Having been an avid FPS gamer since the birth of the genre, going all the way back to the id Software era of Wolfenstein and Doom, I've seen more than my share of incredible, ground-breaking titles that have revolutionized the gaming industry down to its very core. The FPS genre is, after all, one of the most influential genres in the entire gaming universe, and has been so for the better part of three decades.
When considering the influence and impact that FPS titles have had on the industry throughout the years, one game that comes to mind immediately is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. When Modern Warfare released in 2007, it changed the FPS genre, and the entire gaming industry along with it, forever. And, while the pros and cons of its influence have been hotly debated for years, Modern Warfare was undoubtedly a mind-blowing experience for its time, with highly cinematic cutscenes, a fully-fleshed, professionally-written script, spectacular large-scale battles, some of the most expertly-designed levels ever seen in an FPS, and one of the most action-packed, fully-featured multiplayers the gaming world had ever seen. It was an incredible game, to say the least. But of all the great features that Modern Warfare contained, there is one part of the game that still stands out head and shoulders above the rest, and is still being talked about nigh unto fifteen years after its release: the glorious sniping level titled 'All Ghillied Up.' Few who experienced it back in 2007 will ever forget that level, for its stealth, its nail-biting moments, its glorious sense of atmosphere, and the frantic escape at its conclusion. To this day, All Ghillied Up remains one of the greatest FPS levels of all time. So wildly popular was this level that Infinity Ward spent the better part of Modern Warfare 2's campaign trying to outdo it, failing miserably the whole way.
And that brings us to Sniper: Ghost Warrior. For those of you who remember playing All Ghillied Up for the first time back in 2007, do you think you'd be interested in trying a game whose sole purpose was to try to recreate the magical moments that we experienced in that level? Doesn't that sound like a wonderful idea?
Because it wasn’t. Or, at least, while the idea might've been great, the final product didn't come close to living up to its potential. Sniper: Ghost Warrior isn't just devoid of any sort of originality or fresh ideas; it’s much worse than a simple clone of All Ghillied Up. It's a complete, dysfunctional mess, mundane and repetitive at the best of moments, and so broken that it's almost unplayable at its worst. In short, it's a poorly designed mess, lacking the years of development that it truly needed, and it had no business being released in this state.
And really, that sums everything up. This game is nothing more than a cash grab by a company hoping to capitalize on the popularity of Modern Warfare's All Ghillied Up level and the sniping frenzy that ensued within the gaming community in the months and years following its release. The vast majority of the game's campaign is a painfully conspicuous copy-and-paste of All Ghillied Up, from the sneaky stealth segments through the enemy's camp, to the environments themselves, many of which look very similar to what was seen throughout the great sniping level of Modern Warfare. And the developers didn't even try to innovate or improve anything. In fact, they didn't bother to make a game that was playable at all, as the twitchy controls, laughably oblivious enemy AI, and horrible shooting mechanics are all testament of. A few more years of development could've remedied these problems into something that would perhaps have been playable, and anybody who tested the game would've quickly come to that conclusion. So the only possible inference here is that the game was released as quickly as possible to cash in while the genre was hot, without any care in the world towards the final product. It was even painted up with a cool-sounding title, and some good art design on its cover, to catch some gamers unaware. There's nothing more frustrating to me as a longtime gamer than such a blatantly obvious cash-grab.
The campaign itself will take the player a mere five hours to complete on the Normal difficulty setting, as the content is quite lacking. Here, the player will be thrown into the embarrassingly bad introductory level, which shows off the game's loose controls, sometimes-twitchy sniping, horrific assault rifle recoil, grenade throwing that is quite bewildering in its inaccuracy (make sure to throw at your enemy's feet, or the grenade will sail miles over his head), and a so-bad-it's-amusing Hide-and-Go-Seek game in which you duck under a bush and wait 80 seconds as your empty-headed teammates try to find you by walking around in circles while the drill sergeant screams expletives at them throughout the entire search. If you're not shaking your head at this point, you soon will be, as the game doesn't improve much beyond that.
