Sniper Ghost Warrior In the video game industry, there are big names, and there are not-so-big names. Companies like Activision, Ubisoft and EA get most of the attention, and rightly so; they tend to produce more top titles than others. This makes it rather difficult for the smaller guys, who seem to subsist on the peripheries and pick up the crumbs. Then again, when an industry is this large, the crumbs are substantial.
And then every now and then, one of the smaller names will score a win with a game that, while not necessarily brilliant, stands out in their catalogue as much better than their stock-in-trade. Sniper Ghost Warrior is such a game for publishers City Interactive, who seem to be making a run at hitting the big time with some of the upcoming titles they have announced. Sniper Ghost Warrior is, for all intents and purposes, a first-person shooter.
But where other first person shooters have allowed sniping – a complete pain when you go up against a practiced camper – none have really made it their focus. In fact, when you look at a game like Sniper, you realise that many of the other first-person shooters out there could be described (in terms of weapons) as rather unfocused.
In a “normal” first person shooter, you can pick up a sniper rifle and let some unfortunate pixilated soul have it from the other side of the map. It’s great fun, but the realism of the situation is, well, not very realistic. Anyone who knows a bit about weapons – and sniping – will be able to tell you that long distance shooting is a tricky affair.
Bullets aren’t magical things that just keep going… they are subject to the same forces that everything else is, including gravity, wind, time and the rotation of the earth. Firing a bullet over a long distance brings these ideas and calculations into play – the longer the distance, the greater the effects.
Sniper Ghost Warrior goes a long way into exploring these ideas, purely because it is what one could call a specialised first-person shooter. It’s all about stealth, and getting clean kills over long distances. And to this end, the game focuses on some ideas that might be a little different, and takes an approach that is more pedantic and a bit more realistic than the average FPS title.
For example, a player will need to make many long range shots in the game. It assists the player by indicating where a bullet will end up, factoring in gravity, wind speed and the like. Using the scope, the player will see a small mark, indicating that the bullet won’t go to the centre of the crosshairs, but rather to this amended aiming point.
This degree of help is great, but the game doesn’t take other factors into account when assisting the player in this way. Target speed and bullet travel time are pretty much ignored, so the player will need to apply some smarts to the situation. This is both a blessing and a curse.
Moving targets will need to be lead, with the player firing a round at where they believe the target is going to be when the bullet arrives, rather than at a guided position. It’s tricky, and makes those perfect shots frustratingly difficult to get right.
Then again, in the real world, aiming calculations wouldn’t take target movement into account either, so it’s pretty realistic… Aside from long distance shooting, the game will demand that the player infiltrates areas, using stealth preferably, and some ‘normal’ FPS combat will also be encountered.
Sniper Ghost Warrior is not a perfect game, but it certainly is fun and offers the player a different kind of challenge. A few missteps in the execution of the game could probably have been avoided, but even a moderately patient player will be able to get past the quibbles and enjoy what is ultimately a challenging and rather different gaming experience.
The graphics are decent, the missions are long and generally complex, and the multiplayer is quite different to what one might expect from a firstperson shooter. On the whole, while Sniper Ghost Warrior may not rock your world, it certainly provides a breath of freshness in the FPS genre… and will, at very least, show you how tricky sniping can really be.
Verdict: Though not a perfect game, Sniper: Ghost Warrior introduces a new kind of challenge for FPS fans Developer: City Interactive Publisher: City Interactive Distributor: Apex Interactive Platform: PC Xbox 360 PS3
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