Recenze Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 » Vortex

Less than two years have passed since the release of Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts, and developers from the Polish studio CI Games are taking the floor again. They found that the more compact dimensions and the division of the world into sub-regions fit the series more, and they seem to turn away from the open concept of the last numbered part so far – Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3. On the other hand, the sequel Contracts brings virtually no visible innovation and will appeal primarily to players willing to overlook past mistakes and only hungry for other targets that could pierce the shot from their faithful sniper rifle.

Up to the desert

The most visible change of the other Contracts concerns planting – we are moving from snowy Siberia to areas in the Middle East, somewhere in the area between the Lebanese and Syrian borders. Most missions will therefore take place in the desert, and it must be acknowledged that change is mostly beneficial. In many cases, with the main character Raven, you get to places where you have a great view and it’s basically up to you – and a little luck on the sides of your target – whether you hit from a really great distance or secure the hit by a challenging process through areas full of enemies. But it seems to me that the sandbox, to some extent synonymous with the first part, disappears slightly from the sequel, and the game usually tells you exactly what you should do through radio communication, or that there may be several ways to move forward. But you have to be quite careful about what Raven’s conversation with the operations center says, because the game is relatively sparse on the usual indicators and will leave you thinking for a while.

This is definitely not to the detriment, but there will be situations that cannot be solved by shooting alone, and I must admit that it is not always clear from the instructions how the mission should proceed. Fortunately, there are plenty of goals in the five regions available, and the designers have made sure you don’t get lost. This can happen, because in the second part of Contracts, the people from CI Games present really huge pieces of maps with many details, but the overall processing is traditionally curled into a circle, so you can’t miss anything important and you can reliably complete the main tasks of individual regions. How fast it will depend on your skill and also the chosen difficulty, which significantly penetrates the gameplay through available or hidden helpers in sniping. In the case of the Sniper Ghost Warrior, this is already the standard – we are talking about a red dot, which can indicate the future trajectory of the projectile and make your own aiming easier. However, the system is relatively simple and functional, so after a while you will either turn off the dot or choose one of the higher difficulties, for which no relief is available. The actual shooting is quite satisfactory, especially when you hit the target at a distance exceeding calmly 1200-1300 meters, but you do not always get the opportunity and in many places the current Sniper from CI Games becomes a stealth action as cut from a bond.

Artificial intelligence is very inconsistent – so while once a soldier doesn’t notice a person sliding down to the ground next to him, other times the same pandula is able to aim a submachine gun or assault rifle in your direction and doesn’t care if you’re hiding in the bushes over a mile away.

As I wrote above, free access is partially replaced by a linear script, in which you have to complete assignments from developers with a minimal opportunity to get out of the way and do things your way. Yes, you can complete the tasks in any order, it’s up to you how much action you will be, but if you don’t get on the elevator in that place, the game won’t move, no matter how hard you try. Honestly, not all the missions that took place in the closed complex were very attractive to me, because they are not as efficient as Hitman, and shooting from weapons other than a sniper rifle does not work very well. These are not obvious shortcomings and you can certainly use at least a pistol with a silencer, but at this point the production of CI Games touches too much on the experience of the most played titles, which it cannot compete with. Apart from shooting, however, this is mainly reflected in the behavior of the enemy, which, according to the developers, has undergone dramatic changes, but the result is approximately the same as in the first part.

We limp on both feet

Artificial intelligence is very inconsistent – so while once a soldier doesn’t notice a person sliding down to the ground next to him, other times the same pandula is able to aim a submachine gun or assault rifle in your direction and doesn’t care if you’re hiding in the bushes over a mile away. It hits you, whether you like it or not, and it telepathically transmits your location information to anyone in the same camp. It also very often happens that the opponents line up the train and march one by one in front of your barrel, which is funny, but it breaks down the whole atmosphere and mainly does not set clear rules for what you can do and what, for example, will trigger an alarm, could write additional separate paragraphs. However, I am content to state that even the continuation of Contracts does not provide a solution to the age-old problem of how to balance entertainment against overall credibility. Therefore, even in this game, in case of most inconveniences, all you have to do is sit in a corner and wait a while before the whole camp stops looking for you and the soldiers wandering around with a sacrificial capitulate that they simply lost sight of you. As a result, you can gradually go around the whole camp, remove one opponent after another, hide some in crates or bushes, others just leave lying on the ground and after a few minutes the location is empty and you can fulfill why you came here.

The motivation to continue playing does not lie in the story, which tells a dozen stories about the need to deal with a criminal syndicate, but in the diversity of tasks and some spatial puzzles, even if they lack considerable logic. For example, the rotating motors of the transmission tower, whose rings you have to stop by intervention and catch everything within the time limit. Don’t ask me why anyone would construct something like this – they may have learned from the Death Star architects – but it’s a lot of fun to make similar puzzles and enjoy the fact that soft human tissues don’t serve as a target for once. At this point, forgive me for a few shots of what it looks like when it comes to the famous slow-motion shot, because the level of brutality is perhaps at an even higher level and actually doesn’t find such meaning in it anymore. I’m no fat boy, but the X-ray in Sniper Elite is at least fun, as long as crushing bones and guts in the twisted world of such games can be described as fun at all. Nevertheless, I don’t want to bother with a word about the graphic design, which the developers really succeeded in, and the game definitely doesn’t have to be ashamed of any of the competing brands. I played the PC version, which is also not very demanding on hardware, and yet it depicts breathtaking scenery and the mentioned details, which in mostly desert areas make sure that the environment does not look boring.

Of course, information about the playing time must not be left out, or better the time of my completion when completing all the main tasks and a number of challenges – the counter on Steam stopped at 17 o’clock. But those challenges, very similar to the system known from Hitman, are guaranteed to be a means of prolonging your playing, and I guess some of them will sweat a lot. The conditions of fulfillment usually consist of a completely quiet and precise procedure, but sometimes it is a greater trickery, including the use of special weapons or equipment, which you unlock in the role play part of the game, but these are also explained in detail by the label. It should also be added that the new Sniper has Czech subtitles, which the translators have done very well, are consistent and without errors. It’s a pity that some dialogues are repeated very often, which can include reports from the operations center every time you enter a location where you have not yet completed all the tasks. In this respect, the game allows you to return to every already unlocked part of the map, but each time it seems that you are entering the mission for the first time and Raven is constantly scattering notes on the account of selected targets, even if they have long since been cleared and the game is de facto over. But I forgive the new Sniper from CI Games, and regardless of the mistakes where I have to include the technical shortcomings of the animation pages or getting stuck on the smallest objects, this is an above-average work, which is also a bit better and more interesting than the first part. But it still needs a great balance and especially cleansing, which the game lacks and prevents it from peeking into the top floors.