The game would prefer to set itself up like a glorified shooting gallery, but one that, unless played on the absolute highest difficulty, does very little to challenge you. It’s, in large part, the Call of Duty syndrome, and one of the reasons that Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 falls somewhat flat very rarely does it trust you to actually play it. The combat knife is solely used for stealth kills, which will be one of the means by which you’ll sneak your way to each of the sniping sections of the game.Īs with the majority of sniping sections, though, these stealth portions are largely guided, with a narrow path available to you, despite the fairly open nature of most of the environments. Will you pick them off through the gaps in their patrol or go for broke and take out the closest in a tightly-knit pack, hoping you can gun down the rest before they spot your location? Because other than your sniper rifle and a silenced pistol, your only weapon is a combat knife. The moments when the game really shines, though, are those in which it cuts loose and gives you some freedom as to how you tackle your targets. Once in a while, you’ll serve more to distract the enemy while your partner gets his chance to rack up some kills. Occasionally the target won’t be an individual, or a pair of individuals conveniently lined up for a double kill, but the grenade on one’s belt, or an explosive element of the environment. The most opportune targets will be pointed out to you one after another by your spotter, or by the main character’s monologue. Most of the time, these sequences play out almost like guided shooting galleries. They’re strung together with stealthy traversals from one vantage point to the next, but the meat of things is in those moments when you’re behind the scope, lining up a shot to take down an unaware foe. Those sniping segments, as you’d expect, comprise the bulk of the game. There are neat touches in the gameplay as well, such as a color fade effect when holding one’s breath during a sniping segment. It conveys the feeling of being in the nigh-tropical Philippines, the war-torn Bosnian cityscape of Sarajevo, or the cloudy mountains of Tibet. That said, the level architecture is attractive. Crew-cut soldier and dude with facial hair. Speaking of those characters, their designs are fairly generic. There are some strange arm movements as well, though they’re reserved to characters you almost exclusively see from either the inside or behind. While the animation work is generally acceptable, cutscenes feel awkward, especially since the facial animations are absolutely atrocious. And you’re creeping through them, so they’re often filling your screen. While the visuals are largely inoffensive, and do feature some fairly excellent water, character models are simplistic, textures are often somewhat blurry and low resolution, and though plants will bend and sway with one’s movement, they are flat, 2D textures in a 3D world, which is downright ugly when seen up close.
So, how does Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 stack up? Yes, the same engine as Crysis 3, which was released just last month. While that game was built on the Chrome engine, used in the Call of Juarez titles and Dead Island, the new game instead uses CryEngine 3. A lot of my favorite games have initially been released at the budget price point, often supplanting the grandiose and cinematic scale of larger titles with a more concentrated gaming experience and, while Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 may not sit on my list of favorite games, or even favorite budget games, it certainly doesn’t flounder from a design perspective.Īs the title indicates, Ghost Warrior 2 is a sequel to the original Sniper: Ghost Warrior. Keep that in mind, because it’s abundantly clear through everything from the game’s writing and voice acting to its length and visuals. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 is a budget title.
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