The Snipper Ghost Warrior Contracts series of sniper stealth shooters from the Polish studio CI Games has been in the shadow of the Sniper Elite series from the British Rebellion Developments for too long. The latter parts of both franchises came out almost in sync, with Sniper Ghost Warrior always losing this duel to Sniper Elite.
While Rebellion was distracted by the strange and not popular with the public, Strange Brigade, CI Games had a chance, which she took advantage of. In the absence of a competitor, the new Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts, which has borrowed many elements from its counterparts over the years, looks not bad at all. Plus, unlike the already somewhat boring setting of World War II, the Polish stealth shooter exploits modern political realities.
So, in the near future, the Russian Federation split into several subjects of international law. Under the slogan “Stop feeding Moscow,” Siberia separated from Russia, taking with it all its natural resources. But traditionally, the Siberians did not succeed in building democracy, instead, as always, an oligarchic bandit pakhanat came out, who borrowed all the bad habits from the neighbors.
The Siberian government began to put pressure on the disaffected, to fight with its neighbors (Mongolia was the first to fall under the distribution), and to threaten the United States, China and what was left of Russia. Obviously, no one will like this behavior, and some agency, hiding its affiliation, has placed a number of contracts to eliminate the top officials of Siberia. You, as an unnamed sniper with an army background, respond to this contract and must thin out the top of the Siberian “establishment”, consisting of bandits, former KGB agents, mad scientists and dishonest politicians. No remorse, it’s just a job well paid.
Snipper Ghost Warrior Contracts
Unlike Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 with Snipper Ghost Warrior Contracts its three large open levels, the ability to drive around in a car and a lot of additional secondary tasks, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts has six levels (one of them is a training shooting range), somewhat smaller, comparable in size to the levels in Sniper Elite III and Sniper Elite 4… Each of the cards has four to six tasks that can be completed in any order and using different approaches.
All targets can be approached from different directions, and elimination is possible both from a long distance from sniper positions, and close, in quiet or loud modes. True, some tasks require you to take an object from the eliminated target, find records or data, so you will still have to climb into the protected area, even if you prefer a sniper weapon. After completing all the tasks on one level, you move on to the next.
In addition to the main tasks, at each of the levels there are challenges that bring you additional money and tokens needed to obtain the most powerful skills. As a rule, these are requirements to complete all tasks without raising an alarm, remove certain targets in the allotted time, commit a given number of long-range kills, etc. Plus, on each of the levels there are collectible items, as a rule, these are posters (yes, there is also a “Stop feeding Moscow!” Poster there) or notebooks of one of the characters that you have to eliminate.
The earned money and tokens of two types are needed to open and buy new types of weapons and powerful abilities of the hero. The fact is that our unnamed character, at the request of the employers, must wear a special high-tech mask, reminiscent of the mask of Corvo Attano from Dishonored. With the help of this device, employers can follow the actions of their agent, plus it makes it easier to navigate difficult areas.
The pumped-up mask knows how to mark opponents within a certain radius from the owner, show their traces, places where you can hide yourself or hide the body, vulnerable points of machines and mechanisms, electrical panels, allows you to see the view areas of cameras and hack automatic turrets. Cheater device.
In addition, your hero has a lot of additional gadgets at his disposal, however, it is not a fact that, having pumped the mask, you will want to use many of them. A micro-drone that allows you to mark enemies, hack cameras, turrets and burn out electronics is really a handy thing, only jammers are installed near most of the primary targets, making the drone useless.
The same stationary sensors can, of course, be used to guard your sniper position, but it is easier to pump a mask or scatter jumping mines on the approaches. But a really interesting and useful thing is a remotely controlled sniper turret, which can be installed, for example, on a completely different sniper position in order to shoot through the entire level, preventing the enemy from hiding in cover.
However, the enemy in Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts, traditionally for similar games, lends itself, although since the time of the previous part of the AI, it has undergone some upgrade. No, the enemies, in the same way, after ten minutes forget that an evil sniper is wandering around the base, and resume patrolling, stepping over the corpses of their comrades. And yes, they, as always, periodically peek out from behind cover, substituting for your bullets. But on the other hand, AI soldiers have learned to calculate and come to your sniper position, which causes some trouble, especially at the first levels. So yeah, don’t forget the mines.
