Preview: Sniper Ghost Warrior 3

Forget everything you know about the linear, corridor-ish landscapes of this series. Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 has more in common with Far Cry 3 now. The world is open, the cars are plentiful, and, best of all, you don’t have to scramble up towers or pick flowers to somehow fashion bigger ammo pouches. The only thing you’ll need to pick here is which head gets turned into a canoe first.

During our hands on we were able to test out the game’s three main pillars: target, execute, and survive. It’s all in the title: you can be a sniper who murders from afar, a ghost who gets in close with gadgets and silenced weapons, or be a fairly brain-dead warrior who wades in loud with AKs and automatic shotties. We found each approach to be both fun and viable, though the latter is a one-shot-you’re-dead affair in Realistic mode. Maybe be more subtle.

Realistic mode is where this game is at, to be honest. Every bullet you fire needs to be fashioned in your hidden lair, all the usual objectives markers and aim assists that let you easily find and perforate the right person are gone. The snowy open-world we played was full of intel which would lead us to our targets. The rub: we had to leave our cozy sniper nest to infiltrate the towns to get it. This meant a lot of prep work with a personal drone and smart elimination of border patrols with a degrading silencer attachment.

To make matters worse, every long shot you take is at the mercy of your rifle scope calibration (those fancy knobs on the side aren’t for show), weather, wind speed, distance, gravity, and your generic American hero’s heartbeat. In our demo we gauged the wind drag purely by watching the direction of falling snow as an unscripted blizzard rolled in. We can’t stress how satisfying it was to watch that round curve across 480 metres to its intended target. (Some guy’s nuts.)

We went into our demo with expectations aimed low. We came out pretty surprised by how on-target this is. That said, it’s a good thing Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is being delayed until April, as we hit a few traversal bugs (getting stuck in ladders wasn’t much fun). If CI can take care of those, this could be killer.

Posted in Blog, Games