Game review 26 November 2019, 15:48

author: Darius Matusiak

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts Review – Sniper Meets Hitman

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts is basically Hitman with a sniper rifle instead of a disguise. And generally, this combination works pretty well.

The review is based on the PC version.

The third installment of Sniper: Ghost Warrior experienced a toxic flirt with the Far Cry franchise. The attempt to imitate the idol ended rather badly. The developers promised to do their homework, and so the latest part of their series, Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts, turned to another famous series – Hitman – for inspiration with some shy reminiscence of Sniper Elite. And while it's a bit of a pity that such a graceful theme, and a bonanza of ideas, that a military sniper character is didn't get an original formula, it's hard to deny that an amalgam of solutions from other games (similar to Jedi: Fallen Order) did work out this time, and Contracts plays pretty well.

The creators didn't go for the atmosphere of Clint Eastwood's Sniper. The new hero is more like an uncharismatic blend of Agent 47 and Carl Fairburne, i.e. an assassin and a spy who basically has to steal something from an enemy base, and the sniper rifle is only there to facilitate reaching the goal. The story background is really weak, and the only respite here stems from the fact that it's equally frugal as in the new Hitmans. At the time, this game offers probably the best gameplay we've seen in the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series, and we should be probably happy it's not the other way around. However, the game traditionally comes short of full success – there's no shortage of glitches and the low budget is clearly visible.

Agent 47 and Carl Fairburne walk into a bar…

If you're willing, however, to turn a blind eye on some of these shortcomings, you will likely get an overall pleasant experience in return. Instead of freedom in the open world and a storyline, we have a copy of the contracts known from Hitman. Of course, all the quests are tied together with some storyline, but the subsequent contracts are only remotely connected, so you don't have to bother following it closely. The protagonist seems more like an undernourished hacker who's recording a YouTube remake of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, than a professional marksman. In any case, he is hired by a guerrilla group operating in Siberia, which became an independent state after an uprising against Russia – the bold move didn't turn out very well, however, since power is still held by a corrupt bunch of rich businessmen.

And it's exactly those businessmen that we will have to eliminate, while also collecting evidence on their evil machinations, such as a basket full of toys for genetically modified children. In general, the story as a whole is a collection of hackneyed motifs from B-class action cinema. However, once you really get into completing the particular contracts as if you were playing Hitman, this game actually becomes engaging. Especially since the developers have managed to diversify the experience with things such as introducing the target's lookalike, or time constraints. I wish there were more scripted surprises, even if that would increase the risk of failing a mission.

Still, this game takes a step in the right direction, and I hope that these ideas will be further developed, because overall, Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts has the potential for new maps and episodes – exactly like the latest iterations of the games about Agent 47, which is a comparison you cannot escape with a subtitle like that. We even have a male counterpart of Diana Burnwood, who gives us briefings and guides us through the missions in a very similar way as Diana. Another thing imported from Hitman are the introductory video clips before missions – the editing is great, and the stylistics are coherent.

Sniper on contract, a ghost during after hours

The entire premise is very familiar – a paid assassin gets contracts for targets. Each of the five maps offers a few basic missions to complete in any order, as well as lots of side quests and challenges for those who like things a bit more difficult. We can try to penetrate an enemy base, which can be achieved with numerous hidden paths or corridors, or just "shoot" your way to the target from a remote location and enter a virtually empty object. In any case, raising an alarm is not recommended, since the opponents have overwhelming firepower, which makes the game a pure-blood "sniper stealth" in the style of Sniper Elite.

And no matter how satisfying the infiltration process can be, the mainstay of the game is, of course, "sniping." Methodically shooting opponents one by one so the rest doesn't notice actually makes for quite a riveting experience and is simply a lot of fun. Before the mission, we choose the right rifle and accessories. As usual, we can rely on simplified mechanics of ballistics, with the need to make adjustments for wind and distance. The game, as usual, abuses the killcam, showing in slow-motion how the enemies are torn apart with the player's precise shots. All would be great, if not for one thing – the shooting mechanics feel flimsy, completely insubstantial.

Powerful sniper rifles give almost no recoil, except for some swing of the sight, and when fired, they behave like a camera welded to the ground. The exaggerated ragdoll mechanics and underwhelming audio design don't help, too. Things are a little better with the recoil of assault rifles, which is mildly surprising in a game called "Sniper."

I also found it odd how the camouflage looks more like abstract wallpapers of questionable artistic value than actual military patterns. In general, clearing locations from enemies is better fun than shooting as such, since the budget constraints of the new Sniper really become apparent once we pull the virtual trigger.

We don't have your MO, what you gonna do about it?

Some improvements are noticeable in the graphics department. This is not exactly CryEngine unleashed, one can notice some recycling of assents from the third part, and the characters are rather crude, but Siberia can be beautiful, even if the textures are a bit blurry. All the main locations in which missions take place look solid. Environments are big enough, offering numerous secret passages that warrant the existence of stealth mechanics. An interesting addition is the requirement to retreat after a successful mission to report about success; on the other hand, meditation in a glowing triangle that brings to mind occult practices doesn't really help the atmosphere. It could have been more interesting.

It is difficult wave off the quality of technical delivery of the game, since none of the Sniper seems to really care about polish. And don't even mean visibly loading textures or frequent stuttering of the framerate – mostly when the game is being saved in the background, or when we approach a supply depot. This time, however, the most flagrant were the issues with checkpoints, which a few times forced me to repeat entire missions. If you die, the game for some reason has a hard time recreating the state of the game from before the last auto-save. It happened a few times that I would die and respawn just to discover that the target I'd killed disappeared, and with it, the item crucial for completing the mission. It once even happened, as I was repeating a mission, that the game, after the first save, messed up interpreted one of the objectives as already completed, and I couldn't even find the target.

On top of that, there were some irritating issues with the sound. To be honest, it was all over the place – some effects were not there at all, sometimes the dialogs were very quiet. Enemies would teleport before my eyes, and snipers must have been using some sort of roentgen bullets, which reached me even though I was crawling inside a fortified location with narrow windows. When it comes to artificial intelligence, we have to keep in mind that the enemies are mostly sitting ducks, so it's hard to evaluate its behavior – still, it seems that the range of moves and animations is very limited, even when compared to Sniper Elite 4. Overall, there definitely has been some progress in taking advantage of the CryEngine engine, but this is not yet new quality.

CI Games vs Ubisoft and BioWare – 1:0

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts is definitely a pleasant surprise. I expected a painstaking playthrough, to equal the previous installment, but the length of the game and diversity of maps made it all worthwhile. My joy wasn't even spoiled by the looks of the protagonist, who doesn't really seem a highly-trained killer. It is a pity that the shooting mechanics haven't been polished, it is a pity that the game is still a festival of technical blemishes, however, some progress has been made, effectively making Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts the best part of this series (although the bar wasn't really high).

I personally found CI Games's new production more compelling than the recent Ghost Recon: Breakpoint or last year's Anthem! And this, too, isn't a particularly difficult accomplishment – nonetheless, it is at least a minor success. The marriage with Hitman has been a good decision, and it might even spur some additional contracts in the future. Anyway, I am still waiting for a genuine, realistic sniper game, in which the rifle has only three color variants, where you have to make corrections for shots over half a mile, or decide in split-second whether what you're seeing is the target, or an innocent bystander. Maybe the great success of the "green" missions in the new Modern Warfare will be an inspiration to some creators willing to combine it with a sniper game?