Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 creeps onto PC
Sneaky does it
First-person sneak-o-shooter Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 [official site] is now out, popping digital faces from afar in Georgia (not the American one). While the first two Ghostbusters were linear, 3 goes open-world like your Wildlandses and your Far Cries. Ghostbusters 3 is built for sneaking around, surveilling, and carefully picking shots, but players can also try their luck up-close and bang-y.
Here, you can see a bit in this recent 14-minute gameplay video with a developer playing a side-mission on the highest difficulty setting. The chap infiltrates a base and demonstrates things like scouting with his drone buddy, adjusting shots for drop and the wind, driving a car, climbing cliffs, and going in for close-range action. Observe:
Disappointingly, Ghostbusters 3 is about shooting Russians rather than warring with ghosts. What a missed opportunity! The trouble with sniping ghosts is that many only show themselves up-close and in jumpscares. Sure, some do stand ominously in mansion windows but you'll need to nocsope them - move to peer through your scope and the spooks surely vanish in those frames. No, the real trick to sniping ghosts is to trick other people into getting jumpscared while you watch from afar. Perhaps lay a trail of candy bars across the middle of a road to lure a military patrol into the graveyard, or hack communications to send fake meeting invitations. That is not this game.
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell called Ghostbusters 3 "an off-brand Far Cry with a dash of Battlefield" after he played a preview version last year. That's about what I'd expect, and I'd be surprised if it has changed much in the past five months. But if you want to fiddle with scope elevation and whatnot, this may be more the one for you.
Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is £39.99/49,99€/$49.99 on Steam for Windows. It comes as a 'Season Pass Edition' which includes two future singleplayer expansions and some other bits. Multiplayer will follow later too.
As is customary for open-world games, some players are saying it runs badly, some are saying it runs great, and there's no demo so I guess you'll need to flex that Steam refund policy if you want to find out how things go for you.