Sniper not-so-elite?
The past Sniper Ghost Warrior titles have been good, albeit flawed outings that sadly could not hold up to the standards set by the Sniper Elite series. The campaign in Ghost Warrior 2 was a setback, but with an open world based campaign, Ghost Warrior 3 is back on track and while it’s still not the most competent of games, is a step in the right direction for the series.
The story itself is hit and miss, sadly. But the campaign is well thought out, despite taking many of it’s ideas from Far Cry with it’s new open world setting. The problem is that the game is on the glitchy side, which holds it back from what could have been something amazing. It doesn’t help that the game has incredibly long load times and framerate seems to be all over the place. Add in the lack of any multiplayer, or at least for now…it’ll be added in Q3 of 2017 as a free update, but until then there’s a distinct lack of content.
There’s also a Season Pass available, which adds 2 expansions to the story as well as maps for the upcoming multiplayer, plus an ATV to drive, alongside a specialist sniper rifle and crossbow. Time will tell if the Season Pass is worth coughing up for, but I was actually impressed with the 2 extra missions and ATV.
Obviously, parallel lines will be drawn with the recently released Sniper Elite 3, which has fared a lot better with critics and gamers alike. When you add in all the delays to Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, the lack of multiplayer at launch and a campaign that is good, but buggy and doesn’t seem to perform up to par with the competition, it’s not hard to see what went wrong. CI Games would have done better to delay it even further, improve the overall performance of the game, fix whatever bugs they could spot and release it alongside multiplayer. Maybe then, maybe then…it would have a chance to compete against the other Sniper series.
The Verdict
Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is an improvement from it’s predecessors, but it still cannot compete with the Sniper Elite series. A buggy campaign, framerate woes and lack of multiplayer at launch hurts what could have been the redeeming entry for the series. Let’s hope future patches and multiplayer make up for it down the road.