CI Games wants you to be a Sniper, a Ghost, and a Warrior!
On day three of the Electronics and Entertainment Expo, I hit the ground running and first up was a presentation/hands on with CI Games and their shooter/exploration game, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3. There’s a lot to cover but as all snipers know, being stealthy is key!
Long story short, Ghost Warrior 3 has the player trying to survive in the middle of the newest variation of the Cold War. You’ll have to put all your sniper and survivalist skills to the test if you don’t want to be another statistic of this war! The title of the game is very important, as you are more than a Sniper, more than a Ghost, and more than a Warrior.
You’ll be able to kill targets will one shot but to keep with the stealth mechanic; you’ll have to control your breathing. The slightest noise could be the difference between a successful mission and certain death. You’ll also need to put tracking skills and some skills you might not thing of, like negotiations, to make sure your mission is a success. Your skills will be on display because the artificial intelligence reacts like a real person. They might do something like you would because they have been programmed like real people.
One of the major themes of Ghost Warrior 3 is stealth but another one is “play my way.” What I mean by that is you can decide what route to take to get to the target you need to shoot. Some missions have you studying patterns of people, such as when they leave their military base, and then you can decide what time of day you want to take them out. If you see something going on at a certain location, you can decide to help, such as if you see Russian soldiers rounding up Georgian people,( the demo map took place illegally behind Georgia’s border, controlled by Russia)you can decide to help.
Extreme Navigation allows you to traverse anyway you wish, another “play my way” option and Scout Mode allows you to use your Special Forces(Sniper Sense) training. That might consist of disarming landmines or discover footprints of enemy soldiers in the area that want to take you out. Speaking of wanting you dead, the environment and weather can take you down as well. There is a dynamic weather system that will affect your gameplay because the weather could give away your position, it could kill you, or it could vastly affect your shooting ability. I’ll get more into that in a little while.
Realism is key to CI Games and that was apparent in Ghost Warrior 3. The way you have to take into account many factors when your aiming your sniper rifle makes it feel like your actually aiming a sniper rifle.
You need to factor in wind when you release your drone for surveillance but this is one factor where I have an issue with realism. You don’t need to return the drone, it just appears back in your hand when you’re finished with it. This as brought up in the presentation but with enemy degeneration and the reasoning was realism is key but they want the game to be fun too. If there were enemies all over the screen, lag time would be crazy. I guess the game would be difficult/choppy if you had to bring the drone back to you from every recognizance mission it went on.
There isn’t a level-up system in Ghost Warrior 3; there is a training system. There more you do/perform a task, the better you get at it. The more you use a certain weapon, that weapon will be easier to use in the long run. At the same time, there will be missions for you to complete, if you want to during the story mode. They will range from al kinds of things like extractions to tagging certain things in the game. At times you will have to have two to three moves planned out in advance to keep from getting spotted because there could be an enemy helicopter in the distance and you’ll have to get your drone over for surveillance. How you do that is up to you and half the fun?
The gameplay demo showed off how lovely environment is and how you can go pretty much anywhere you want to. Sniper Sense is easy to activate and you don’t have to worry about seeing landmines and other traps on the ground. They have colored circles around them so they’re pretty obvious because they game doesn’t want you dying that way.
Going back to the environment, you rappel down the side of a mountain and it really looks like one wrong step and it could be lights out. The sunset you see at the start of the game is a nice touch as well. The controls could have been a little bit tighter and just a little bit more responsive at times. However, since the game isn’t slated to release until 2016, it looks great thus far, with the environments and controls. There was plenty of rain in the demo but it can’t be a Cold War without snow, guys!
