There's no way my hard drive could ever be clean again after a few hours of Sniper: Ghost Warrior being installed on it.
I asked myself that same question after playing Sniper: Ghost Warrior for a few painful hours. Seriously, this game made me think... long and hard. And no matter how hard I contemplated, I just couldn't come to any decent conclusion about a few things. First of all, how the hell can you make a stealth game about sniping and actually mess it up? Second, how the hell can you mess it up when you already have a pretty good sniping game on the market (Sniper Elite) that you only have to copy and improve a bit in order to make a blockbuster...
I think I speak for every FPS fan when I say sniping is awesome. From Medal Of Honor and Golden Eye, to Modern Warfare and Halo, sniping your enemy from half a mile away and making a "one bad guy less" note in your head never gets old. So it's only fair to assume that a stealth game based on that very same simple pleasure would be pretty awesome. To all of us, not only FPS and mil sim fans.
Truth be told, making a good stealth game isn't easy. You need to put a lot of effort into level design, cover system and even more into enemy A.I. You need to balance a lot of details carefully in order to have both fun and kind of realistic experience of sneaking around and snapping necks. But then again, making a good game isn't easy at all, stealth or not. So if you can't do it right, don't do it at all! It's simply not worth it...
OK, now that I got that out of my system, let me tell you something about WHY I'm so outraged about this game. Well, first of all, in a sea of generic console shooters, boring sequels and cartoon games (I'm looking at you, Wii... you murderer of hardcore games!), Sniper: Ghost Warrior seemed like a welcome breeze of freshness. I started tracking it's development a few months ago, saw all the promo materials, gameplay videos and screenshots I could find. And it looked awesome, a dream come true in this bleak and uninteresting time of kids-friendly cartoon titles and space marines. A combination of realistic stealth gameplay and brutal slow-motion headshots. In other words, Sniper Elite on steroids. But then the game was released and things started to go wrong...
This time you jump into shoes of a highly trained US Army sniper, sent to eliminate a certain badass warlord, in a stereotypically corrupt jungle banana republic. And that's about all I remember about the plot. It's so unoriginal and boring, I stopped paying attention to it after the first cutsceene. Of course, cutsceenes themselves are boring as well, and voice acting is terrible. But hey, I'm not playing this game because of the plot... things could still turn out OK, right?
Wrong. The first thing that baffled me was a painful lack of customization options. Both graphics, sounds and controls, they all could've used a little bit of tuning. But for some reason, the game doesn't let me do it. Not a very good start... I tried to experiment with a resolution a little bit to make the game run more smoothly, and to adjust it better to my laptop widescreen. But (surprise, surprise) the moment I reduced the resolution from idiotically excessive 1300X1200 (I can't remember the exact numbers) to a more fitting 1024X600, the game switched to window mode. Wait, what the hell?!
WHY THE HELL CAN'T I PLAY THIS GAME IN FULL SCREEN MODE WITH 1024X600?!?!?!?! IT'S 2010, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!!!!
So I was sentenced to "almost, but not quite good" game performance the whole time, for some reason known only to those sadists from CIty Interactive. The "best" part of it all? The game still looked crappy, with rough edges and extremely pixelated scenery. Yes, DESPITE gigantic resolution it forced me to use. Forget about anti-aliasing.
All of this served as a bitter taste of bad things to come. The moment I stepped into the jungle, the game looked kind of OK. For a year 2007. It lacked polish, but the jungle scenery looked kind of impressive and convincing. Until I moved, that is. You quickly realize that all the vegetation is completely static. It doesn't move, it doesn't react to bullets or explosions... The same goes for the rest of the environment. But OK, this isn't a run-and-gun shooter, it's not like I'll be spraying machine gun fire over the jungle canopy a lot. Move on to the killing... The first half of the first level kind of served as an intro, a tutorial. And since the "real" tutorial in the game is horrible, and teaches you exactly nothing about gameplay, this was kind of a welcome feature. But it's really frustrating how the game holds your hand and doesn't let you move an inch out of a designated path of the level.
Sneaky, sneaky I go and onto the first enemy I stumble. OK, so my spotter tells me to hide and take him out. I carefully aim, hold my breath, adjust my aim to compensate for the wind, gravity, and... Woe, wait a minute! What is that red dot in my scope? That, my friends, is an indicator of where exactly the bullet will land. I'm sorry, but what exactly is the point of playing a sniping game if all you have to do is follow the red dot? Where's the challenge? Where's careful calculation and aiming? Where's the careful timing and hard work in order to see the highly rewarding slow motion bullet impacts and blood splatters? You know, the entire POINT of sniping in ANY game... This way it all comes down to pressing mouse 1 button. Kind of like a console button mashing...
