It’s amazing how different a game can be from a pre-release preview build to a final game retail build. I had the opportunity to preview Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 in early March, and what I played left me rather impressed and excited about the game’s potential (going into the preview it was one of my most anticipated titles 2017). Granted, the preview was running on an Alienware super rig that could pinpoint a missile onto the arse of a space ant on Mars, and as a result ran relatively smoothly at 60fps, only dipping occasionally. The premise – despite the questionable voice-acting and writing – also seemed promising, but sadly the end result is a far cry from the potential the game showed early doors. While SGW3 is reasonably fun to play, it never reaches its full potential thanks to a handful of technical issues and a fairly vapid story.
Welcome to the open world of Georgia
SGW3 puts you in the military boots of Jon North, a skilled sharpshooter who has been sent behind enemy lines to the open world (a first for the series) of Georgia to combat the rising threat of the Separatists, and to search for his missing younger brother, Robert North. In the game’s prologue we learn of the bond between Jon and Robert, and that Robert was taken captive by unknown assailants during a mission in Ukraine, while Jon was left battered and bruised, but alive. So Big Jonny is fuelled by a little more than the patriotic fight for freedom when he is sent to the quaint Eastern European nation.
Jon is a no-frills operator; to him the only good Separatist is a dead Separatist, and this is generally the attitude you and your vicarious deadeye dick take into missions. However, while Jon for the most part is a one-man army, he is assisted (somewhat) in his efforts by two staunch female compatriots: Lydia Jorjadze – an ex-Georgian SFB (Special Forces Brigade) operative with whom Jon has a complicated history, and Raquel Shein – a Mossad agent who believes that working with Jon will mutually benefit their own causes and fight against the Separatists. This threesome, along with Frank Simms (the man in charge), are tasked with bringing down the Separatist regime and delivering the Georgian people from their tyranny.
Brothers in arms
For those that have played the previous iterations of SGW, you’ll notice that SGW3 is a refreshing take on the series thanks to its open-world environment, which is spread into three regions and gives players the freedom to explore and complete missions as one pleases. The preceding entries in the series were heavily linear experiences, with players limited to the short-lived campaigns and arbitrary multiplayer modes. With the game’s open world, CI Games (developer and publisher) have included a good balance of campaign missions, side missions and points of interest – which can be anything from rescuing Georgian prisoners, or tracking down collectibles and general loot items. Another welcome addition is the inclusion of a drone in Jon’s gadget kit. The drone allows Jon to recon an area before commencing an assault, which is highly recommended considering it is quite easy to become outnumbered if you go in too loud. Another new feature is the Scout Mode, which gives Jon the ability to see areas that are climbable, items of interest and any threats in the environment such as land mines.
There are a myriad of Points of Interest scattered across the three regions, giving players ample opportunity to earn XP, find required parts for crafting and slaughter some Separatist goons in the process. One of my favourite side objectives was eliminating targets from Jon’s Most Wanted list, which is a list of twelve of the most notorious Separatist personnel in Georgia. These targets can be found inside shantytown strongholds, heavily guarded fortresses or within other Separatist havens, and yield tasty XP and currency rewards. However, a word of warning to those currently playing, if you have game version 1.03 installed you will not be able locate one of the targets, Stepan Chbaarta, as his existence was wiped with update 1.03. Thankfully, CI Games are aware of this and hopefully will have a fix soon.
They call me the reconnaissance man
Damn you Stepan!
The crème de la crème of the game’s shooting mechanics are hands down the sniping mechanics, which are arguably the best sniping mechanics I have ever used in a video game
The components (mechanical, explosive etc.) you scavenge and earn in the game world can be used to craft items back at Jon’s safe house such as bullets (tagging bullets, explosive bullets and the like), gadgets (grenades, throwing knives) and medical items. The safe house serves as Jon’s base of operations, and here Jon can choose his next mission, modify his loadout thanks to a good array of weaponry (there’s a bunch of sniper rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, handguns and even a bow to choose from) and catch some well-earned shut-eye. Items can also be purchased using the game’s currency, which is earned after completing a mission and taken from every dead Separatist soldier you loot. Jon can also add modifications to his drone such as night vision or increased battery here.
The game world feels heavily inspired by Ubisoft’s Far Cry series, aside from the fact that Far Cry often takes place in picturesque locales, whereas SGW3’s Georgia is a dreary and barren setting. Covered by dense forest, snow-laden terrain with only a handful of small villages, it’s a desolate and lonely place. Running on CryEngine, Georgia has a quaint and idyllic feel to it, and although some areas look a little rough around the edges, for the most part SGW3 is graphically satisfactory. Much like in Far Cry, Jon is able to drive across the map, which beats walking everywhere. However, the driving mechanics are average at best, and it feels like you’re driving a sort of floating bumper car as opposed to the rust bucket SUV that Jon has. Thankfully, there are an abundance of fast travel points scattered across map, so if clocking up miles ain’t your thing, you can just fast travel everywhere. Another positive is that there are no towers that require climbing, and campaign missions are not locked to side missions, which is a godsend from CI Games. Far too often in open-world games, developers (Ubisoft in particular) tie the main missions to the side missions, meaning that you cannot progress in the campaign unless you have ticked enough side mission boxes.
