Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts is one of those games you play to kill time, that or you’re really into the Sniper Ghost Warrior franchise, if you are, you have my sympathies. Anyway, on to the review!

Background

This review came from an old site I wrote for (more here), now that the site is gone I am uploading all my old reviews from there, here.

So a few years ago – 25 Aug, 2017 at 4:06am to be precise – I posted a review of “Sniper Ghost Warrior 3“.
Developer “CIGames” were happy to engage in some feedback on that review. I wonder if this holds true to this review.

Disclaimer

We are walking into HEAVY spoiler territory through this review – If you have issue with this then I urge you to find another review as
this is more of a critique. Though there will be a review in here I feeel it best to also speak about these particular points.

As per all of my reviews we shall start with the specs.

Specs

This game was ran on the HIGH preset and was also streamed on Twitch at 720p 60FPS.

Story

Out of the bag I want to say the story presents itself in such a way that it is only loosely held together by a single concept: Libération!

You are “Seeker”. From what I gather you are a mercenary hitman who has been used all over the world by various groups and people to do the dirty as it were. You are hired by a group and given a “Handler” and a mask. You are paid a nice fee and for lack of a better phrase told: “See all these bad people, here is why they are bad… do your thing.”

Simple stuff. Now when I say: But wait.. there’s more! I am sure you have a few ideas as to what this is.
It’s cliché. I do not want to give it all away here but if you think something smells off – You can guess the end of this game easily.

You go through Siberia and take out various targets within a corrupt government. Each and every one of these people are depicted as despicable. All bar the Eugenics doctor. She’s doing some good… but for bad people. Pretty sure we could convert her.

S.S.D.D

Either way – Bad people. omelettes, eggs and all that jazz. Each individual contract has their own thing and some of the information you can get from some “secondary” objectives can give you some info on what you are actually in for Bulletproof Glass, particular quirks for ID, potential meetings and the such. Good to know what you are looking for and for that I do commend CIGames for rewarding the side missions on each map.

Overall however the story is very “one note”, disjointed and short. If I didn’t have a death count in the triple digits I doubt I would have spent 9 hours playing this game.

In my opinion: The story is as basic as a Nickelback song and as predictable as death is inevitable. Compound this with some good ole’ sequel/DLC bait.
Left a bad taste in my mouth and I’ve tried marmite.

Mechanics

The mechanics of this game are very similar to the Sniper Elite series – The higher the difficulty the more you need to work for each kill. Take out cameras so you don’t get spotted, adjust elevation and wind speed, tag the targets, hold your breath, fire. I recommend a suppressor so you don’t alert everyone and their cat within a 10-mile radius. These guns are meaty. Excellent sound design on this part.

The selection of bullets as well – oh my. Straight up decapitations and dismemberment, and the slow motion. Perfect chaos. We got .50 Cal bullets, luring rounds and even “Easy Mode” rounds – Make aiming a thing of the past. If you ever played the previous game however this is all standard. The only difference is you now must do the side challenges of the contracts in order to upgrade Seeker to hold and use these bullets.

Each missions has a few side challenges that unlock tokens used to unlock particular skills. Each skill helps in one way or another and each tree has a split choice for perks. You can only have 1 of the 2, example: More Stamina OR Faster stamina regeneration? That’s smart.

The idea of the as a gameplay mechanic was a very good choice. The mask is the communication device as well as the HUD. All of the things you need are
essentially built into the mask: Map, Binoculars, Thermal Vision & objective tracker – Think the MGS4 Eye Patch. The most useful Milti-tool you never think of.

I do miss the cars and all other travel equipment, however – the 5 (Yes count that, 5) contracts in this game are vast and you die fast. Compound this with the autosave function that can just set you back a good 10-minute journey. Seeker can skip leg day for some time.

The cutscenes between each mission – your brief if you were so inclined – are some of the most beautiful cutscenes I have ever seen. Loved the style. I will say however that more work was clearly put into handler than Seeker as every line delivered by Seeker was laughable. If you had been a silent protagonist I would have been happy but no… had to give him the most SyFy, B-Movie, Direct to DVD voice ever.

You also handle pretty bad. It takes a special breed of idiot to fall through the gap in some stairs because you slipped on solid, dry concrete in the sun. Every movement is like walking on bananas.

I could understand this in the snow areas… not so much in the middle of a road when there is no snow… or ice… or bananas. Add on to this that when you come out of ADS it takes a week to turn in any direction. It’s almost like you are in disbelief that you looked down the scope.

The AI By the way… they will zero right in on you but they are as dumb as bricks any other time. Unless you shoot near them, shoot at them or they somehow manage to see you – they are pitiful.

Mechanically – This game is almost solid. Clearly, this game is built for multiple playthroughs but I could not bring myself to do it. The minefields man…PTSD. Add on to this all the points above and you can find a balance.

Performance

As stated earlier I streamed this game on the HIGH preset and I got a solid 70+ FPS with some minor jitters. My biggest concern though? It’s 2019… Why no Borderless window in the settings? Half-Life 2 has Borderless!

I suffered twice the game crashing to desktop – Call it “Launch Week Issues”, benefit of the doubt there. Overall this game ran well… better than the previous instalment. I literally have nothing else to say about the performance. Absolute Dream

Overall

Overall this game is as interesting as ready salted crisps. There is potential in there and many other interesting things can be done – but on it’s own it’s basic, uninteresting and boring.

The highlight of playing this game was being 2nd on the Twitch page for this game. This game is better than SGW3 but to be fair it’s not hard to improve on garbage.

This game however – in my personal opinion – is just nicer smelling garbage. Many good improvements and kudos on that. Hands up – I liked them, yet this game still has some issues that plagued the previous game – Simple gameplay loop, terrible AI, boring and predictable story.

I personally cannot recommend this game – though a fun romp overall it is still just a minor distraction with a flimsy story. I actually recommend SGW3 over this game – the story was better and the gameplay was more diverse.

(Overall score based off of the average of all 3 scores ((5+5)+10)/3