Sniper Ghost Warrior 3

Much better than my expectations, I had so much fun with this, for at least 15-20 hours! Sandboxy like Far Cry, but felt more serious (you die pretty quick if you get spotted for example). Combined with the checkpoint savesystem this gives quite a bit of tension, and sometimes you progress very slowly/stealthy to be on the safe side. Often many ways to complete a mission - melee stealthy with knife (or throwing knife), ranged stealthy, or just loud with grenades and machinegun. You could also hack camerasystems (personally, or with your drone after upgrading it) so the cameras won't spot you. Line of sight and hiding all works great in this game. You tag enemies with drone (or sniping scope), and after that they are always visible with their tags...no fan of that but that's how it is. Sniping felt very good - you have different difficulty options, depending on how easy you want it to be. Personally I thought melee was the most fun, so I played this sniping game by mostly sneaking up on enemies. You can sneak up to them and press "v" for melee kill, or you can run towards them while holding down firebutton to kill them quickly with the knife, and those kills you can chain if several enemies are close to each other. You could also drop down on top of enemies if you are on a roof for example. And of course lure them away by throwing stones, or lure them with your drone, and even more ways. So it's very sandboxy and very creative in how you want to play it. The skill system could have been better though, you just unlock everything while playing. Would have been better if it was more RPG and you had to choose one way or the other, sort of locking out gameplay options. Now you can always do anything you want, sort of. At least when halfway through. Game looks good, and the rain looks better than anything I've seen! But runs very heavy - my 4070 with all on max at 4k gives me around 60fps! No DLSS in this game!

The game is overall playable and engaging. As every game - it has it's pros and cons. Pro-s: 1. Soundtrack in georgian is great. 2. Scenery and overall plot is good. Contras: 1. Weapon may shoot by itself, disclosing you 2. Quite often the personage gets stuck after climbing up the ladder and hte only way around it is to change the primary weapon to secondary (or the other way around). 3. No manual saves. That's the bigest of all.

The only con for me, is slow loading time between missions etc. **Well worth the wait**. Great graphics and game play with cool stories. If you like sabotage, zip lining, flying drones and driving vehicles, endless landscape, beautiful scenery, looting areas and bodies, stealing wallets, blowing things up, hiding and sneaking, tons of weapons and upgrades, etc, etc, etc, and of course,... sniping as a ghost warrior, this game is for you!!! Awesome

Copy of my Gold ed. review, since, well, it applies verbatim. Okay, the story is 110% see through, the faces are horribly plastic, acting is not really brilliant. Who cares? SGW3 fixed most of my issues with the series, that being (without any particular order): * Not being able to find your own way to the level. Fixed by making the world open that offers some obstacles, some opportunities and some new mechanics. * Silly FPS parts. Fixed by introducing _some_ close combat action, though most of the time you can limit such to the minimum. * "You and what army?". Being alone is no fun, working in pair with your spotter works better. Fixed by: you have a drone that works as your spotter. Open world brings in some design choices unknown to follow-the-line games. I wasn't fond of having to pay for my weapons and ammo, but I hadn't run into serious troubles with resources and money, so this one is a "feel" rather than a "fact". But you have bigger freedom with choosing your arms, so there are advantages. Oh, and your stuff needs maintenance and fixing too, even on mission. There is a lot more content in the game - freeing prisoners, exploring places, climbing challenges, drone navigation... but saving your progress is not possible from like the menu, but is connected only to some game actions - such as ending a mission. And if you die, you get resurrected on a pre-compiled save location, with not much state being carried on. I am not a fan of this, but... you can just not die, eh? There are new mechanics: enemy being alerted, mortars, hiding in trash cans, cameras and "hacking", interrogation - and three skill trees for a sniper, ghost or warrior, so there is even replay value for the (open quotes) story (close quotes) if you're into that sort of things. If you know what you're getting into, even full price is not really that expensive (somewhere between 1-2€/hour in game), and if you're still unsure, buying at sale price of 4€ will make feel you like a thief later.

There's a lot to like in the game: - open world - most missions can be completed with stealth or just guns blazing - weapon upgrades - skill system But there are also quite a lot of bugs and sub-bar design choices. For example, the skill system is a nice touch, but most of the skills are useless. And the engine seems oddly heavy and unoptimized. Would like to give 3.5 stars, but all-in-all it did leave me with a good after-taste, so if I have to choose, I'll lean towards 4 instead of 3.