Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 | PS5 Review
Updated: Nov 19, 2021
Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a stealth-based, first-person shooter, developed and published by CI Games, where you have to infiltrate bases and pop heads in the most spectacular fashion throughout. It's currently available on Windows PC, PlayStation, and XBox. For the purposes of my review, I was playing the PlayStation 5 version.
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In Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 you drop into the Middle East as the soldier, Raven, who is an established marksman and has been called in to help conduct contracts to take down corrupt government parties. With an amazing arsenal of weapons available and a barrage of equipment at your disposal including drones, automatic turrets, and a tech equipped helmet; hop into the combat and calculate your way into infiltrating every base from a crazy range.
I'm not a huge expert in sniper simulators personally, however I've always been a big fan of the FPS genre in general so I had good expectations for Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 despite my lack of experience. Usually my weapon of choice in Call of Duty: Warzone these days is a sniper rifle of some sort, however in true Call of Duty fashion there is plenty of realism left out and the sniping always leaves something to be desired; unlike with Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 where you have to factor in the distance to help you calculate the bullet drop and the winds direction and strength. For any concerned noobs like me, there is an excellent tutorial where the game takes you through a fairly easy scenario showing you how all this works and showcasing the features of your helmet which include: night vision, a system for marking and tracking enemies, and various levels of zoom that really assist you in taking off heads at incredible ranges.
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There are three difficulty levels available in Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2, allowing any level of player to enjoy and I would imagine that the hardest difficulty would increase the already excellent realism included in the game. You're not locked into choosing just one difficulty setting throughout the whole game so if you're struggling with a particular scenario, you can lower the difficulty to allow you to progress. My main criticism of the game would probably be that the enemies all seem very similar to each other and not much variety is offered in terms of their movements, awareness, etc. Perhaps that would change if I increased the difficulty though.
After getting through the tutorial, you are ready to start your first mission and are taken to the loadout screen which early on you don't have the funds to buy much. Soon enough though, you begin to gain money as you start firing your way through the scenarios. There are extra challenges that you can do in each level to receive extra money, as well as to allow you to unlock the various perks, gadgets and equipment. For me the challenges brought some replayability into the scenarios because there is always something new that you want to unlock to develop Raven's many methods of taking down the enemy.
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To a certain extent, I got Hitman vibes from the game due to the necessity of stealth and the many different ways you can approach each scenario using the equipment available meaning you could return to each scenario multiple times and complete it in a different way every time. For instance, you could go in guns-a-blazing with your assault rifle, or you could find yourself perched up over 1000km away scoping in watching the targets while they go about their business, not realising that they're just about to have their head blown off, all the while with you hacking into their systems to gradually make your way closer and closer to the base, picking the enemies off one by one.
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I found the level and map design to be excellent and as the game is scenario based I had the misconception that the levels would be quite short and linear but I couldn't have been more wrong! The maps were huge with a variety of enemies crawling around for you to pick off at your own leisure. The close combat is good, not perfect but it's usable despite the focus being on sniping and stealth. I'm not great at stealth in games so my plan of attack was to really perfect the long range fighting and utilising the features on my helmet to tag enemies while I was a distance away so I could pick them off a few at a time and finish off any stragglers with my Assault Rifle.
The PlayStation 5 version features improved visuals, faster loading times, and makes excellent use of the Dualsense controller's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. This makes the triggers really fight you as you scope in adding to the immersion of the game and making the controller trigger really feel like an actual trigger. I looked at some footage of the game on the PlayStation 4 Pro and while the visual difference isn't massive, it's a completely noticeable improvement when you compare it with the PlayStation 5 gameplay.
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Overall, I was really impressed by Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2. It took a genre that I'm keen on but not overly familiar with and made it really accessible with all the extra gadgets that you have. And despite being made up of various scenarios rather than one flowing piece, the game felt well tied together and connected rather than just random levels. The sniping itself felt smooth and the aids worked well to help me improve, but as previously mentioned, you can opt to turn most of the HUD aids off to further boost the realism along with the difficulty.
Lj's Rating: 4 straight headshots out of 5.
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For more information on Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 please use the following links...
CI Games - Developer | Publisher | Facebook | Twitter | Website
Many thanks to Bope for the Review Key.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 | Steam Store | PlayStation Store | XBox Live
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