Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts Review PS4

The Sniper Ghost Warrior series has always been a joy to play with. CI Games managed to carve itself a niche spot in the market, with the high tension sniper gameplay that the Sniper Ghost Warrior series offered. Now, the latest entry in the franchise, Contracts brings together the refined gameplay elements of its predecessors while ditching the open world of 3 for a more sandbox style of play.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT

Sniper Ghost Warrior: Contracts, takes a page out of the rebooted Hitman series’s book. You take on contracts that have a primary objective, that has you assassinating bad guys but you also have optional side objectives that involve hacking into computers or recon.

The core gameplay of Contracts remains the same as it’s predecessors. You have to scout out your target, figuring out their movements and distance before taking them out with your rifle. The sandbox nature of the game can, however, lead to some unpredictability and interesting scenarios. Your enemies can just as easily take advantage of the open environments by taking cover or bolting out of sight as you can.

The game has a pretty impressive arsenal of unlockable snipers, alternative weapons, pistols, grenades, and gadgets. This extremely varied loadout can support different playstyles and allows you to switch tactics when necessary. A sniper rifle might be good enough to take out a single target from far, but if things go down and you find yourself surrounded an automatic rifle is better suited for that task.

There are multiple ways to approach your objectives. You can choose to get up close and personal to your target or take them from afar, sneak around enemy patrols or take them out, pick up a bounty or other optional challenges along the way and then look for a good overview position. You can use your binoculars and your drone you then start tagging enemies to map their position and plan your move. Different enemy types also add to the tension as leaving the wrong type of enemy alive can completely ruin your plans.

FLAWED AIM

Visually the game is good looking with well-detailed environments and can manage to look really impressive with its lighting and effects. Unfortunately, the game is plagued by some technical issues. Enemies would frequently get stuck in the environment or their animation would totally glitch out. I had a guard vibrate wildly after being shot and this totally killed my immersion. The base PS4 version also struggles to maintain a steady FPS in some cases, even though the visuals don’t really look like they should be breaking the system.

All this can turn out to be a potential game-breaker, but thankfully the tried and tested sniper gameplay is really fun and managed to keep me distracted from the flaws.