So you have to snipe crazy long distances calculating wind drift and bullet dropoff so it’s actually rewarding when you score a headshot and it’s like watching slow motion footage of a dog overturning their food bowl. No, reign it in, kids, those targets are fucking miles away, you won’t be bum bouncing those without an industrial grade bum trebuchet. At least it focusses on something, unlike the rest of it which is the usual “You can use stealth OR direct combat OR stick landmines down your trousers and bum bounce everyone to death it’s up to you” folderol. I enjoyed the sniping gameplay more than I expected. There’s a bit of utterly bog standard action stealth gameplay on the way to the sniping positions – you know, hide in bushes, wait for guards to turn around and contextual button prompt them right in the jugular vein – but then the sniping challenges feel like a nice reward, like coming home after a long day at work, gathering the family around and shooting them all in the head. And this is a game that focusses on the sniping, thankfully. But I guess there’s no helping feeling distanced from the story in a sniping game, where the average distance between you and every other named character is roughly the length of the queue outside the STD clinic in the town where your mum lives. Come back in a few years after our actions get declassified, I suppose. Even leaving aside how painfully generic a setting this is for a contemporary war shooter – oh I guess we can’t call it that ‘cos there isn’t technically a war going on. So on the whole it feels like the story writer sat down to work and then threw up their hands and went PBBBBT. No-Nonsense Handler tacks it onto your to-do list with all the gravitas of a request that you pick up a carton of milk on the way home. There is kind of a twist in that there’s one last surprise target you need to ornamental fountain after the main lady, but Mr. Or maybe the very no nonsense voice in your head could be lying about your targets you only have his word that they’re evil and the worst YOU ever see them do is neglect to close the Venetian blinds before you make everyone else in the room forever paranoid of distant shrubbery. Like the big leader gets in a giant robot suit or some kind of fortified bunker at least and isn’t just standing around in a courtyard looking like she’s waiting to complain to the gardener about some neglected leylandiis. You do all of that, then the very no nonsense voice in your head says well done, then you go home. You proceed to oust it by tracking down a bunch of key power brokers and turning all their heads into very short lived and highly pressurised ornamental fountains, concluding with the big leader herself. The plot, right, is that you’re a lone sniper in a nondescript Middle Eastern oil nation with a new government that I guess didn’t import enough Simpsons DVDs and therefore the Western powers want ousted. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a game so utterly milquetoast in all its attributes. Not because it’s any less mediocre you understand, but because it’s now so mediocre that the mediocrity’s come back around to being interesting. I covered it in my compilation review of games I couldn’t think of many interesting things to say about, but now the sequel’s getting its own review. Sniper (HUURH) Ghost Warrior (HUURH) Contracts One was an improvement in that it was a game like reading a slightly interesting magazine in a doctor’s waiting room as opposed to being like the ensuing botched colonoscopy.
Like watching a Jason Bourne film where the costume department accidentally ordered everything two sizes too small and Jason Bourne spends every action scene in a dustbin growling with generic intensity about how his jockstrap pinches.
I reviewed Sniper (HUURH) Ghost Warrior 3 and it was godawful. Without the Sniper part clarifying things, what would you assume Ghost Warrior was? I’m leaning towards either poorly translated martial arts film or an air freshener marketed towards men aged 18-35. I always find it laughable when anyone refers to themselves as a “warrior” if they’ve never even had one battle axe lesson – or indeed if they collapse like an ineptly folded cootie catcher the moment they get into a direct fight with someone less than two hundred yards away. There’s still something about the title Sniper HUURH Ghost Warrior HUURH Contracts that irks me, all dry heaves aside.
We have a merch store as well! Visit the store for brand new ZP merch. Want to watch Zero Punctuation ad-free? Sign-up for The Escapist + today and support your favorite content creators! This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2.