Pretty enjoyable if you are a fan of the Sniper Elite games and enjoy stealth you will likely get a kick and a challenge out of this. Was actually shocked by how much I enjoyed this considering how pants I thought the first Sniper Ghost Warrior was back on 360.

One of the better sniper games out there for sure. It has pretty good graphics and the maps are really big with a number of side objectives and challenges to complete. The game has pretty good customization options and i like how in order to buy upgrades on guns and such you have to spend money. You earn it by completing contracts or looting what you can off of bodies. Nothing is restricted either from the start which is nice. Biggest issue is that despite the games verified status on deck the game is honestly to much for it to handle or the optimization is just that bad because it crashed my deck multiple times just straight shut it down completely from what i assume was overheating issues. The game also does not have manual saves for whatever reason so if you were to sit still in one spot and kill like 20 guys before getting killed yourself. congrats you have to do it all over again because the game only autosaves in certain unmarked locations as you move around the map. The enemy Ai is incredibly stupid ffor the most part. They flip flop between being utterly blind and have eagle eyes. I genuinely dont get it. So to make up for this you are incredibly fragile both with fall damage and with how much damage you can take overall. A single regular troop is more than enough to take you down if you get caught off guard or outta cover. Which again without manual saves can make you end up repeating certain sections really annoying.

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts is heavily focused on stealth. You can find a good position somewhere and start taking out enemies from a sniper rifle without care for alert, but enemies have mortars in bases, sniper cover in places you wouldn't suspect , and normal enemies have good aim too. Good is that you don't need to be a sniper all the time. You can sneak by many places using cover, bushes, gadgets, etc. In many aspects, the game even suggests the player to finish targets with a knife. Sometimes targets are just covered from sniper fire and it gives some plot-related talks as well. About sniping this is done great. Now, gadgets and weaponry are available for buying rather than finding them on maps and unlocking them with time. For some, it will be bad cause it kills the progress feeling, but for me it's great. I could play with my favorite best-suited weapons from the start. Gadgets palette is way bigger than in any previous SGW game, and with this, what I said earlier, you can not only get a weapon that suits you, but also set the player character with skills suited for your style of playing. The sniping mechanic alone is a little more immersive now. Wind changes are more frequent, and putting up a bipod or setting a rifle on something makes a change. Sniping in easier modes is also better. Instead of dot signalling where the bullet will go, like in earlier SGW games, now we have a suspected fall of the bullet. Thanks to that player, don't get just fixed and moved into another place croshair, but still must take adjustments for bullet falling and changing wind. Snipers now also have new ammo types, which can change the way of playing. Standard caliber rifles can be loaded with bullets that lure enemies or scan to mark them. Bigger caliber rifles can be loaded with explosive bullets or piercing rounds that can kill enemies behind a wall. Maps are changed for the better, too. Instead of average open worlds like in SGW3, we now have smaller biome maps. They are full of enemies but also full of collectibles, many routes to target, and even side quests. Every map has its own mission, which is 4-6 objectives, around 5 challenges (like kill all targets with a knife, or do something without alarm, etc), 2-3 side quests, which are randomly spawned additional targets, and, like I said earlier, collectibles. Every map is different, not only by the layout of terrain and buildings, but also by the weather (snow or more fall-like). The plot just exists. It is not really important. The player is a mercenary. The player is getting paid for getting the job done. Payer doesn't need to know anything. Of course, there are dialogs with the player's employer, and if the player wants, they can dive a little into the game's plot. In summary, without spoilers, not long ago, the Siberian Republic was created by gaining independence from Russia. It's critically placed, full of resources, but like a typical post russian-soviet country, it is run by an oligarchy. The player got targets close to the government of this country. If a player chooses to kill targets with a knife, and interrogation can get some information about the employer, but seriously, it's not a Tolkien-like plot. It's just an excuse for taking the next **** biggest cons are bugs. I think that on the development team, only 5% were testers. The game doesn't have saving on demand; it has automatic saving, which is triggered mostly in certain places, so if you are keen enough to see that the game is saving progress, you can try later going into the same place, and the game will trigger saving. Although this save spot was meant to trigger saving only once because loading from the last spot often resets NPCs on the map, their routes, and sometimes even routines. After loading the game, NPCs that were next to you while saving can now be in a completely different place. Saving also breaks the HUD jammer. There is a jammer that can remove marked enemies from the minimap and player HUD. You can find it and disable it, but if after this game saves and loads, the jammer will be in a limbo state where it will be working, removing markings, but broken, so you cannot turn it off again. This single bug made me redo one target from last mission for 4 HOURS because enemies were in many numbers, and without marking them, it was difficult to track them and put them down in a way that won't raise an alert. Collision bugs are normal in this game; many times, I was stuck on one pixel or invisible obstacles. Also, enemies and turrets often have absurd spotting ranges. Adding to this, that there are a lot of them, many times sneaking by them is also almost impossible. Probably, it was kept like that because it will make the playthrough linger. The game got only 5 maps plus a tutorial. After all, it's a fine game, but it requires a lot of patience - both for being sneaky breeky sniper and to forgive a ton of bugs which make me reloading the game like a machine gun sometimes.