The budget game market is all but extinct in these “high production value” and AAA title days. It was surprising to see a little title called Sniper: Ghost Warrior creep on to shelves for a reduced price of £30. Not exactly the type of budget gaming that some older gamers will remember (think back to the days of yore with the Amstrad, Commodore and Spectrum) but much cheaper than any other new release. Is the lower price a reflection of the development of the game, or is it a worthy temptation?

Sniper: Ghost Warrior is an American cliché in game format. The story centres around an island that was once an American friendly territory that has now been overthrown by a corrupt, and very local, dictator that is working his own people to death. As an elite sniper, it is your job to assassinate said cigar chomping despot and restore peace to the island.

The funny thing about a game that pegs itself as a sniper game, is that it would lead the player to assume that sniping and sitting on high vantage points are the order of the day. However, you will all too frequently find yourself sneaking through camps with only a hairs distance between you and your enemies and there are the occasions where you play as a Delta Force soldier, which has an uninspired run-and-gun feel to it.

The stealth sections of the game can prove to be just as tense as they are annoying; one alarm and it’s restart from the last checkpoint. Those players with a little patience may enjoy these sections as they usually involve picking targets carefully rather than shooting them on sight. There are moments however, where the player will wonder: “How exactly did that guy behind the tent see me?” Flawed stealth is inexcusable in a game that promotes it as much as Sniper: Ghost Warrior.

The long range sniping sections are more appealing than you would first think. Lining the perfect head shot from nearly a mile away, accounting for wind and gravity, and watching your bullet fly in slow motion towards the unsuspecting target is a joy, even if the bullet cam is over a decade old. Thankfully the bullet cam is not overused, and only applies to head-shots, as there are more than a few occasions where you will need to fire and forget.

Achieving the perfect head shot is assisted by concentration mode. This allows the sniper to control their breathing to the point that time slows down and makes taking a shot much easier. Not a new innovation, by any standard, but a welcome one if just to make sure enough of the buttons were being used.

Graphically speaking the island is a lush, green and quite pretty landscape. The foliage and water effects are comparable to that of the Far Cry series and though not as technically advanced, there has been a lot of time and effort put into the scenery and it paid off. It is apparent though that more time should have been spent on character models as they, more often than not, look like badly posed action figures trying to mimic real emotive responses.

Navigating the terrain can be a downright nightmare at times. When the player is in a crouched position, your sniper is barely capable of walking over small rocks and bumps in the terrain, and most of the time you will get stuck in doorways. Stairs, damn them, are the trickiest enemy to overcome in the game as the player may find themselves sliding back down in a weird snakes and ladders mini-game the developers never bothered to mention, but thankfully there is very little need to climb many sets of stairs unless the player is willing to find all the ‘”secrets” in the game.

There is an illusion about this game and the way in which you approach objectives. It seems as though there may be multiple routes through an area, but on every occasion these “alternative” possibilities are always blocked by crates or barrels, and on the worst occasions there are invisible walls holding the player back. Creativity is not the order of the day in this game and trying to carve your own path through the storyline will prove to be unfruitful.

There is always a constant need to package a multiplayer mode within any game these days and Sniper: Ghost Warrior is no exception. Game modes like Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are ever present as usual. It seems that a game that has its single player revolve around the concept of camping is trying to create a game wherein no player can complain that another is camping. It is called Sniper: Ghost Warrior after all. However, there are still a lot of players that consider camping in one spot to be the very bane of online gaming, and it’s not a concept that most players will take to.

The multiplayer aspect of the game is very hum-drum at the end of the day. It may amuse the few that are playing it for a while, but in the end it’s barely worthy of an hour of gaming time. In short there are better multiplayer shooters out there that are worth a look.

The idea of Sniper: Ghost Warrior, and the lush jungle setting, is fantastically different from most modern day shooters and on paper it has all the elements that could have made a good game great. If the developers had allowed the player to choose their path and complete objectives their own way in a more open world environment, instead of occasionally letting them climb a hill or ladder, it may have had more substance. With flawed stealth sequences and dodgy collision detection this game does not exactly come up to scratch and falls into the category of standard FPS, with sniper rifles of course.

VideogameUK verdict: 4/10