By John Walker on May 24th, 2012 at 12:00 pm.
Join us in debate. The trailer for Sniper Ghost Warrior 2 begins by saying it is all created with the game’s engine. But having missed that message, one of our number dismissed the trailer as CGI. But where is reality? If the game really looks as good as this trailer shows, it’ll be the best looking game we’ve ever seen. But being created using CryEngine, and being in-game footage, are two very different things. If a game could use focus the way this trailer does, could track slo-mo bullets, and be so meticulously directed, then it would be in a different league. That seems unlikely. Well, you watch.
Well yes. Here’s some actual footage of the game being played:
It looks nice enough, if for some reason mostly set in plain green corridors. But perhaps not quite the revolution in gaming the more recent trailer suggests. Still, pretty, snipey game, out this August.
24/05/2012 at 12:02 Njordsk says:
I just saw the picture and thought “Oh brink, what’s with it again”.
24/05/2012 at 12:08 Tinus says:
You are escaping. Go here, go here, now press this, go here, here, and here. No, here. Good, thanks.
Great, another game that thinks I’m causaly and spatialy challenged.
24/05/2012 at 12:27 Cunzy1 1 says:
O really? In a dead end corridor I have to get to the other end of the corridor. Thanks HUD. I would’ve been stuck there for hours.
It’s soooo lazy. Also, it isn’t looking all that. I’m not a fan of counting how much graphics a game has but “the best game we’ve ever seen”?
24/05/2012 at 14:01 maninahat says:
“Best LOOKING game”.
Then again, I don’t think it is that either.
24/05/2012 at 14:55 DeathPig says:
Why..this brings back memories of the CoD SP campaign….Follow this dot, kill some shit, then follow the dot again. Otherwise you’re stuck with some idiots shooting at you for no reason at all.
24/05/2012 at 16:02 Cunzy1 1 says:
Whoops. That’s what I meant. Good arrows.
24/05/2012 at 12:46 Reiver says:
I tried to go downstairs to get some water but got lost due to the lack of arrows. After five minutes of walking into a wall i finally made it to the kitchen. There was the water and there was the cupboard with glasses in it but what to do? I stared really hard then i tried shooting it. Finally i realised i need to press the E key. Life can be so hard.
24/05/2012 at 13:54 Bhazor says:
Reminds me of the time I tried to feed a toddler and ended up ordering a tactical strike.
24/05/2012 at 14:10 SanguineAngel says:
Why are those two buttons so close together? That’s what I’d like to know
24/05/2012 at 15:17 Milos says:
In case a toddler turns out to be a communist spy.
24/05/2012 at 16:01 Terragot says:
Also the player gets captured in the mission proceeding this one.
What an awful way to handle mission success : “hey bro you completed that mission but here’s a plot twist you have no control over what-so-ever”.
24/05/2012 at 12:10 byteCrunch says:
The weapon models take about 50% of the screen, is this how bad it has gotten on consoles.
24/05/2012 at 16:07 BoZo says:
After doing some experiments here in the office and looking like a complete idiot I’ve concluded that the character is holding the gun touching his face between the nose and the mouth.
24/05/2012 at 12:17 The Smilingknight says:
Looks like cheap ego stroking ‘+ extreme brains gore shit for morons.
24/05/2012 at 12:20 Casimir Effect says:
Hey game companies, you know what would be great? Not playing a generic-looking american guy all the damn time. Your game is set in Bosnia? Here’s a thought: the PC is…. Bosnian! Genius I know, but you too can have these thoughts. Can make for a far better story too, rather than Americans Save The Day while silly local forces flap around and run away.
24/05/2012 at 12:44 lurkalisk says:
Why? They probably don’t want you playing as anything short of the videogame stereotype of a good guy, which is understandable considering no native faction was really in the right, to put it lightly as possible, at that time.
I can’t say any Americans saved the day in that case, but the Bosnians and Serbs were certainly flapping about… In the most atrocious ways possible, the both of them, but you get the idea. This is the wrong conflict to be pulling that “Why Americans?” card on.
