outpost nestled in the crook of a high cliff side. It's not the best place to be a sniper, actually. The cliff is high and the building is cramped below, creating lots of bad, obstructed angles. I only get one clean shot off from up high before searching for a better perch.
I end up going in for a closer approach, mangling the stealth after the first couple kills and mopping up the rest of the enemies at close range. The truck is locked so I have to turn on my Witcher Senses and follow a trail from the truck to a nearby bunk where the driver must have slept. Keys in hand I hop in the truck and drive off to the next map marker where the guy I'm doing all this for is. I'm rewarded with typical quest reward stuff---resources, XP---and then my radio crackles and another character is talking to me about the mission. I stand and listen just in case there's something else to do around here before I fast travel back to the safe house.
That's when I hear the rumble of the truck's engine. The NPC I just brought it has hopped in the driver's seat and is roaring right at me. Before I have a chance to move out of the way I'm run down like a dog. The death screen comes up and I have to load the last check point.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is that kind of first-person shooter. The kind of game where you finish a side quest and then the NPC you just helped blindly drives right over you. The kind of game where you can pick off a dozen armed enemies and then get killed simply standing in an empty road, mowed down by a guy ostensibly on your side.
The Ugly
There's lots of these small details that make the game feel a little bit like a B-movie. And that's OK, to a degree. I'm all for more mid-tier games that are a little bit bigger and more robust than indie offerings, but not quite as big budget as your typical AAA fare. The problem is a matter of priorities. Where are limited resources best devoted? Perhaps this type of game should focus its time and budget on creating a limited, but high-quality experience rather than trying to ape sprawling open-world games like Far Cry or big-budget AAA military shooters like Call of Duty. So here we have the military mumbo-jumbo of a Call of Duty but without the star power; we have the open-world sprawl of a Far Cry but without the interesting story and good writing.
Forgettable dialogue and mediocre acting make the game's story feel almost superfluous. It's often funny to see how foreign devs handle American soldiers and culture (and I'm sure the reverse is also very true). For instance, the game's protagonist, Jon North, is described as basically a video game version of American Sniper's Chris Kyle. The in-game description describes him as someone with traditional American values who believes firmly in the United States's role as world police.
Speaking of in-game descriptions, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 abounds with shoddy translation when you read through the various menu descriptions of characters and missions. Reading these you really notice that the game was made in Poland rather than the U.S., and not in a good way like when you play The Witcher 3.
Here's Jon North's Character Bio, word for word:
Jon North is a loyal soldier. He believes in classical American way of life, and strongly identifies with the notion of America being the "World Police." As a marine and a sniper he learned to trust his own instincts in distinguishing good and evil and never hesitates to state his mind to others. Natural leader with craving for control.
The Bad
There are other issues: Graphical tearing, frame-rate drops, enemies' arms sticking through barriers as they magically shoot through walls, and so forth. The stuff you'd expect, basically, from a lot of video games these days.
I'm really happy I opted to play Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 on PC. On PS4, the game's load times are out of control. Upwards of five minutes can pass between loads on console, making the early days of Bloodborne somehow look good. Thank goodness it's a little bit faster on a beefy gaming PC. But even there the load times can be a bit painful. I realize it's important to have patience as a sniper, but there are limits.
The entire production feels very much like Far Cry: Sniper Edition. The open-world filled with points on the map, the skill tree, the foreigner in a strange land come to save the day. I'm not far in yet, but overall I wish they'd left the story more bare-bones and focused entirely on missions. This is where things get good, after all.
The Good
The sniping in Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is quite good. Many missions play out as infiltrations of one sort or another. Find an enemy outpost, tag the enemies with your scope or drone, then proceed to take them out as quietly as possible. If you fail, either go in guns blazing or hide and make another go of it when they decide that you're gone.
On a side note, I long for the day when games no longer rely on this sort of alarm mechanic. If I was a murderous villain guarding an outpost and someone started sniping my fellow thugs, I wouldn't just go back to business as usual moments later when we couldn't track down our assailant. I'd be on high alert. I'd call in backup and stay put until they arrived.
I'd like to see games go much further with this, with enemies trying to save their wounded allies, or falling back to really secure defensive positions that required extra ingenuity from players. The alarm level wouldn't just subside in a few minutes, it would remain high until back up arrived or you took everyone out. Imagine playing a sniper game where you could intentionally wound an enemy just to draw out his compatriots. Pretty sadistic, but also pretty cool.
In any case, while sniping is fun and fairly deep, involving various zoom levels and adjustments for factors like distance, you can also play up close and personal with a variety of secondary weapons and melee take-downs. This is all great fun. I really enjoy taking over enemy bases in Far Cry and it's great here, too, only with lots more sniper gameplay. I also enjoy the bullet-time when you land a perfect headshot. Your bullet swoops and zooms toward the bad guy and you see it plunge through their skull in gory detail, blood spraying as they crumple and fall. You can turn it off if you want.
That's a nice, gory touch, but overall I think the graphics are pretty good. Nothing special, by any means, but not bad either. There's some very pretty moments, but these days good graphics offer diminishing returns. The game runs pretty well on my machine for the most part, bugs aside, with settings cranked to the max. (I run a GTX 1080 GPU alongside an Intel i7-6700k CPU.)
All told, I would have preferred CI Games to focus more on creating great missions and a more polished experience rather than an open-world with expensive cinematics. Then again, I still have a lot of game left. Early impressions can be deceiving. It's entirely possible that the open-world and story will surprise me down the road. I'm just not holding my breath.
Well, okay, I am holding my breath, but only because it helps stabilize my next shot...
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 launches today on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. I'd wait for a sale. If you like sniping games, there's plenty to like here. But it's still something I'd hold off buying until the price falls.