The annoying red dot disappears only on the hard difficulty setting. Not very fun, really...
OK, so I snipe an enemy, enjoy a colorful and artistic headshot (which looks far too comic-booky for my taste, instead of sheer gruesomeness of Sniper Elite headshots), and on to the next enemy I go. The guy conveniently turns his back on me and stands still while I take aim with my silenced pistol. I actually tried a few different approaches for this. And the coolest was deffinitely the throwing knives. It's the most silent and bloody way to dispose of someone. One of the very few bright spots in this game. But unfortunately, this also serves as a taste of bad A.I. to come.
Be that as it may, very soon I was left on my own. After a failed assassination attempt, I'm off to off more bad guys and enjoy more Sin City style headshots. And that's where I got my first real taste of Ghost Warrior's gameplay. For some reason, the game won't let me snipe all the bad guys from a cliff, one by one. I actually have to go sneaky and keep getting killed for 500 times until I finally pass all the guards and escape. My enemies, of course, all seem to have super senses. Despite my ghillie suit (that should render me practically invisible over such long distances) the bad guys would always know EXACTLY where I am after I fired only one shot from my silenced sniper rifle. Their crummy AK47s seemed to be more accurate then my scoped DMR, even over longer ranges then 500 meters. The moment you shoot one guy, the entire army knows EXACTLY where you are.
And they bombard you with bullets despite the fact that you're not even in their line of sight and there's a big rock between you and them. No, I'm not making this up. It really happened. Often. Unfortunately, slow motion headshots appear only on certain occasions. You can take out 2 or 3 guys in a row, with the most difficult headshots to pull of, and you'll see only one cool slow motion sequence. Sometimes I'd pull of a 500 meters shots, and there was no artsy brain splattering to reward me. At that point I wanted to rip my mouse out of it's port and bash it against the wall. Another annoying thing is that the game doesn't register distances over 500 or so meters. So forget about 1.5 kilometer headshots you can brag about. I don't know why, so don't ask.
Sure, you can pick up your enemies' weapons, but... THIS IS A F***ING SNIPING GAME!!!! I DON'T WANT TO USE MY ENEMIES' WEAPONS!!!!!! I WANT TO SNIPE THEM FROM A MILE AWAY!!!!!
Sneaking past them is also next to impossible, since they can spot you from a mile away and turn you into a bullet magnet. Again, while you're not technically even in their line of sight. But that doesn't mean they're smart, mind you. You'll often see them just standing in the open for you to shoot. Or they won't even react to their buddy having his head blown off right next to him. They never even use cover, for God's sake!
To make things worse, they are nearly impossible to spot. Seriously, even their skin has some weird pale greenish tone, to help them blend in with the jungle. It's really stupid to see that a guy with a cowboy hat can blend in with the environment better then a sniper in a ghillie suit. On normal difficulty settings, the game paints your enemies bright red and blue, in order to make them easier to spot. Along with the stupid red dot, that's gotta be the thing that kills the entire experience more effectively then a bullet to the skull. Unless, of course, you always wanted to shoot Gummi Bears in the head and watch their brains splatter all over the Gummi Glen forest (Dibs on a new sniping game scenario! I'll be waiting for your offers, EA). Look, I can see why these things would be OK on the easiest difficulty setting. But I can't understand why the hell do I have to put up with it by default. They could've at least give me the option to turn it on and off...
You'd also think it would be pretty easy for a sniper in a ghillie suit to hide in a dense jungle. Wrong again, my friend. The dense vegetation does nothing except making it harder for you to aim. It sure as hell won't provide any cover. Implementing a grappling hook into the game also isn't a very bright idea. What could've been the perfect tool for giving you more freedom and access to a better sniping positions turns into nothing more then a nuisance, since you can use it in just a few places.
I could go on about bugs and flaws of this game. After the first level, which has the only few bright spots in the entire game, every new level afterwards is just a painful excercise in repetition and frustration. Dumb enemies offer no real challenge, and their super senses only make it impossible for you to experience any freedom, tactical planning and improvisation (considered common for any sniper) in accomplishing your mission.
What's good about this game? In short words, nothing. Not. One. Thing. I don't give a damn if it's a budget price title or not. This game is simply frustrating and not even slightly fun nor rewarding. I had such high expectations about this game, and the press release material made it look like a quiet blockbuster. I swear, this is the last time I got excited about any game at all. Thanks to Sniper: Ghost Warrior, I am now firmly convinced that the gaming industry is dead, and that the only decent title we'll be seeing from now on will be uninspired, dumbed-down shooters, console arcades and sequels to the uninspired, dumbed-down shooters and console arcades.