24/05/2012 at 13:28 Casimir Effect says:
They should do a story which allows for something. It’s simple to do a story which can give a likeable character who works for bad people. For example, have the sniper be in the Bosnian army but given enough independence such that he doesn’t follow immoral orders. Do it in such a way as to not show one side in a better light, show them both containing heroes and villains. Or detach the main character from the military and make it a revenge story – civilian (with some military training for the sake of appearances) who hunts soldiers (maybe from both sides) for some reason (to be disclosed during the story or before it).
Small developers like this need to realise they won’t be getting the big crowds for their game. Sure it might look good and have the word Sniper in the title, but that isn’t enough. It could be far better for them to try something new in terms of setting, story, gameplay, characters etc. Make themselves stand out in another way.
25/05/2012 at 11:41 mr.black says:
I get what Casimir effect wants to say, but have to agree. During the war, my neighbors would most probably use snipers to shoot those civilians in the beginning. Children first probably..
Also, those civilians in the beginning – totally unrealistic tearjerkers! Mothers learned fairly quick not to have their children play idly in a playground in a middle of war zone, which was more or less the whole of Sarajevo.
24/05/2012 at 12:46 roryok says:
I’m not a historian, but from what I remember the NATO involvement in the Bosnian war was mostly enforcing a no-fly zone. I remember the international failure to act more than anything else. Seems a bit rich having a game about a gung-ho sniper guy saving civilians
That said, I would actually prefer to see more action games set in past conflicts than imaginary future ones.
24/05/2012 at 13:17 DodgyG33za says:
IIRC most of the snipers in the Bosnian conflict (of which the Siege of Sarajevo was the major conflict) were Bosnian Serbs or straight Serb Serbs. And it was civilians they were killing.
NATO only intervened by blowing stuff up towards the end, and then from the safety of a cockpit.
So just imagine the outrage if they made an accurate sniper game set in Sarajevo.
24/05/2012 at 13:31 RakeShark says:
There’s a dark and utterly tasteless joke in there, somewhere.
24/05/2012 at 13:32 MichaelPalin says:
That would make an interesting war game for once.
24/05/2012 at 13:54 Quaib says:
>I’m not a historian
Yeah that’s an understatement. As a Serb with first hand experience at a very young age let me say the Americans bombed civilians and cities indiscriminately. My dad would go out in the garden and hear shells in the distance. Americans and Brits did nothing but kill and rape and slaughter and invade a sovereign country, like they do everywhere they go. They also bombed the chinese embassy and deployed stealth bombers. BTW a nighthawk, the “invincible plane”, was shot down by the Serbs.
>International action/interference in local affairs
May you die a slow painful death, extended over an immeasurable period of time.
Also there was no intentional killing of civilians anywhere, it was an ethnic conflict between armed forces from neighbouring countries, not some military campaign against civilians.
Get your facts straight.
24/05/2012 at 14:18 maninahat says:
>”May you die a slow painful death, extended over an immeasurable period of time.”
No need to get nasty. Your shocking first hand experience doesn’t excuse you from being a dick to ignorant strangers. Speaking of ignorance:
>”Also there was no intentional killing of civilians anywhere, it was an ethnic conflict between armed forces from neighbouring countries, not some military campaign against civilians.
Get your facts straight.”
You’re denying the systematic rape and the ethnic cleansing of thousands of civilians, commited by combatants on both sides? Apparently your first hand accounts do not show you the entire picture.
Anyway – this is all off topic in a subject I’d rather not get into. It’s the last you’ll be hearing from me.
24/05/2012 at 14:27 roryok says:
Who are you talking to? I didn’t say that, and it looks like no-one else did either
I refer you to the Srebrenica Massacre [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre]
There’s no such thing as an ethnic conflict between armed forces. An ethnic conflict is a conflict between ethnic groups
24/05/2012 at 15:18 Dunbine says:
Well, I had the pleasure of spending almost three years in Bosnia in the dirty 1990s, in both Sarajevo and Srebrenica amongst other places, and I can tell you Quaib that you are most assuredly full of shit.
24/05/2012 at 15:32 Quaib says:
Yeah? Did you see these graves of “8000″ people yourself? There was mass genocide of Serbs, but no one seems to care about that.
