Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts

This game was a blast to play, but it was very short. I was left wanting more. Also, there are some side objectives you can miss by not understanding the games mechanics, or by not having the right tools at the time. Sadly, you can't replay missions to get those side objectives either. Overall, i'd say this game is worth it. Just wait for it to go on sale first.

Regarding EAC, apparently it was removed in an update before I got it? This is the best Sniper Ghost Warrior game in the franchise, taking a hitman approach benefitted this game greatly. However after the first 3 levels, things start to get worse. First of is how it handles alert status. According to this game, Siberians are all psychic hiveminds, the moment one guard gets alerted, everyone in that area is alerted and can pinpoint where you are. Second is how it handles the delay between detection and alert status. When guards see you, you literally have half a second before it goes into said alert status. Third, is the lack of a "recovery" or hiding phase. Because you can't avoid detection during alert status, cuz the hivemind you literally cannot reset back to a non-alert status until you completely leave the area. There is no downside to equipping silencers at all. Because a large amount of the sniping undetected is reliant on silencers instead of triangulation and relocation, detection is not properly built into a gameplay loop, being a protracted fail state instead of an inevitability of sniping. TLDR, bad stealth mechanics bring down what could have been a decent experience. I'm hoping the next game improves on its flaws, as this series is slowly but steadily improving with each iteration. Honestly, I would recommend Sniper Elite 4 over this, a game that has mastered the stealth-sniping gameplay that this franchise aims for.

The only saving grace for this game is the sniping. Creeping around like Solid Snake feels like it should be awesome, but the experience is marred by terrible AI that cycles between omniscience and complete, utter stupidity. Since the game auto saves at predetermined checkpoints, it takes only one "mistake" (e.g. the AI momentarily being either decent or godlike) to destroy from minutes up to half an hour of slow progress made to sneak into a base and take out your target. Welp, looks like some dude wayyy over there "saw" you and is now giving you a machine gun enema with accuracy that would make a real sniper envious. The only real tactic at that point is to either grenade yourself to start over at the last checkpoint or, if you're able, run away and hide and wait for them to reset. You can try running and gunning, but in order to push the idea of being a sniper, the other guns may as well be airsoft. About the best I can explain the AI... if you played the terribleness of the original Sniper Elite back in 2005, it's like they dragged-and-dropped the same terrible AI into this. Get this on a very deep discount only.

An otherwise awesome game ruined by a save system that is BULLSHIT, the game will save itself at random points without any player control so it is very easy to lose all your progress and have to do an entire mission more than once.

The game has a lot of good mechanics. Different bullet types, nice bullet-cams, and some very long distance sniping sections. Stealth also works well in this game, almost like a sniping Splinter Cell at some points. The only drawback is that for AMD graphics cards this game seems to be under-optimized, running a bit louder than it should considering the age of this game. Lots of fun nonetheless so it's worth it. The reviews saying there is spyware are incorrect because nothing other than the game itself installed for me. Highly recommend getting this on sale.