Đánh giá sniper ghost warrior 2 năm 2024

If you loved the tense sniper missions in the last couple of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” games, you’ve probably wondered at some point what it would be like to have a whole game made up of such stealthy goodness.

Wonder no more, because Sniper 2 Ghost Warrior is that very game. And it’s great fun.

Cleverly, any tutorial element is incorporated into the first mission, where you’re accompanied by your spotter who walks you through the principles of moving slowly, using cover and generally being patient.

This first mission, more closely resembles tasking for a special ops unit than a sniper team, but forms one of the three types of mission you’re required to fulfil. Fortunately, the other two types are much more like it, usually directing you to occupy a nice, comfy sniper’s perch somewhere up high and then raining down sniper hell on the other side.

Sniper 2 is a no-frills offering – no weaker for it mind you – where you’re presented with solid sniper missions but don’t have the added distraction that you find in most games of this type, such as having to pick up documents, blueprints, USB drives or whatever else. And while locations are sparsely populated with paraphernalia like laptops and other equipment, there’s nothing to find and collect, which is a welcome relief.

Similarly spartan but excellent in its minimalism is the audio. The music is low-key but serves to increase the tension and sense of drama, but the foley work is particularly fine, with sound effects that subtly aid authenticity and are as good as any game release out there.

Enemy AI is pretty alert: a radar ‘pip’ and handy meter on your HUD tell you when they’re close and have a chance at spotting you, so when that starts filling up, it’s time to backtrack and find some scrub to hide in.

And once you’re found, you’re usually dead within seconds.

Sniper 2 has more in common with Ubisoft’s “Ghost Recon” series than first-person shooters like “Halo” or “Call of Duty,” so death can come very quickly, sometimes from a single bullet.

Since you’re a sniper, if you’re trying to be really stealthy, it’s often better to just stand there and let them kill you so you can restart the segment and do it over again ‘properly’.

Doing so, however, brings into focus a major complaint of the game, which is that checkpoints are a long way apart, so reloading the last save or checkpoint can put you right back at the start of a mission that you were well over halfway through, often on the wrong side of a video sequence.

Your sniper clearly failed SF selection too. Running more than about 50m sends his pulse skyrocketing towards 200bpm and he seems incapable of hopping over a waist-high wall or obstacle, unless the game specifically wants you to.

So Sniper 2 only really does one thing, but it does it very well. That focus on delivery of core gameplay is admirable in this climate of feature-creeping, copycat, collection-obssessed first person shooters.

There are no complex assessment and reward mechanisms at work here, but the game does give you a little pat on the back every so often with a satisfying bullet-cam that seems to kick in on the last kill of a group or wave of enemies. The multiplayer offering is lacklustre, but hell, that’s as it should be.

Sniper Ghost Warrior 2 is a superbly enjoyable sniper gallery for a lone gun – exactly what we hoped IO Interactive would release as DLC for Hitman Absolution – and better for it.

While the sniper rifle is standard issue in almost every first-person shooter, few games manage to capture the challenge and coldblooded thrills of being an actual expert marksman. At its best, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a competent sniper sim that lacks the edge required to be a real sharpshooter.

A dumb shooter that feels like a rubbish stealth section dragged out across the length of an entire game.

Ghost Warrior 2 has all the hallmarks of a generic modern military FPS: linear corridors filled with thick enemies, strategically placed explosive barrels, one-dimensional characters who spout military jargon, and things exploding. But the difference here is that you're sneaking rather than blasting your way through these tunnels of scripted war nonsense. It's a feature-length stealth section.

"This is a bad game with maddening stealth AI, bewildering checkpoint placement, and idiotic ultra-macho dialogue."

At first, I gave it the benefit of the doubt. It looks reasonably pretty thanks to CryEngine 3, so I thought it might be an enjoyable parade of shallow but visually dazzling set-pieces. Wrong. This is a bad game with a maddening stealth AI, bewildering checkpoint placement, and idiotic ultra-macho dialogue.

But the sniping must be good, right? It is, after all, a game solely about shooting people from great distances. The rifles feel powerful, and there's wind and bullet drop to consider if you're playing on hard. Long, well-placed shots are rewarded with a slow motion bullet-cam, but it's always an anticlimax. There are no worrying, gruesome Sniper Elite-style exploding heads here; enemies just go limp and fall over with a feeble squirt of blood.

Much of the game is spent crouching in bushes and creeping past roaming guards. This would be fine if you weren't seemingly fighting an army of psychics. If you're spotted for even a fraction of a second, the entire base will turn their guns on you, somehow knowing exactly where you are thanks to some spooky terrorist hive mind. Then you'll die, and be forced to repeat ten minutes of tiresome sneaking thanks to the frustrating checkpoints.

"Stealth would be fine if you weren't seemingly fighting an army of psychics."

More successful are the missions where you perch above an enemy base and support a squad of soldiers as they infiltrate it. All your targets are marked for you by a spotter, but there's some element of strategy and timing in taking out guards while their buddies are facing the other way. They're just shooting galleries, though, and only enjoyable because they're breaks from wrestling with the horrendous stealth AI. These were my favourite moments, purely because they were so easy I could rip through them without having to spend more time bored to tears.

I barely needed to play Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2. It's like a game of Simon Says. Walk here. Shoot this man. Set up your rifle here. Sneak past these guards. Kill those ones. Now walk over there. Even when you're separated from your spotter, your superiors are barking orders over a radio. Soldiers are supposed to follow orders, sure, but they're also capable of, and expected to, make decisions sometimes.

There are some impressive-looking environments, courtesy of the CryEngine. The opening chapter sees you sniping your way through a tropical holiday resort, and later you fight across the streets of war-torn Sarajevo. But it doesn't take long to realise that, as pretty as they are, the levels are just static film sets. I was fleeing for cover, and the game started screaming “LEAVING MISSION AREA” at me, even though I was surrounded by jungle. The locations look big but it's all a not-so-clever illusion.

Even with its simulation of bullet physics, Ghost Warrior is no more sophisticated than a Call of Duty game. The tortuously linear missions drag you between utterly forgettable pockets of action, and the story and dialogue are vapid. Don't be suckered in by the promise of Crysis-level visuals: it looks decent, but has none of the innovation or freedom of Crytek's game, despite sharing the same tech.

Expect to pay: $38 / £25

Release: Out now

Developer: City Interactive

Publisher: In-house

Multiplayer: Up to 12 players

Link: www.sniperghostwarrior.com

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2

A dumb shooter that feels like a rubbish stealth section dragged out across the length of an entire game.

If it’s set in space, Andy will probably write about it. He loves sci-fi, adventure games, taking screenshots, Twin Peaks, weird sims, Alien: Isolation, and anything with a good story.