Albanians trafficked in Serbian organs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft_in_Kosovo#2010_Report_to_the_Council_of_Europe
What about the president of “Kosovo” (a part of the nation of Serbia, mass occupied by albanians) being responsible for this organ harvesting?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashim_Thaci#Alleged_Criminal_Activities
Carla del Ponte backs this up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Del_Ponte#Organ_smuggling_accusations
and admits she hid it before.
Everyone seems to conveniently forget the many, many crimes committed against Serbs. You don’t understand the nature of the conflict here. This goes back millenia. To the Turkish empire occupying and enslaving Serbia centuries ago, to the Catholic church converting croats and turning them against their brothers, and the pope’s funding of a mini-crusade against the serbs, to the Croatian “ustashe”, a STATE SANCTIONED, NAZI group, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustashe putting Serb civilians on stakes and cutting out their eyes, etc., etc., could go on forever.
You are the one choking on govno.
24/05/2012 at 18:57 alundra says:
Thanks a lot for the first hand account of the fact everyone but the mass media seems to know.
24/05/2012 at 13:29 MichaelPalin says:
But why would a Bosnian kill Russians in the Yugoslav Wars? What you ask for makes no sense.
24/05/2012 at 16:33 Opellulo says:
The Balcan Wars were a very gray page of European Hystory; something so violent, confused and troubled that left scars that still burns now (and this tread is another proof).
Choose this setting for a generic “America! Fuck Yeah!” game where the Serbs are the new nazis is a very, very bad decision.
24/05/2012 at 12:20 BrightCandle says:
For a game about sniping there isn’t a great deal of actual sniping going on.
24/05/2012 at 16:05 zaphod42 says:
Don’t confuse this with Sniper Elite or Elite V2, which are great sniping games.
This is the sequel to Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which was EXTREMELY mediocre. It felt like a budget cash-in, try to find a niche that doesn’t have a ton of games and profit.
The idea of it was cool enough, but the game played like crap. You’re FORCED to follow a very linear path through the level, and enemy AI is atrocious. They’ll frequently see you through walls or trees, and manage to shoot you with a pistol where you would be hard pressed to snipe them with your rifle.
If you think Sniper Elite is linear, Sniper: Ghost Warrior would blow your mind. Its like they took the call of duty mission where you’re sneaking around Chernobyl, which was kinda fun, and they dragged it out into a whole game.
The whole thing is “go here. Hide behind that truck. Wait. Now move. Now wait. Okay, go over here.”
Uggggh. This is not sniping!
Crysis was better for jungle sniping. At least then, I could approach it how I wanted.
24/05/2012 at 12:24 povu says:
it’s cool that this kind of stuff can be done in engine and look this good, but ‘Actual In-engine footage’ is still very different from ‘actual gameplay footage’ as you said. It may be closer to home than CGI trailers, but it’s still far from representative of the actual game.
24/05/2012 at 12:28 Dave Mongoose says:
It’s important to notice that they say “created with the game engine” and not “in-game footage”: it’s quite possible that the trailer still took several days to render (and uses higher resolution textures, better models, better animations, etc. than will be in the final release), just that they used the game engine itself to do it rather than another program.
If that’s the case then it’s barely any different to CGI.
24/05/2012 at 12:29 Stevostin says:
The 2nd vido is on XBox, apparently. I don’t think the trailer to be incredible. BF3 was hugely more impressive to me.
24/05/2012 at 12:34 ZIGS says:
That’d be my guess, given the poor graphics and the fact that it seems to be running at 20 FPS
24/05/2012 at 12:47 Bweahns says:
I like how they start the video for ‘Sniper’ Ghost Warrior 2 in a confined hallway with a pistol… The first game was the definition of a bland, buggy, phone it in FPS. Second looks no different.
I’ve been just fine with FPS games glorifying violence since I was a squeaker but something sticks in the craw about glorifying sniping, it’s such a horrible role to have in real life, watching people’s heads and chests explode at super high magnification isn’t good for the brain. I still find it hard to comprehend how someone can kill other people on the orders of those above them, outside of having your own life immediately threatened…
24/05/2012 at 13:03 RakeShark says:
Sniping’s a good job, mate.
