Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2

 


I had recently finished the first Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts game, and suffice to say I did not really enjoy it. Still, I had the second one in my library from a cheap bundle purchase so I guess I'd play it too, although not really looking forward to it.

The game is largely the same as the first, in terms of mechanics and overall gameplay. It starts off with more cutscenes about international politics and you being sent on missions to take care of political targets or whatever, although this time the tutorial is at least a bit more fleshed out. It explain its mechanics more, which is how the first game should of been. Also the game has one more difficulty now, so theres 4 instead of 3 on the first game. I still chose the default 2/4. Something totally surprising is that now the game has a little red dot in your scope which shows you exactly where to aim. This was on by Default for me on difficulty 2/4. This completely changes the gameplay and makes sniping way, way easier. To the point where I'm not sure its even a good thing, its just weird. For the whole game I was able to rely on this little dot in my scope and it would reliably let me snipe enemies 1000 meters away, it felt like I was playing with Aimbot or something.

That's not the only new tweaks to the mechanics, either. Many things that pissed me off about the first game are different here. For instance, the enemy Snipers that will constantly one shot you out of nowhere? Guess what, in this game not only does it instantly give you an icon showing you where they are, but even if they do shoot you , it barely even hurts you. Wow, what a drastic change. Another example is the Extraction in the first game was super unintuitive what it meant and what it was for, well in this game it clearly states what it does, you can press "Return to lobby" or "Continue with current mission" and you can also change your loadout and skills and buy equipment at the extraction, unlike the first game. Also, in the first game, when I'd tag enemies with binoculars it seemed like it would only last for 10 seconds, but in this game the tags lasted forever. Lastly, like I mentioned, the biggest one is the sniping mechanics are changed, you frequently get in much longer range sniping encounters, like 2000 meters, and you can also manually adjust your scope which I don't think you could do in the first game, you could tweak your scope sights according to distance, as well as a little Red dot showing up telling you where the bullet will go. Even things like weapon attachments and clearly explained with a tutorial you can't miss, unlike the first game where I had missed the fact you can use attachments until the game was almost over. Here the UI is more polished and better designed and is more intuitive.

The graphics are mostly the same, it feels like the same game, same controls, same graphical fidelity, same model and texture fidelity, same lighting fidelity, same bullet camera, it just feels like another mission pack with a few tweaks more than anything. Although the gore does seem to be raised even higher, you can get some really gruesome headshots which blast his head apart, brains flying everywhere, its really disturbing at times and disgusting even more than the first game, which is a good thing to make your sniper feel actually powerful and menacing.

So multiple mechanics are polished and cleaned up which made the game significantly less obtuse and aggrivating.
Even the objectives are more coherently shown, they're clearly marked as mandatory that this is how you complete each level, instead of the first game it feeling like they could just be optional side content.

As for the actual missions, its a lot more of the same kind of thing. You have a handful of locations, you choose your loadout and level up your skills, then you enter a location and complete all the objectives to unlock the next location. The first mission is a Desert type location, where you basically just have to go around and Eliminate a few different officiers. Thats really all there is to it, its a semi-open big map, but theres only a few small areas that are pertinent to the actual objective, so what I ended up doing is basically hugging the wall and running past all the empty pointless encampments full of enemies and just ran straight for the main locations with the objectives.

This game seems to have a lot more encounters which can go wrong, like if you miss or shoot the wrong guy, the main target will get in a vehicle and start driving away. This happens quite a few times. Infact you can even fail the entire objective, and this was confusing. If a target escapes and you fail the objective, you can continue playing the rest of the mission and completing other objectives, however by the end it won't let you progress to the next mission. You'll have to go back in the map and it lets you try the one objective you failed again, thankfully it spawns you right at it, also. But the first time I failed I was confused as to what I should do now. Should I just reload checkpoint? Restart mission? It wasn't clear and left me with some feeling of annoyance, a message should of popped up like "Objective failed, you can still do the others, and try this one again later" or something, for example.

The guns this time around are mostly the same, huge bulky sniper rifles with long range scopes, though the Assault rifles only have 24 bullets oddly, instead of 30 like the first game. And an array of pistols. The guns are done well enough, it feels satisfying to shoot the AK, although some of the snipers are too weak and can take like 15 headshots (no joke) to kill a single heavy armoured enemy. Then I bought another sniper with more damage and this time I was ONE SHOTTING him. The disparity between the shit snipers and good ones is hilariously stupid.

Some of the objectives are just tedious busywork, however. For instance mission 2 has you going around turning off power to these towers, which gave "where the fuck do I go" vibes, because again just like the first game, it usually does not tell you exactly where to go, but just a rough general area. Mission 2 also has you going to some power facility and turning off these generators, and this location is a sort of big annoying maze where you have to climb all around and swim underwater inside tunnels and do all this tedium which took me a dozen minutes or so where I wasnt even fighting enemies but just running in circles.

