➤ Sharpshooters 🎮

Even for hours on top of a rocky conformation, or perched on the branches of a large tree or behind a bush, but always hidden in a strategic point waiting for the target to be eliminated or the friendly "target" to protect.

Alone against everyone. It is the hard work of sharpshooters such as Jonathan North, a Marine joined the Joint Special Operations Command, trained to strike accurately in quick and "silent" missions. Just like the one assigned to them: sabotaging separatist operations and neutralizing their leaders who destabilize the Republic of Georgia, a region of fundamental strategic importance that is sliding into the chaos of a civil war. Jon, codenamed Lodestar, actually has a second, more personal purpose: to save his brother Robert, who has been missing for two years and who appears to be a prisoner in an area controlled by separatists. A "secondary" objective for the USA but primary for the military, torn internally between his sense of duty and love for his loved one. To try to finish both operations in the best possible way, North can count on the support of Lydia Jorjadze, a mercenary who in the past fought alongside him in Afghanistan and with whom he had a relationship, and on a member of MOSSAD, the secret service Israeli. Around this incipt starts and evolves, divided into four acts, the story of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, a tactical shooter that highlights the role of the sniper, and that passes from a particular and contained formula to an open world structure with multiple broader and commercial approaches, somewhat reminiscent of the latest Far Cry.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, an open world with snipers with a lot of potential not all expressed properly

Behind the enemy lines

As we wrote on the occasion of some previews, the possibility to move freely, the use of vehicles, the huge map with various points of interest to visit or enemy outposts to free, the large valleys where you can wander around with your gaze, in fact give the feeling of being faced with something very similar to the aforementioned Ubisoft title, only with more accurate ballistics and a certain emphasis on long-range assaults. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, as it should be, focuses on a different gameplay compared to a Call of Duty, although here too there are some more "dynamic" and somewhat linear sessions.

From this point of view, in fact, the title offers a series of fairly varied main and secondary missions with three different types of free approach to each of them (except for some where you have to follow a certain line dictated by history), so as to have a good alternation between the phases of pure sniping and moments in which, for example, one is also called to recover documents, to hack alarm systems and cameras with the drone, to infiltrate outposts to free prisoners or to investigate and track down some mysterious killer. Given the nature of the production, but also for the convenience of the player as we will see later, the slower and more reasoned action of the sharpshooter predominates, where strategy, tactics and patience play a role in 90% of cases. fundamental, together with ballistics. It is in fact one of the strengths of the game, and apart from a few glitches from time to time, it generally works well: firing in a hurry, perhaps using a heavy 50-caliber rifle while sitting, or even worse, standing, means for example missing the target. . In short, it is better to do things properly, losing mobility, but gaining accuracy. Therefore it becomes essential on the one hand to take advantage of the wide arsenal available to equip yourself with the model of rifle and bullets best suited to the type of mission, without obviously forgetting to bring along a short weapon, a dagger and other support objects such as explosives to be used to cover the escape or to undermine possible vulnerable points from where some enemy could surprise North. On the other, use well the system of craftsmanship, which inside special shelters where it is possible to just rest, pass the time or select missions, allows you to intervene on some fundamental components of the character's arsenal. For example, with the necessary materials in your pocket, you can repair objects, or configure an assault rifle as a medium-range sniper rifle complete with a silencer, or as a light machine gun. And again, build different types of bullets: the standard ones, those suitable for piercing the armor of vehicles or those made specifically to knock out men, perhaps from a very long distance. There are also DARPA ones that correct the trajectory of the shot in flight. In short, non-trivial choices that have an important impact in the continuation of the missions and on the life or death of the gamer, especially in the advanced stages of the story. Several of these components are to be found within the areas in which the protagonist is to act, therefore the exploratory phase is not to be underestimated, also because it can lead to really important discoveries, useful even to deepen the plot. In this sense there is a particular function that is activated via the L1 backbone, a sort of Batman-like detective view, very useful for highlighting traces on the ground, on the doors, spikes to cling to, points to lurk and other clues or elements otherwise not visible.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 offers 48 Trophies including 36 Bronze, 8 Silver, 3 Gold and Platinum. To unlock them you have to satisfy some specific requests of the game, which in ascending order can be to neutralize 50% of the targets from the list of the most wanted in a game, hunting a certain number of animals or eliminating some snipers, just to give examples.

In the center of the viewfinder

Once in action, it is necessary to choose the best position to take up positions, study the area in which you have to operate well and collect as much information as possible, identifying and marking at the same time the individual targets through the work of the drone or binoculars, to have always keep an eye on their position. Time and weather conditions should not be underestimated, since the latter sometimes limit visibility and noise, but can also create problems in identifying targets or using certain weapons correctly. Once you have the necessary information and have planned the best tactic to avoid being detected, you are ready to shoot, but paying attention to the direction of the wind, the distance of the victim, the oscillation of the weapon and the temperature: all factors that could in turn affect the success of the hits and the mission.