24/05/2012 at 13:08 MordeaniisChaos says:
I know snipers, Soldiers, and Marines. generally, the snipers are actually if anything a little MORE stable than the rest. Although that may be in part due to their training. Most of the folks I know are Marines, and they are trained to be aggressive in the field. Snipers, even Marine Snipers, are trained to be methodical and patient and calm. And it already takes a talent for sniping as it is, which usually means calmness under pressure is something that doesn’t come with any huge difficulty to them.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think the effect is as different as you think. Grunts kill people, and probably see their buddies hurt more than many snipers do. Grunts also get up close and personal with remains, and injured friendlies, which tends to be be worse for the psyche.
Also, this doesn’t look like CG at all, it doesn’t even look as good as all of the Crysis 3 shots hanging around. Did you watch it in 480? Maybe then with the motion blur and framerate you’d have mistaken it for CG but at 1080 that video had jagged edges, sharp geometry, and obvious video game texturework in it. Seriously, I can’t tell if all the talk in the article is sarcasm or not. It’s not that impressive looking. Bad? No. But not Crysis levels of impressive.
24/05/2012 at 14:24 Shooop says:
Most modern soldiers live in an almost completely different world than us.
They make jokes about watching those heads explode open, some rationalize that they’re the good guys and everyone they shoot deserved to die.
Just flip through the book American Sniper by Chris Kyle. I was half-surprised he didn’t proclaim god himself sprinkled magic blessing dust on his rifle every time he took a shot at someone by the time I reached the end of it.
24/05/2012 at 12:52 PitfireX says:
“What goes though my head before I pull the trigger? The fact that im silhouetting myself out of this building and that the people who made me have absolutely no idea what sniping is or how to make a decent game. yet for some reason ill sell tons of copies and probably make a part 3 because gamers will buy any steaming turd we lay in front of them”
24/05/2012 at 13:42 Love Albatross says:
He may also be thinking “It’s a real hassle to put bullets into the chamber one at a time. If only there was some way to quickly and easily load a gun, perhaps using some kind of box filled with ammunition.”
24/05/2012 at 14:51 ZIGS says:
Bolt-action rifles are still used nowadays
24/05/2012 at 14:57 roryok says:
and even if they weren’t, this game is set 19 years ago.
24/05/2012 at 16:27 Arglebargle says:
Bolt action rifles are inherently more accurate, which has much greater import when you are trying to take a shot a mile out. Sniping is not about spraying a waft of bullets at your target. You can, technically, snipe with almost any gun, but elite types use weapons finely honed to the task.
24/05/2012 at 18:49 Unfettered says:
Yes but bolts still have magazines.
To be fair however the original M24, which was used in the Bosnian war, did come with a 5 round internal magazine, which is loaded by depressing the round in the action with the next round. Perhaps that was attempted to be depicted in the video.
The new updated M24s (a2 & a3) come with external detachable 5 and 10 round mags.
24/05/2012 at 12:57 Jupiah says:
I wish they’d spend a little more money making the animations look natural. The second the player presses the button for the sneak attack but before the PC actually touching the enemy, the enemy who was previously talking on his headset while moving around with his hand on his ear suddenly goes quiet and snaps upright so the PC will be able to conveniently grab his neck and slice his throat.
24/05/2012 at 12:59 Post-Internet Syndrome says:
I didn’t find the trailer to be that awesome. It looked nice to be sure, but not nicer than bf3. And the animations were a bit wonky. (Really, now that games generally have great graphics, why not give some love to animations, developers? It’s one area that can use a lot of improvement.)
Also generic american military jargon gore fetishism blah blah. Doesn’t seem a very interesting game really.
24/05/2012 at 13:15 RakeShark says:
Yeah, being ex-military myself, I find the super jargon so out of place, contrived, and just desperate to be taken seriously. We tended to use more fart jokes over the radios, our 9-Line always involved either a burning humvee or the squad diversion kit waving a VF-17 panel, our NBC situation always “EXTREEEEEME”, and General “El Guapo” taking over the channel spouting his Cortinian revolution rhetoric.