This game also seems to feature more indoors levels, like one mission has you going inside some gigantic facility with an elevator where you go down multiple floors to track down this high prioirty target. This mission takes an hour or so, actually its a gripe that some missions are longwinded in this game compared to the last. But I guess it was kind of cool that the game has a more variety of encounters such as massive in doors segments which rewards close quarters Assault rifle combat.

Theres one mission in particular that was just super annoying and bullshit, though. One mission you have to assassinate some woman, and then instantly protect a prisoner that is trying to escape by running his way through the village. This is like 2000 meters away. So you have to protect this guy as hes sneaking through the village, surrounded by dozens of enemies, and youre 2000 meters away trying to snipe them with massive bullet drop. I failed this thing like 20 times. Only after I managed to memorize exactly every enemy I finally passed it. The path the prisoner takes to escape is just nonsensical and stupid, he deliberately takes every dangerous path right next to all the enemies instead of just turning and running out of the village. I get its to make an engaging mission but the rate at which they kill the prisoner is just bullshit.

Other missions involve more mountianous areas with lots of elevation and verticality, which is like more time spent trying to figure out how to just reach the objective area moreso than engaging in fun combat, which was a bit tedious, although thankfully fast travel is still a thing and you can hilariously skip past massive segments of the map and enemies just by fast traveling closer to the objective which kinda feels like an oversight. Like theres clearly many areas with carefully placed encounters and encampments but you can just skip them entirely.

Many missions frequently will have you go to some general area, and search every nook and cranny for some PDA, laptop, or notebook, at least at some point when youre close enough it does give you an icon telling you where it is, but its still a lot of time spent running in circles not doing much else.

The skills themselves are mostly the same, youve got 4 skill trees, one for Drone and Turret which I just didnt care about, one for your Mask which highlights everything, one for Equipment, one for Support and Stealth. Mostly all I did is work my way towards the skills that give extra armor, which is significantly noticable, and also work towards skills that give more ammo, and work towards skills that highlight enemies near me. Thats aboutut all there is to the skills. You get points by completing objectives, thats about it.

The weapon unlocks are also mostly the same, you just use money to buy weapons, although in this game it seems like some weapons have Intel item requirements, like you need to go around and collect optional intel to be able to buy certain weapons, which was kinda disappointing because its not exactly like theres that many weapons to buy and half of the snipers are locked behind these optional intel items which I didn't really get. Still, I bought a sniper with high damage and attached a 10 magazine clip on it and that was more than good enough for the whole game.

One of the last missions has you going inside some big palace to hunt down some woman, the location was pretty cool and almost epic feeling, you even go down inside some prisoner dungeon to make your way there. Lots of action and combat, killing enemies back to back, sometimes can feel fun and satisfying. I ended up just accidentally running right up to the woman and shooting her in the face point blank , which was surprising.

The last mission is kind of a joke, it just has two objectives, assassinate two guys, which took a total of like 5 minutes. One of them you just need to find the guy that smokes, the other is trivial just snipe him and then leave. Kinda a pointless filler mission. Then you get end credits and the narrator guy thats been talking to you the whole game says maybe he'll buy you a beer at the bar one day. Oddly enough though, to my surprise, theres actually another mission left over. I guess this is one optional bullshit mission you can do if you want? I said screw it and did it anyway, and when you do it the narrator guy says "Oh its nice of you to tie up loose ends" or whatever. But this mission kinda sucked in comparison to the others, just another Desert map with lots of mountains climbing around, assassinating a few different people, going inside some tents to pickup some Virus DNA, taking out some encampment by some ancient ruin and going in to pickup some item, thats about it. Nothing really remarkable about it, just another generic mission. Its just weird they made it optional, why not put this before the last mission instead of having this jarring feeling that theres another mission left after the end credits.

Thats Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2. Its definitely better than the first game, although I very much question some of the new changes, such as the red dot showing you exactly where to aim. You could argue "oh you didnt play on high enough difficulty" I played on difficulty 2/4, Sharpshooter, which I take to be the default experience.  I know you can disable the red dot, but it was on by default for me, which I take to mean this is what the developer intends you to have as your default experience. And although I hated the one hit sniper deaths in the first game, I also question neutering them this much in this game, theyre almost insignificant now, they shoot you and it takes off like 15 damage. They should shoot you and it take off like 90 damage, the balance is stll wrong.


It's still not a remarkable game or anything, it just had less annoying bullshit than the former game, its still very generic with not any memorable missions , no memorable story or characters, no real epic cinematic moments, still feels like a bargain bin cliche military shooter game, but at least there were moments where I had some amount of fun playing through it. It's also short, I beat it in one session, so that helps things too.

5/10