Gamescom 2016: The Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 gameplay demo showcases drones and open world

There’s something very fascinating about snipers. That image of single-minded focus, utter determination and the cold precision involved in executing that perfect shot appeal to something deep within all of us.

A great many games attempt to draw on that appeal and somehow, they fail. Personally, I mark that down to a focus on mechanics rather than environment and level design. Of the hundreds of games that I’ve ever played, only 3 games stand out for their stellar sniping components.

The first one is Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, which nailed the atmosphere.

The second is, of course, the All Ghillied Up mission from Call of Duty 4.

Lastly, the game that truly brought the sniping experience together was Sniper Elite V2, which was a beautiful combination of atmosphere, mechanics and level design.

When the first Sniper: Ghost Warrior game popped up on my radar, I was excited. A modern, sniping experience with bullet time and realistic bullet drop and wind effects? Hell yeah! When I actually played it, the game was depressingly bad. I don’t know if its sequel was any good for it didn’t even earn a second glance from me. At any rate, both games barely managed to cross the 50-point mark on Metacritic anyway.

Enter Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 from the same studio. I was expecting the worst, again, but surprisingly, the gameplay demo that we saw from Gamescom 2016 wasn’t bad at all.

The game seems to have gone open world this time around (think MGS) and you pick missions from a laptop at your safe house. Missions are apparently built on a sniper, ghost and warrior style of play. The idea makes sense in hindsight and gels with the title, though it did take them 3 games to figure it out.

As is evident from the names, sniper missions require you to snipe, ghost missions emphasise stealth and warrior missions expect you to channel Rambo. Missions are a mix and match of the concepts, so you’d get a sniper-ghost mission, for example.

The demo also showcased weapon crafting, some degree of modding and driving mechanics, all in first person. There were some interesting elements to the demo mission, most notably a scouting drone that you could deploy to, well, scout, and tag enemies. You also have a “Sniper mode” that’s akin to Batman’s detective mode. Time slows down, enemies and points of interest are highlighted, as are points of entry.

I wouldn’t want to colour your judgement even before the game is out, suffice to say, watch the trailer and make up your own mind.

My only real issues with the earlier games centred around the fact that they followed a by-the-numbers approach to design and mechanics. X must exist because it’s trending. I just hope that Ghost Warrior 3 changes all of that.