But never forget we are professionals. …Viva El Guapo!
24/05/2012 at 13:02 Didero says:
I like how most of the enemies conveniently have their backs towards the player.
24/05/2012 at 13:11 MordeaniisChaos says:
Also, this is a PC and 360 game, those kinds of games use PC code for trailers, and 360 code for previews, which means you end up with a lot of mixed signals. First of all. Second of all, the first one is clearly the “cinematic” quality, where things tend to look a little cleaner, a little sharper. One of these is a trailer, one is just a video, and comparing them is silly. They both have aliasing, they both have the telltale signs of rough motion blur, they both are clearly from a game.
24/05/2012 at 13:27 MichaelPalin says:
because sometimes, I just like to blow shit up
It seems video games have finally something deep to say about war. Every survivor of the Yugoslav Wars should play this game, for closure and shit!
24/05/2012 at 13:39 Squire says:
Recruitment Officer – “Hello prospective armed forces candidate, how are you going help us by fight the warrrrrrrr against terrorism?”
25 yo who played call of duty and all its clones since 2004 “Sometimes….I just like to blow shit up! Hgyuk!”
Recruitment Officer – “You are banned from the army…ed forces”
24/05/2012 at 13:50 Bhazor says:
Well it’s not like there aren’t already nutters in the US army.
If this game doesn’t let me piss on the dead or collect finger bones as an acheivement I feel it will be lacking as a war sim.
24/05/2012 at 14:51 Synesthesia says:
That’s a Calvino quote, if i’m not mistaken. He’s a cultured guy, that guy with the magnifying rifle.
The setting is also kind of insulting, isnt it? As in the latest call of juarez abomination?
24/05/2012 at 13:44 Bhazor says:
Anyone else think the children in the playground at the start looked like dwarf Nazis?
If *this* is the best looking game you’ve ever seen then I seriously hoping I’m just missing the sarcasm.
I mean I thought that looked pretty frickin bad. The textures, the blur, the clay faces, the strange floatiness of people ice skating along the ground.
24/05/2012 at 13:52 LeiterJakab says:
Anyone else wonder if the trailer was intentionally unintentionally hilarious?
24/05/2012 at 13:59 sirdavies says:
Game looks generic as hell. I love the fact that the guy is talking about AI and then kills someone who was talking on the phone and doesn’t alert any enemies lol
24/05/2012 at 14:09 Bhazor says:
One of the few parts I liked in MGS2 was the way guards would actually report in. There’d be guards walking about with radios and every 20 seconds or so they’d pick it up and report an all clear. If you incapacitated them you’d hear the commander on the other side call in and when the guy didn’t answer he’d trigger the alert and send in an assault team. I liked the idea that there was actually some kind of hierachy of command rather than it just being a string of disconnected mobs in uniform.
Its a system I can’t remember seeing anywhere else not even in the most po faced soldier sim.
24/05/2012 at 14:36 Shooop says:
Sniper Elite V2 flirted with that kind of thing in a way. If another soldier found a corpse lying about he’d go into an alert mode, shout to others and him and everyone within earshot of him would stay in alert until you killed them.
Hopefully they’ll push this idea farther next time. As well as make actual sniping missions instead of only designated marksman ones.
24/05/2012 at 14:03 Jake Albano says:
My goodness, those door opening animations look so very tedious. I was tired of them after the first one.
25/05/2012 at 03:08 MD says:
I got bored about a quarter of the way through the first one.
24/05/2012 at 14:26 Shooop says:
So then… Sniper Elite V2 is a much better buy? Yes, I totally agree.
24/05/2012 at 14:34 ffordesoon says:
Well, that trailer was dumb. Not as dumb as the Ghost Recon: Future Soldier trailer, though.
“WAR IS A WAR AND FIGHTING PLAY FOR KEEPS BLOW SHIT UP.”
How is the writing in all these war manshoot trailers that try to be completely serious somehow more ludicrous than the writing in the trailer for the new Expendables film? Are game writers actually unable to write a line as “good” as “I now pronounce you man and knife”?
