Yet another mediocre first-person shooter
Not CONTENT with having two God-awful releases under their belt, CI Games have decided to complete the unholy trinity of infuriatingly mediocre shooters with their latest identikit stealthy FPS: Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3.
The majority of the time, a new game will have at least one unique or defining feature that distinguishes it from the rest of the noise. Not Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, a game from a series that seems to be content with existing as the lowest-common-denominator FPS fodder. Besieged by a litany of graphical and technical faults, we can already throw any hope of an immersive experience out of the window.
I had enemies contort in front of me, disappear in the middle of a stealth takedown, and repopulate before my eyes, inside what I thought was an empty outpost. On top of that, whenever you boot up the game or change regions it takes almost five minutes to load, which is painfully slow.
And even something as simple as tagging enemies is frustratingly inconsistent. Sometimes the ability won’t work when you’re directly aiming at someone from a few yards away; other times you’ll pull up your gun and inadvertently tag someone in another room. The framerate is also wildly inconsistent, whether you’re simply walking or popping in and out of your sniper scope. Sometimes sounds don’t play, and pop-in is a constant eyesore.
The story is, naturally, as cliche as they come. The dialogue is littered with expletives and the journey feels more reminiscent of a signposted tourist trail than the breakneck twists and turns of a good military yarn.
Surprisingly, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 does actually have some redeeming features. The sniping itself is a treat, although it would have to be really, because if you somehow managed to fail at the one task that your game should really be doing right, then you should probably reflect on the choices you made in life to get to this point in your career.
One of the best feelings in the game is lining up a target, fiddling with your scope to get the zoom and zeroing distance right, and then pulling off a perfect headshot. There’s also a killcam similar to Sniper Elite’s - minus the x-ray brutality - that shows you your best shots in slow motion.
Look, you really shouldn’t go anywhere near this game unless you are a literal masochist. There’s plenty of other options that offer the exact same concept but with a vastly superior experience.