Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 could easily be called Sniper: Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed: Sniper as it’s based in a vast open world that allows you to pick your own route, go exploring, climb towers, find collectibles and complete missions the way you want to. And this is a good thing. I remember playing the last Sniper game and having to follow marked paths to a specific location and shoot targets before bugging out down a specific path. There are some missions where you have to follow a specific path – I mean how do you get to a mountain top ruin without following the mountain path? But pretty much it’s like like Frank Sinatra said; I did it my way.
The game begins with a tutorial mission where you and your brother are scoping out an abandoned facility looking for something. You get to use your sniper sense to track footprints, drone to mark enemies, and perfect the art of long distance head-shots before climbing down and engaging in more traditional FPS fare of room clearing with a machine gun.
Then there is a twist, then the main game begins where you are dropped into Georgia to try and quell a Separatist uprising, a one man army so to speak, but with stealth and sniper skills rather than run and gun – though you can do it either way.
The open world is vast and detailed, there is plenty to do just in exploring. The missions are varied, and can be approached in any way. Explore around the mission are and you might find several ideal sniper spots, or just walking in carefully sniping people as you go. Using the drone is essential so you know what your up against.
Fast travel and driving enable you to get to places quicker than just jogging, though unfortunately you can’t just sneak up on an enemy, kill then and steal their APC.
Everything about the game play is solid from a tactical shooter point of view, and dare I say fun? I mean it never gets old getting a head shot and following the bullet to its target and witnessing the result in slow motion. I know, I probably need to talk to someone about my giddy excitement at watching heads explode.
The only real issue I found with Sniper is that it literally ages you. And I mean literally. The load times make me remember when games were played on computers and had to be loaded onto the computer’s memory via cassette. It would take some 20 minutes to load a game. And I shouldn’t be comparing a modern game to a tape based game from the 80’s.
But it’s a small price to pay, especially for a game where paitence can be you biggest asset.
Rating: R16 Contains violence and offensive language.
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