24/05/2012 at 15:00 RakeShark says:
I’m convinced a majority of the writing in video games is not read out loud until recording and well past editing. It tends to suffer from the “Well, it sounded better in my head” situation.
24/05/2012 at 15:05 roryok says:
I think you’ve stumbled upon a good idea – there should be an expendables game!
24/05/2012 at 14:49 maninahat says:
You know what would be a better sniping game? One with old fashioned sniper rifles. I don’t like all this tacti-cool crap they use these days, and I am especially bored of the modern settings and generic camo grunts. Semi-auto anti material rifles kind of take the challenge out of it too.
How about a game with one shot, black powder sniping or something? I’d love to play as Geronimo. Or a Tuareg. A game in which you have to take a great deal more care in lining up a shot, ‘coz of the time it takes to reload.
24/05/2012 at 15:03 roryok says:
hear hear. maybe a first world war sniping game for a change.
A quick look at wikipedia says the first snipers were actually during the american revolution, waaaay back in 1777.
24/05/2012 at 15:24 RakeShark says:
Quite a few in Roger’s Rangers, yeah.
24/05/2012 at 15:56 ankh says:
Sniper game set in 1777 during the american revolution where you assume the role as the first sniper ever in the world? Yes I will play that.
24/05/2012 at 16:32 Arglebargle says:
So you are a sniper assassin fighting the Templars?
24/05/2012 at 16:34 ankh says:
You should be able to choose a side and also switch sides if your team is losing. That is the way of the sniper.
24/05/2012 at 16:38 roryok says:
Templars? Uh-oh… I sense National Treasure territory
25/05/2012 at 02:37 DeathPig says:
Or maybe slap the next AC protagonist with a sniping crossbow, and be done with it?
24/05/2012 at 15:22 Shooop says:
Even with those fancy new rifles sniping isn’t this easy. Bullets still drop over long distances, there’s wind, humidity, and the rotation of the Earth.
Watch a few videos of ARMA 2 sniping to see how at least some of those things would effect a game that took sniping seriously. What we’re seeing in this game and Sniper Elite is the designated marksman, not a sniper.
24/05/2012 at 16:07 Stellar Duck says:
Good points. The same goes for the recon in BF3.
24/05/2012 at 16:32 Shortwave says:
Lol.. This is one of those times where I see the game being covered..
And I instantly click the view comments button because I know how hilariously brutal it’ll be.
And yup.. You guys delivered!
The first installment of this game was such a joke.
Anyone with half a brain knows this game is hardly a sniping game.
It’s just a COD clone with a sniping theme.
No matter how good this game looks we totally know what to expect.
A pile of steaming dog turds.
BRB, playing Sniper Elite V2.
24/05/2012 at 16:46 Shooop says:
Even that has a very misleading title. It’s not sniping, it’s being the designated marksman. A sniper operates at ranges of 700 meters and more. The longest shots SEV2 lets you take are about 250 meters.
But be damned if it isn’t a good time though.
24/05/2012 at 17:20 nikpup says:
The framerate from the Ingame trailer is barely playable in my opinion, especially for a precision/sniper game.
24/05/2012 at 19:05 marcusfell says:
Wake me up when we get a sniping game that lets me down three hostiles at once from two miles, through concrete walls.
As in, stuff actual snipers do already.
24/05/2012 at 20:33 nirr says:
http://dv.gd/oej
24/05/2012 at 20:36 Cryo says:
This narrator sounds like murdering people is giving him a huge boner.
24/05/2012 at 22:01 Shortwave says:
I laughed out loud IRL.
24/05/2012 at 20:51 Ernesto says:
That was terrible. The waypoint density in this one is way too high.
25/05/2012 at 02:40 DeathPig says:
How could you! There’s gonna be lots of kids playing this game. And I’m pretty sure they’d get lost even with all these way points. All thanks to the spoon feeding megalomaniacs in charge of CoD.
25/05/2012 at 02:48 kibble-n-bullets says:
I like how the sniper waits for things to get serious before breaking out the bi-pod and using a rest. That’s I guy I want on my team.
25/05/2012 at 03:11 MD says:
Man this looks dizzifying. Wobbly-head-cam + tiny FOV = yuck.