Ye olde faithful loadout
Georgia has a quaint and idyllic feel to it
Thanks to the game’s open world, players are not restricted to a singular method of infiltration, and players are encouraged to complete missions in a mixture of three different playstyles: Sniper, Ghost and Warrior. XP is awarded to players for each particular style that can be used to upgrade skills in those three sections. Sniper XP is awarded when you kill a target using a sniper rifle, Ghost XP is earned when you commit a stealth kill and Warrior XP is awarded when using your secondary weapon. The three skill trees are made up nine skills each, but these are fairly run-of-the-mill, such as increased health, faster reload and greater resistance to damage. It’s relatively easy to acquire a surplus of skill points and you’ll easily be able to max out each skill tree.
Mixing the three playstyles together can create some fun and satisfying sequences, and the order of the day for my playthrough was often an amalgam of Sniper and Ghost tactics. I genuinely enjoyed infiltrating Separatist strongholds and wiping out an entire garrison without leaving a trace. However, more often than not the temptation to finish the last couple of adversaries off with a shotgun was too much to resist, which generally alerted the remaining Separatists to my presence. The missions themselves have a good variance to them, even if none of them reinvent the wheel at all. Missions will have you infiltrating bases to realign satellites or to take out a high-ranking Separatist official, while others will be pure sniper missions that require Jon to cover his compatriots as they infiltrate an area. Often there are optional objectives such as not raising alarms that give players that additional challenge. For the most part the missions are designed relatively well and are usually confined to a small area such as a dilapidated apartment block, however the questionable AI behaviour (one mission they’ll converge on your location with precision, while another they won’t acknowledge the person two feet away dropping dead from a headshot) ensures that a couple missions are perhaps a little too easy, none more so than the game’s final mission. I played the game on normal difficulty in order to pump this review out (normally I’m up for more of a challenge), and while it threw up the occasional challenge, seasoned shooters will no doubt be better served playing on a higher difficulty. The game also has a ‘realistic difficulty’, which removes the HUD, includes one-hit kills and smarter AI. If you enjoyed Metro’s Ranger Mode, I highly recommend taking this difficulty for a spin.
It’s not all about shooting from a distance
The gunplay is possibly the highlight of the game. The weaponry felt powerful; it felt meaty and extremely satisfying to shoot. The crème de la crème of the shooting mechanics are hands down the sniping mechanics, which are arguably the best sniping mechanics I have ever used in a video game. Sniping requires players to not only account for distance, but also wind and other variables such as how much you’re zoomed in (depending on which rifle and scope you have equipped). It’s not as simple as basic shooters where the middle of the crosshair is where the bullet will go, in SGW3, your perfect headshot may be slightly off to the right of the crosshair depending on the conditions. For players who find the sniping simulation a little too difficult, you can enable the ‘red dot assist’ from the previous games which highlights where the bullet will go once you’re holding your breath. The bullet cam from the previous games also returns, however, this time around if you use a stronger bullet the heads of your victims will explode, no doubt causing you to smile with satisfaction.
As mentioned earlier, SGW3’s 12-15 hour story is a largely forgettable and predictable affair. This is a shame, given the potential that the unique Georgian setting had and the promising premise of the Separatist threat and the hunt for Jon’s missing brother. It’s done no favours by the B-grade voice-acting and writing that makes our protagonist a rather unlikeable character, and that the crux of the story – the hunt for Jon’s brother – is a significantly underwhelming aspect thanks to the game’s anti-climactic and terrible ending. At no stage did I ever really feel a vested interest in Jon’s cause, both against the Separatists or in the search for Robert. I felt more like a high-skilled mercenary who killed for no other reason than the thrill of it.
Deadeye dick in action
However, SGW3’s lacklustre story is the least of its worries, as its slew of technical issues created a downright frustrating experience. First and foremost is the game’s constant framerate drops, which occasionally felt like it dropped into single figures from time to time even on my PS4 Pro. Even rudimentary mechanics like toggling your sniper rifle in and out of its scope, or running or climbing caused the game to stutter. Furthermore, the enemy AI would sometimes vanish mid-stealth kill or simply not show up at all. There was one mission where I had to take out targets so Lydia could infiltrate into a building, but one of the enemies wasn’t visible and I had to close the application and start again. The two biggest offenders on the technical side though were the game’s sporadic freezes and crashes, of which I had around ten. It felt like a was playing Russian roulette with the game, as anything from changing weapons to simply walking could cause the game to freeze or crash at any given moment. What made this an intolerable experience, was that each time the game crashed (or if you changed to a different map) you were forced to sit through a loading screen that could last around five minutes. The other major flaw here is that outside of missions that require you to take out targets from a distance, targets would disappear whenever you were further away than roughly 250 metres. For a game that has a strong focus on eliminating targets from afar, this is a fairly big oversight.
Final Thoughts
Given that CI Games had already delayed SGW3 numerous times, the final Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 product is a disappointment; there are no two ways about it. The game’s lacklustre story, shoddy AI and various technical flaws ensure that the game, despite excelling in the sniping department and being relative fun to play (when it’s not crashing), never lives up to its potential.
Reviewed on PS4 Pro // Review code supplied by publisher
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- CI Games
- CI Games
- PS4 / Xbox One / PC
- April 25, 2017
