As someone who grew up during the glory days of the Sega Genesis, I have a pretty deeply seated love/hate relationship with updates. This was a time that developers were limited to the final product being released in a finished state and what you got was what you got. If a broken game was released, reviews and word of mouth would spread quickly. Luckily, with our current situation an update (or few) can fix a completely broken game, such as the title we’re reviewing today.
Don’t get me wrong, this adventure could be a passable, if not occasionally fun title. In the current state, I ran into more bugs than in most early access games, with freezing and multiple strange glitches throughout. The most tiresome of these occurred during the tutorial. Playing as Jon North, stereotypical military figure, I was tasked with clearing a small base and disposing of a chemical weapon with an AI counterpart. Requiring I take out the guards from the exterior in complete stealth, I carefully picked them off one by one.
Unfortunately, my AI teammate kept missing shots trying to help, causing me to fail the mission. I know what you’re thinking; I missed and blamed the AI. Funny story: prior to “missing” the last enemy, I was treated to a slow motion bullet cam view of my bullet slamming right into the guys forehead. This happened no less than 6 times, one of which resulted in the gentleman flying around the map like a balloon with the air being let out slowly after his head was clearly destroyed, and I still failed.
In addition to the current performance and visual issues, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is currently lacking the multiplayer component. This feature has been confirmed and will be included at a later date. I know this isn’t the first instance of this, as the recent Ghost Recon Wildlands opted for this approach as well.
After completing the tutorial, you are set free in the open world setting of Georgia, tasked with tracking down the stereotypical bad guy who kidnapped your brother. Everything about this game is a carbon copy of other series that have produced a better product on older technology. It’s as if CI Games played darts with sticky notes containing plot points from the past 10 years of FPS and action games and wrote the story as they went. The best description I can give this is an early access alpha of Far Cry 2. Everything from the half assed driving, weightless guns and remedial enemy AI is present; which suffers from what I refer to as the Tom Clancy syndrome. The enemies lack variety and will go from being dumber than a sack of hammers to swarming you if within a 5 mile radius of shooting someone with a silenced weapon. If you have ever played Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon, you’ll understand.
The open world setting is also a huge disappointment due to the open world not really being that open. Each area is a hub for a set of missions and is no bigger than the average region from any other open world game. This wouldn’t need to be a talking point if you were not required to sit through a 5 minute loading screen every time you switch regions. I haven’t been this annoyed by loading times since Metal Gear Solid 4.
Geography and level design for the more linear locations of the missions do offer multiple tactical approaches. I did feel limited to sniping for most of my time with Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, due to the limited skill tree and enemies pin point accuracy once stealth was broken. Even with Jon upgraded, one or two well-placed shots and you are out and will need to start the mission over. Unfortunately, mid mission checkpoints were looked over in development. The only saving grace to this is you can keep your earned XP and the mid mission loading times are fairly quick. With this being said, I was able to level 2 of the 3 skill trees completely before completing act one.
The skill trees offer options in Ghost (stealth), Warrior (going in guns blazing like Rambo) or Sniping. With 9 in each tree, you earn upgrades regularly, but they add little to the gameplay and lack any visible character progression. There are a number of gun options with multiple customizable features, but none of them seem to alter gameplay in any way, unless switching to a different class of gun. Among the options, the sniper rifle is the only weapon that feels effective.
While CI Games did use the CryEngine for this outing, it is by far the worst game I’ve seen using this technology. Crysis 2 running on a PS3 looks better than this in every way possible. I can say not everything in the game looks awful, it’s simply inconsistent. The guns at your disposal have impressive amounts of detail, yet you’ll come across doors or random items that look painted on. The sound production is not much better, as there is a frequent delay in the sound effects from gun fire. Finally, the lip synching is off more times than not, which does distract you from the horrendous voice acting. You’d hear better performances on late night HBO programming.
The only truly positive thing I can say about Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is the season pass is currently free or included with your purchase. In its current state, I would not recommend even acquiring this game, but our scoring system doesn’t go any lower.
1 out of 10
Pros:
- Season Pass is Free
Cons:
- No New Concepts or Ideas
- Ridiculously Long Load Times
- Technical Issues
Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 was developed and published by CI Games for X1, PS4 and PC. The game was released on April 25th, 2017 for $59.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. For more information on Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 , please visit their official site.
Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.
Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.