Just as City Interactive's games starts to become okay, they drop the ball again!
Now, the first Sniper: Ghost Warrior actually showed some promise. It even had good graphics. And sniping. Sniping is fun. Only problem was, the stealth system was completely broken, the non-sniping segments were terrible, and the last time I went to the bathroom had a better story than that game. Still, I actually enjoyed it, bugs and all.
With S:GW2 it looked like they might have learned their lesson, and using Cryengine 3, this game looked to be beautiful in the previews. Well, just like with Aliens: Colonial Marines, the previews were wrong.
The graphics are outdated as hell. On its lowest settings, Crysis 3 looks better than this game on its highest, and they use exactly the same engine. What the hell? The textures are bad, the character models are bad, the vegetation looks bad... well everything looks pretty bad to be honest. Not even the lightning effects manages to impress. Crytek sold their engine to other companies so they would be able to create great-looking games, and this is what they come out with? S:GW1 using the old Chrome 4 engine looked better than this, and that game came out 3 years ago!
Edit: for some reason, the game becomes slightly nicer to look at as you progress through the game. The Tibet level around 2/3 through the game almost looks like it could have come out last year. Incidentally, this was also the level featured in the trailers...hmm?
Well then, onto the awfulness that is the gameplay. Good news: stealth isn't totally broken now (Edit: after playing some more, I've found that enemies will still see you in pitch black darkness and through vegetation, even though you cannot see them. At least they won't spot you from a mile away though). Unfortunately, there is absolutely no challenge in this game. If CoD is marketed towards 12-year old (mind you, I still like CoD), then this game is marketed towards infants. Your radar shows both the extremely linear path you can walk on (CoD looks like an open-world game in comparison) and every single enemy's position on it. There are waypoints about every 30 meters, and if you try to go slightly another way you will automatically fail the mission after 6 seconds. So much fun!
The game opens up a little (with emphasis on little) later on where you can try to challenge yourself by pretty much disregarding your given orders and shoot the wrong guys, or rushing like a jackass. This can actually offer a little bit of a challenge since you die in just a few hits, and your health doesn't regenerate (even though it's supposed to according to the loading screen hints). That said, if you intend you play the game as intended, expect it to be little more than "Simon says" in the challenge department.
All enemies have little symbols over their heads so you know where they are at all times, it's impossible to screw up and be detected unless you miss on purpose.
The game tells you exactly when and who to shoot at all times, there's no choice of your own.
Once you have deployed your sniper rifle and a sniper position, you cannot even unscope until you have finished the extremely linear "cover your buddies and shoot only the bad guys with large crosshairs over their heads".
You cannot even decide what to look on with your binoculars, the game forces you to look at a particular location while your "buddies" talk about something you don't give two sh*ts about.
And lastly, there's the damn red dot that always appears when you about to snipe, meaning you just aim where it's pointing. I would have honestly preferred it if the game had no bullet drop at all, and at least let you aim with the normal crosshair rather than looking at a stupid red dot.
One time I actually missed a shot because I refused to wait for the red dot. Instead of failing, one of the AI partners shot the enemy and I was STILL awarded with a "nice shot!". What the hell is this? Trophies as thanks for participating?
Gonna have to try increasing the difficulty to its highest to have any challenge at all I guess.
Oh, and you cannot even pick up enemy guns, and your barret sniper just magically appears when near a sniping spot, and then disappears again when you are done. Just great.
The story is about you, a random sniper dude, who is supposed to kill random dudes by supporting your other random dudes with the purpose of... something. The story is so boring I don't even have the brain capacity to follow the asinine writing. CoD looks like Shakespeare in comparison.
Edit: later on in the game, things kind of starts to make sense. The story doesn't become interesting since all characters have the personally of a piece of dry bread, but at least you can follow what is going on. It's the cliché wannabe Hollywood BS you have seen 512 times already, including the standard European villain and a few betrayals thrown in for good measure.
It's probably worth mentioning that the game is really short as well; I beat it in less than 3 and half hours on normal difficulty.
Best part of the game: trying to find as many ways as possible to glitch and break the game's already bad scripting. This part is actually fun.