Hitting a sentry that is too visible or making a mistake, the alarm immediately goes off in the ranks of the separatists, with the risk of unleashing a real manhunt, a very dangerous situation, at least for a few minutes.The enemies, in fact, do not seem to shine by logic, and often show limited artificial intelligence. If they manage to close every escape route to the protagonist they are able to implement good bypass tactics or some combined attack, but in fact it is enough to move away from their position towards the bush or slip into a building to become almost completely invisible to the group. of "hunters" who, confused, ends up wondering where the infiltrator is and then calms down. The same is also true when it comes to fighting from a distance, with enemy soldiers more likely to hide than to respond adequately to the threat with combined actions. This at least at the Normal level of play (there are three basic ones, the others are Difficult and Extreme), where things get complicated a little later in the adventure, when snipers, mortars, tanks begin to pop up between the ranks. and reinforcements recalled by radio, who quickly bring small groups of extra opponents onto the field. Obviously, as written before, the game does not prohibit approaching the objectives to kill or destroy them by looking at them more closely. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, in fact, offers two other types of approach to missions, in addition to the sniper one we talked about: one, Phantom, is of the stealth type, and involves having to move in the shadows taking into account several factors in order not to be discovered, such as light, noise, surveillance cameras, and so on. Interesting scenario in which to operate but not very varied overall and to balance in some mechanics, especially in the behavioral routines of the sentinels at the attention level (it is not uncommon to kill a guard in broad daylight while his colleague a few tens of meters away even if notices), and alert (it quickly fades, as in many other stealth titles to tell the truth). The second method is instead that of acting in a hurry, attacking and shooting like a madman at everything that moves, but with the real risk of having a bad end after a few steps in a "mode", Warrior, rather crude from the point of view of gunplay. In short, you will have understood that regardless of the three options available, the title seems to favor and reward mainly the chosen shooter approach, relegating the other two to the role of supporting actors to be used only for curiosity or to complete the work, but rarely as an option. principal, if not in some more linear mission specifically designed for them by the developers. And it is precisely this aspect, probably, one of the limits of a production that, according to the developers, aimed to diversify the offer, because in fact a sort of fairly repetitive game pattern is created that leads the user to act almost always at the same level. the same way: to mark all the enemies on the spot, to eliminate them mostly from a distance and then complete everything with some close action. Some might argue that being a sniper-focused title it makes sense, but then why talk about "freedom of approach" if it is allowed up to a certain point? In any case, returning to the missions themselves, upon completion of each of them, based on the actions performed, experience points are gained and skill points are obtained that can be spent in each of the corresponding specialization paths, namely Sniper, Phantom o Warrior. It is also possible to unlock new features always linked to the three branches available and therefore to the combat, concealment and gadget management capabilities, to make the old North increasingly competitive.

Operation Georgia

We obviously cannot conclude our review without first analyzing the technological part. In this sense, from a visual point of view, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 offers really suggestive glimpses, thanks to the CryEngine and a good level design, which turns out to be varied enough to offer areas fairly diversified between them, and ranging from wooded areas to others more flat, up to urban agglomerations and military bases. But most of all to the good implementation of particle, atmospheric and light and shadow effects, which acting in combination with each other and with the dynamic weather and the day and night cycle, give users a nice overview helping to give them a greater sense of identification.

Where the engine limps is in the architecture of the buildings, which appear rough and quite flat-looking, as well as in some textures. The latter are generally of good quality, especially as regards those related to natural elements such as rocks, soils and flora, but disappoint the characters, protagonists and supporting actors. In this sense there are inexplicable contrasts for example between those that cover some faces compared to others that are used for clothes, which are less defined if not flat. Even a good part of the polygonal models of the characters did not convince us, as they seem to come from at least a generation of consoles ago. To complete the picture of the defects there are then some movements, which sometimes appear rigid, as if there were no points of connection between one action and another., and the long loading screens that can last up to four or five minutes at times. Also worth noting are some graphical glitches, such as a sniper rifle we had eliminated hovering in the air with the marker indicating among other things the active presence of its owner, even though he was already dead, and a couple of freezes during the adventure that forced us to leave from the last check point. As for the audio part, the dubbing in English is good, with an overall discrete acting taking into account some lines of dialogue really from B-Movie, with rambling jokes that often clash with the drama of certain topics, and the environmental effects, from the typical sounds of the night in the wilderness to the noisier ones in the morning near inhabited places. On average, the soundtrack, which however does not fail to offer some good ideas in terms of songs, especially when there is a need to "underline" some situations in the most dramatic phases of history.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store Price 69 € Resources4Gaming.com

7.0

Readers (17)

6.6

Your vote

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 marks an important step forward for the series compared to its predecessor, although it does not shine completely due to some limitations of artificial intelligence, the lack of refinements in certain aspects of the gameplay and some errors of a technical nature. And it does so above all thanks to some good ideas, such as the situations in which the protagonist finds himself, which offer discrete game possibilities, the good craftsmanship system, the quality of the marksman phases and the scenarios. The feeling is that CI Games wanted to put too much meat on the fire compared to what were perhaps its possibilities, ending up not being able to properly implement and refine all those aspects of the product that instead could have guaranteed it a better judgment and rating. Ultimately, however, we would like to promote it albeit not with flying colors, given that in our opinion it is still a good base from which to start again to build future chapters, and a pleasant title to play for fans of the genre willing to close. an eye on the listed defects.