Review by: Michael Barnes

If the Modern Warfare titles are video gaming’s answer to big-budget, Hollywood action movies than City Interactive’s Sniper: Ghost Warrior is analogous to the straight-to-DVD, low budget knock-offs that box office successes precipitate.

Between the story progression with multiple player characters, in-engine cinematics, backstabbing higher-ups, and hidden laptops scattered around the battlefield it’s impossible to play through the single player campaign without constantly being reminded that the game is a cheaper, lesser version of the venerated Call of Duty games. It’s really unfortunate that the game comes across as a derivative and even exploitative piece because the on-paper concept of a fairly realistic, stealth shooter with an emphasis on sniper action is potentially a great one. But once you find yourself in a mission and you’re running and gunning through a crummy imitation of another popular shooter, it becomes clear that the potential of the concept has been squandered.

An uninspired story concerning an insurgency in a fictional South American country frames the tired, repetitive shooting action but it’s written so vaguely and the voice acting is so poor that it’s hard to get interested at all in the political and military matters it describes. You play as three characters over the course of the single player campaign and only one of them is an actual sniper so that should tell you something right there. At one point during a mission, I wound up just throwing my sniper rifle away in favor of an assault rifle and charging straight through the level with guns blazing. So much for all this “Ghost Warrior” business. Missions are very linear and pretty typical of the genre, but if you’re looking for another sniper-tastic mission like “All Ghillied Up” from the first Modern Warfare game, you’re not going to find it here. You won’t even find anything as compelling as the Sniper Wolf segment from the Metal Gear Solid.

The sniping in the game is actually pretty satisfying, however, largely thanks to a bulletcam effect that is triggered when you score a headshot. It’s terribly rewarding, even in such a lackluster game. There are a couple of feints toward realism that I do appreciate, as bullets arc rather than travel in a straight line and if you’ve been doing a little jogging before you go belly-down, your heart rate is going to be too fast to steady your aim. There are a couple of “cheats” for playability’s sake, namely a red dot sight that helps you determine how much lead you need and a slow-motion “focus” mechanic that makes lining up shots easier. The higher difficulties do away with these handicaps.

There are numerous technical problems with the game that effectively break its own concept and make several of the missions unnecessarily difficult and very frustrating. The stealth system simply does not work reliably, and a couple of missions fail instantly if you’re spotted. The AI is weird and inconsistent. I’ve been literally standing right next to an enemy and he did nothing but shoot wildly into the jungle. But I’ve also been completely concealed and after taking one shot, every enemy on the map is firing full auto into my location. Levels are filled with invisible walls, knee-high plants that block movement, and clipping issues that are a real pain in the ass when you’re Oscar Mike or fleeing from a horde of bad guys.

The graphics are actually not that bad, and City Interactive deserves credit for squeezing some good visual mileage out of the Chrome engine. The jungles look thick and lush, and although the characters are dead-eyed, animations are reasonable and the models aren’t bad. You still wouldn’t mistake them for what you’d find in a AAA-class game, but I’ve seen much, much worse in budget titles.