Upon starting the campaign in earnest, the player will be taken aback by the bare-bone, unoriginal story, the mediocre voice-acting, and the uninteresting characters. And then they'll be thrust into action, following one of many poorly-scripted cutscenes. They'll find themselves within the first of two types of levels present within the game. In the case of the first level, it's (quite predictably) an All Ghillied Up clone, borrowed directly from Modern Warfare. In these levels, you'll find yourself sneaking through camps of enemies while trying to reach a perch where you can snipe your target. At first, everything seems all right. There's some atmosphere, some tension, a few fun moments in which you silently dispatch the guards along your path with a couple of muffled shots from your rifle before you duck back into the shadows. These moments are interspersed within the game, and sometimes you'll even feel like the game has potential, if only it had been polished and refined over a few more years’ worth of time. A couple of the sniping segments are even decently enjoyable. But then, after five minutes of sneaking, and thinking the game will be some fun, you get spotted. And then, in many cases, you'll either be shot dead, or the level will automatically end in failure, and you'll have to do it all over again. You’ll be more careful the second time, and yet the same exact thing will happen, and you’ll be forced to start over at the last checkpoint. You'll be seen, and all the enemies on the map will know exactly where you're located, as if through telepathic power, and they'll shoot you down. And then it'll happen again and again. It’s something you’ll have to get used to if you decide to play Sniper: Ghost Warrior.
Each and every time it happens, you'll wonder how on earth you were seen. Despite the otherwise awful AI, the enemies can be quite eagle-eyed. They'll spot you in the shadows. They'll spot you in the bushes. They'll spot you behind trees. They'll spot you behind a series of stone walls. And they'll spot you from half a mile away. And each time they do, you're almost certainly dead. This is coming from the same computer AI that you'll often catch staring at walls, or looking backwards at nothing while standing at their post, or even pointing a gun at you as you step out of cover, just to completely forget about your existence seconds later when you sneak away. The AI ranges from telepathic genius to mind-numbingly idiotic. And there's nothing in between.
Even their scripts don’t often work. Sometimes you'll be given directions for how to proceed, you'll follow them to the dot, and the enemy will still see you. You'll have to repeat these scenes very often, and that's where much of the game's length comes from. Be prepared for lots of chewed nails and torn-out hair. That being said, the game is quite easy. The main problem is that there are quite a few of these massively frustrating sequences that you'll get stuck on due to broken stealth mechanics and terribly inconsistent AI. It doesn't help that the game's HUD interface is, itself, quite confusing. When you get shot at, a red indicator will appear, showing you the direction your shooter is located. However, why the developers would choose a large red indicator to tell you you're being shot at is quite the head-scratcher. Even after a few hours of playing, I'd confuse simple shots for being hit, and would often make an incorrect reaction based on that. At the very least, they should've made the indicator green or yellow for shots, and only turned it red when you actually get hit. That alone would save a lot of confusion and frustration.There is one decent part of the interface, however. The bar at the bottom of the screen shows how close you are to being spotted. Unfortunately, it can be of little use, as you're often spotted almost instantly when stepping out of cover. It’s a simple matter of how the enemies are scripted, and the scripts were very poorly developed.
Speaking of the scripting of the enemy AI, Sniper: Ghost Warrior happens to be an extremely scripted game, down to the level design itself. If you thought Call of Duty was was a linear corridor-shooter, just wait until you try out Sniper. You’re always forced along a narrow, predetermined path, even when the environment around you appears to be huge and open, and in-game markers are always there to show you the way. There’s no sense of discovery, no possibility of you using your own resourcefulness to find your way through each level, and no alternative solutions to complete the objectives, leaving the game with absolutely no replayability beyond the initial play-through. If you stray too far off your path, invisible walls will block you in, and in a few locations, you’ll even inexplicably fall to your death over a ‘cliff’ about three feet high. The game also gives you the option to climb cliffs by using a grapple, but even these sequences are always scripted, and I never encountered a place in which I needed to use a grapple on my own, making me wonder why it was available to be equipped as a weapon in the first place.
If you continue to play beyond the first sniping levels, you’ll soon be introduced to the other type of level present in Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which is the standard run-and-gun type of mission so common in modern FPS. These levels, despite being easier overall, and lacking much of the frustration of the stealth levels, tend to be even more boring and repetitive than the others. While they might not have all the negatives of the stealth levels, they also include none of the few positives. You won’t find any fun moments, any sense of atmosphere to speak of, and there are no satisfying headshots waiting for you at the end of each sequence. Instead, you get stuck with repetitive corridor shooting that shows exactly how unrefined the gameplay is. Your pistol is your most reliable weapon, and the grenades, once you get used to them, are your best bet to take out your enemies. The assault rifles are a pain to control, as their recoil is shockingly wild, and every single one of them handles exactly the same way, whether you pick up the M4, the AK47, or any of the other rifles. The shotgun is a bit easier, though it's worthless at shooting enemies more than ten steps away from you. Basically, nothing really works the way it should except for the pistol. And the levels aren't anything special. They're narrow, and there's never more than half a dozen enemies coming at you at once, though more will respawn in a very blatant and unnatural way on-screen when their comrades die. Little bumps on the map will stop you in your tracks, sometimes resulting in your death. And the AI is laughably bad at close-range gunfights, often forgoing even the slightest bit of shelter. The result is a series of mind-numbing levels that feel completely pointless to complete.
