Not Quite the Headshot….

It’s fair to say that if there is a game out there with the word Sniper in it, I’ll probably be interested due to the fact that Sniper Elite 4 was excellent. Must like that series, the Sniper Ghost Warrior Series kind of passed me by on the PlayStation 3 days. However, when the chance come to review Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 come about, I got out my scope and zoomed in to some more action-packed sniping action. It’s just a pitty that the end result wasn’t quite the headshot that I was looking for.

If you’re like me and haven’t touched any of the previous games, do not worry. I perfectly understood what was going on from the start in terms of the story that was being set up for me. You play as an elite black-ops agent, Jon North, whose brother has been killed and along with other stuff, your personal objective is to of course, avenge your brother’s death. Simple enough but sadly, the story is quite bland and it’s perfectly acceptable if you find yourself switching off after a short amount of time like I did. I’d have liked a much better story in front of me, and in all honesty the voice acting does nothing to help the cause.

Another thing that doesn’t help the cause is the games’ performance from the outset. Fair enough the game does look lovely in the different environments, but its actually loading those environments and missions that is the problem! It can take up to 5 minutes to load one different environment, which lets face it is unacceptable in the PlayStation 3 days, let alone the PlayStation 4 days. I do hope and expect CI Games to release an update (hopefully soon) that fixes this problem in particular, as it really stops the flow of the overall experience that you are trying to have with Sniper Ghost Warrior 3.

Like most games in this genre, there is a lengthy tutorial (prologue) mission that will get you to grips with all the basics. Moving, shooting, stealth kills, skill points…. yeah, you get the drill! One of the aspects I did enjoy the most however was using a Drone! The mechanics on the drones work really well. The drone is used to scope out different places, allowing it to tag enemies for you to take out easily, rather than having to look for them yourself and open up yourself to getting killed easier. Once you have tagged all of the enemies, you can then take them out with a sniper. If you use the scope mode, it will reduce any shaking of your sniper rifle, allowing you to take out your enemies with more precision.

Precision though is something that I did struggle with in Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 if I’m honest with you. Yes, I can hear you calling out “maybe you’re just shit!” which may be true, but something didn’t feel quite right. Even though I was aiming right for the enemies head, I’d often find out that the shot would actually miss the target, which was strange to say the least. There is a camera though if you do make the perfect shot, which zooms in on the bullet going straight into the enemy. If you think of the Sniper Elite 4 camera but much more toned down, then you’ll understand what the kill camera is like in Sniper Ghost Warrior 3.

As I said previously, the games’ tutorial mission sets up how you collect skill points throughout the game. These skill points can be spent making your character more stealthy or more of a killing machine (Ghost, Warrior…..). It’s a decent system, but quite a contradicting one at that.  I wanted to pretty much do the whole game Stealthily, which yes you can. However, if you want to level your character up….. you’ll need to go back to previous missions and get more kills and find more items. Not really the stealth approach I was hoping for?

It may seem like I am moaning about Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 but honestly, if you can look past the flaws which can be sorted via future patches, there is a good game to be had. The gameplay is slick and fun, the sniping whilst flawed, always feels good when you get that perfect. You also drive in the game, and whilst the driving mechanics aren’t the best I have seen (I’m not expecting GTA levels though), they are decent and your waypoint is clearly marked on the map in the bottom corner.

A PlayStation 4 Review Code was provided by CI Games