An open world, three different ways to complete your missions, the production of munition by yourself, passages like in a parkour race, wildlands, a drone to spy the area, controllable planes and a story with a personal touch – this all and much more offers the latest Sniper Ghost Warrior game. Could CI Games combine all these elements into one great game which also is technically on a high level? Let’s find out.

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Unfortunately, the game’s story is not the best we ever could enjoy. The center of the story is the Elite-Soldier Jonathan North. In the prologue you can see how his brother get kidnapped. While you are playing the kampagne you get from time to time a view into the past. We think that this flashbacks turn us too much away from the main story until the game’s characters noticed, that his kidnapped brother could be in the middle of the area.

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We noticed really quickly, that Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 has not the best look especially in the cutscenes and when you take a closer look on the characters facial expressions. On top of that we have to say, that the game’s story is not on the level we thought it could be. From time to time there are some great story parts that are really good when you listen to the enemy’s smalltalk. But this is nothing that could push the story into a higher dimension. Especially, when you get to see the busty woman for the first time you will know, that they do not mean this serious.

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Thanks good we can say that the story does not matter too much in a sniper game. You are running through Georgia, have to kill people, help the local living population, you have to find you brother and hunt a ghost. And our journey through the brown-dark-green squishy and later snow-squishy open gameplay world with a vehicle that is not very good to control. You drive through narrow, desolate and lifeless streets until you reach a hideout. At the first glance it seem like the streets and small towns are empty because of the civil war. But after a few hours of playing we noticed, that the world is just lifeless and desolate, because there is no dynamic and/or surprising things and no AI that live there by themself. And we could unfortunately see very quickly, that this game is not so good as for example Ghost Recon Wildlands. Because of dynamic lights and shadow effects and great looking vegetation, you can see very often low textures and squared landscapes. Later in the game you will see barren rooms. Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is unfortunately not so good as other games with features like variety and liveliness.

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Until you reach the place you can hide yourself, you can activate the notebook, start the next mission and choose how you want to do it. After that you leave the cave and drive with your vehicle through the land. It is also possible to teleport yourself to one of many fast-travel-points. This is only possible if you have found them before. On the way to the mission point you can take a look at the virtual Georgia and find some interesting spots. It is also possible to talk with the people that are living there, find items for crafting or relicts from the past. It is also possible to find better sniper rifles. You know, as a sniper you have to collect sniper rifles (sarcasm). Even because of these nice small places, the open world can not catch us so much, that we do not want to stop to collect things.

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Unfortunately, the open world is very useful only in the main missions, because you can decide how you want to complete them. And this is a huge improvement compared to the previous game. Around the place you have to complete your missions, there are a lot high places which are great to use them to explore the area and to shoot from there. Thanks to the Special-Sniper-View, which is also useful to find hidden mines and footprints, you also can find really easy places and markers. In addition to that, you get also some very helpful markers for the parkour-run.

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The searching for enemies is very important. Great is, that if you once have marked an enemy, he is marked for a long time. You can mark them in two different way. You can use the visor of the sniper rifle or by using the drone, which is also useful to explore the area from above. The drone is a really powerful tool for snipers, which unfortunately can be spotted by the enemy. The sniper duels are really interesting when the enemies staying so close that they can observe each other. In such case, you could use special baits or distract the attention of the enemies differently, or you do not care about the most inconspicuous procedure.

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You can kill the enemies very good from the distance after you marked them. We have to say that we had a lot of fun with this compared to other features of the game, which are not so good made like the snipering. Aim, set distance to the target manually, stop breathing (time will be slowed down), press the trigger and look forward how great a plan can works. According to the difficulty level you have chosen before you also get in addition to the breath holding feature an extra feature. With the help of an additional crosshairs that considers the influence of the wind on the bullet. This help setting can be switched off manually, if you want to plan this by yourself. Hardcore-Gamers can also switch off all Interface-Elements and menus. We also unfortunately have to say, that we wished, the save-system would be much better. Because of the only one save point that is constantly overwritten, the missions are much more exciting. But we think that for lover difficulty levels, the designer could include a much more open system.

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What we also like is that it is possible to kill enemies not only from the distance. You can sneak up to them, kill them and hide their dead bodies. This works very well, but we hoped that things like the own volume and the perception field of the opponents would be better visualized like for example in Dishonored 2. It is also possible to fight as a warrior and kill all enemies like in Call-of-Duty. Unfortunately, we have to say, that the weapons handling is not the best on, the protagonist can only insert a few hits and the grey enemies enter an optical symbiosis with the everything that surrounds them. This the reason we recommend to you to do it the sniper way. In the most missions we combined all possibilities we have. We can say that this game has not the worst AI we ever saw. We also can say that the missions and what they include varies very often. Like in many other games you can collect ex-points to in different categories to get new skills or to improved them.

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We have to say that the developers of Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 build the game on one of the best game engines in the world, the CryEngine. And it is really sad that they did not developed a much greater game. The frames are not so high as in the normal game when you for example use the drone. The loading times are much too long.  We had no problems with the controls on the PC. They are working very well with the keyboard and a mice.

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Sometimes, less is more. And one great example for this is Sniper Ghost Warrior 3. Unfortunately, the additional features are so blowed up the the main game slips into the background. We had a lot of fun in the sniper duels as long as the AI worked great, too. The missions benefits from the open game world, because you can decide by yourself how you would like to complete the mission. With the great drone and both styles of playing (Ghost and Warrior) this game combines features which allows you to be the one man army. Would the developers focus on this features, their game could be a serious competition for games like Sniper Elite 4. But unfortunately they add an useless Crafting-System, things you can collect, a lot of not interesting areas and a skill system that that left no space for variety. At the most time the open world seems very lifeless.And on top of that there is unfortunately a story we do not really care about. We think that the developers wanted too much but could not complete it on the level they wanted to. Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is a great game with a lot of potentials. We hope that the developers will finish it with some DLC and free updates, so that it could become better and better. Give this game a chance.

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