Beyond the terrible gameplay, the awful level design, and the utter lack of content, every other aspect of the game feels poorly developed and unfinished. The game’s graphics are probably the one thing that somewhat stand out above all the rest. The visuals are quite nice and still hold together well today. It’s certainly not the best-looking PC game of its time, but it looked much better than anything present on a console circa 2010, and it holds some jaw-dropping scenery that is worth stopping to appreciate in the gaps between each frustrating stealth sequence. But even the graphics can be inconsistent at times, as textures, shadows, and lighting effects bleed into each other in a few of the levels, and there are some obvious graphical glitches as well. Zooming in on backgrounds far in the distance will reveal badly muddied textures, and if you explore a little ways beyond your path, you’ll discover objects that are likewise muddy and lacking in detail, as if the developers didn’t care to finish up everything beyond the gamer’s main path. Many of the houses you’ll come across are strikingly lacking in interior decoration, often making me wonder if the towns had long been abandoned, or if almost every village I came across throughout the game was actually a small military complex. But I believe this was just another symptom of the rushed, lazy development present throughout the game.
If the game’s visuals were pretty good for its time, the game’s audio was pretty bad. The music doesn’t quite fit with the player’s surroundings, or what’s happening on screen at the time, and sometimes it’s remarkably obvious. There are times in which the music starts really banging and getting louder during stealth segments for seemingly no reason at all, and there are other times in which it almost completely goes silent while the action is raging around you. And the musical score itself is unimpressive. It’s repetitive, lacking in variety, and it doesn’t contain any stand-out tune that could’ve potentially gotten me into a better mood while playing. The rest of the game’s sound design isn’t much better. The voice-actors often sound bored and uninspired, and the sound effects lack punch. Outside of the sniper rifle and pistol, the guns sound like they’re made out of plastic when they shoot, the grenade explosions are too soft, and the screams of the enemy soldiers in Spanish are extremely repetitive. And that brings me to another fascinating point: there are only two distinct sequences of dialogue that the enemy soldiers say in Spanish. There’s one in which a solo soldier is speaking on the phone, telling someone that he swears on his mother’s grave that he wasn’t told what he was supposed to do, and that everything is cool. The other is spoken by two soldiers in which they talk about a girl one of them is trying to court. These two sequences of dialogue are repeated endlessly throughout the game, sometimes with four or five soldiers speaking them all at once. Even someone who’s never studied another language in their life will notice this, and for someone who can understand Spanish like myself, it’s something that will make you want to smash your head against your desk.
Beyond the single player campaign, there’s not much to do within this game. Replaying the campaign isn’t worth the trouble, as the game is too linear to have any replayability. You could try using throwing knives as an alternate weapon in the campaign, but the controls are as equally unwieldy as the grenades, and take some time getting used to. Explosives are utterly pointless, as the enemies normally shoot you from very far away, so tossing out C4 explosives and detonating them will likely get you killed, and claymores will almost never be triggered, making me wonder why they’re in the game in the first place. Hand-to-hand combat is nonexistent. All of that being said, the game does contain a decent online multiplayer (or, at least, it used to, before the servers were shut down). It was actually a bit better than the campaign, as it lacked all the frustrating stealth sequences and linear shoot-outs that made the single player mode so boring. However, due to the poor gameplay mechanics, it took a long time to adjust to playing against other players, and while there were certainly some exciting moments to be had, the multiplayer suffered from many of the other problems I listed within the campaign, notably sometimes-twitchy sniping, poorly-designed knifing, and invisible blocks in your path in certain areas. The size of the maps and the lack of players could also result in some boring stretches, before the multiplayer servers were shut down completely.
With so many flaws and so few qualities, Sniper: Ghost Warrior fails to live up to the famous Call of Duty level that so clearly inspired its creation. It is, quite simply, a rushed mess of a game that truly needed a few more years of development and polish before it was released. But since it was clearly never intended to be anything more than a quick cash grab, the overall laziness that permeates almost every aspect of the final product is strikingly apparent. There are many better FPS out there to enjoy, so getting stuck on a game that is worse than mediocre isn’t worth even a second of your time. Avoid it, for your own sake.