I just completed Sniper: Ghost Warrior on the Hard difficulty. Normally I play games on Medium, because usually that is when you see the balance that the designers had intended for the game, but I had read in reviews that you don't have to compensate for wind and distance except on the Hard difficulty, so I played it through on Hard and never tried Medium or Easy.

There were lots of reviews complaining that it was too hard, that it had "punishing" difficulty, and that it was too simple.

I'm really convinced that the people writing these reviews have lost their collective minds.

Having played it through on Hard, I didn't really think it could have been any easier. If it were any easier, you would feel too much like a superman and not a flesh and blood sniper. After all snipers are supposed to be all about hiding, and trying to avoid being located and suppressed. Even on Hard difficulty I was only rarely one-shot-killed by an enemy, and your character still regenerates hitpoints (ugh) when his health is below 30/100 back up to 30. You can also inject yourself with adrenaline to regain another 30 points of health instantly. The game on Hard is easier than the original Halo on legendary, it's easier than ARMA II on a standard difficulty level, it's easier than the original Operation Flashpoint. It kind of reminds me of Soldier of Fortune II on the hardest difficulty level. It is a LOT more smooth and easy to play than one of the other greatest sniper games of all time, Line of Sight: Vietnam, in which I could spend an hour on a level inching my way through the vegetation spiraling along the outside of the whole level to systematically eliminate all the North Vietnamese forces.

Given that this game is not as difficult as a lot of well known titles, and is similar in a lot of ways to old titles like Soldier of Fortune II, I don't really get all the flak it gets in the reviews. It makes me think that what people want now are just bells and whistles and elaborate cutscenes, because for a low budget titles Sniper: Ghost Warrior is outstanding. It allows you to hide in vegetation, which a lot of FPS games totally fail at. It allows you to compensate for windage and elevation, time your shots with your breath, bullets have realistic penetration of various objects, and it takes a small amount of time for a bullet to land on your target 300 meters away. In fact, in some ways the game was really easy, because it even gives you a very limited window of "bullet time" you can activate while scoped in with your rifle to help you make a precision shot.

I especially liked that while your character was definitely an elite marksman, the accuracy with a lot of the weapons wasn't stupidly infallible. With carbines and pistols you definitely had more of a grouping than in a lot of other FPS games. Which is realism that I appreciate, because it's one of the few games that really lets you understand how a sniper rifle is like a surgical instrument compared to a pisto lor a carbine. In a lot of games a carbine can hit anything you point it at no problem. In this game you have a lot of misses if you use a lot of full auto.

I suppose the bad guys probably hit you at 200 meters more often than they should, so in that way the game is "hard", but if they didn't hit you as much as they did, the game would really become stupid easy, since enemies would have no way to retaliate once you opened fire on them from concealment.

The game strikes me as having the minimum amount of realism to make the game rewarding to play, while still having a lot of "fun" aspects, like injecting yourself with adrenaline and some of the crazy situations you are able to survive through skillful playing which realistically you wouldn't be able to. Because it had a little bit of challenge to it and just a little bit to think about when handling weapons in-game, I feel like it's one of the most fun games I played all year.

I've only played the first couple of missions. One of my major frustrations is that I couldn't seem to hide in the vegetation: enemies always spotted me unless I was behind a terrain feature or other solid object. I gave up at the bit in the second or third mission where you have to sneak somewhere without killing anyone or being spotted.

I have to say the difficulty setting only seams to tweak how hard to kill you are and how much HP adrenalin gives you its 50 on easy. I think the really problem is the articulately stupid AI getting spotted from 300-500m when I'm prone in a lake at night and failing the mission as its one of the don't get spotted ones is just ANNOYING AS FUCK! Also I love that that fails you the mission but you can snipe a guy next to his buddy and they go humm but not sound the alarm.

Some of the times when I got spotted it was honestly stupid. Other where more ok that make sense I did you you round that corner others where oh I did see you from a cross the MAP and when I use my scope on 8x zoom you still stupidly hard to pick out though part of that problem is due to a small tv screen a decent distance away makes aiming iron sights at 300m harder than it should do not even a tine bit of zoom when you do that unlike in real life when there is, well its not real zoom but its an effect that your eyes don't do when looking at a game so the game should do it for you.



As for that I think getting a full auto burst on me from 400m is a bit mad. Those guys are mor accurate with there AK clones than I am with a sniper rifle all things considered. Yes the game had good parts but other part I found plan stupid also I swear to god most rifles don't drop that much over 300m. As if they did it deffently would be a sniper rilfe at 300m one of the guns was dropping about 2foot the dot was crotch level when aiming at the crown.

Hmm, yeah, I thought there was maybe too much bullet drop as well to be totally realistic.

Yeah it kind o broke the realism when bullets droped so much that if they did that IRL shooting a guy at 300m would require ballistic knowledge and math. Also wind seamed to also be insanely effective a 1m/s cross wind sent you bullet about a foot wide at 300m. Once more we know that people hit other people in windy weather at that range with comparatively inaccurate assault rifles with iron sights.

I mean the hardest shit in the game was one at about 450m though the game did have to inflated distance a bit due to the issue of things being smaller than they are IRL but still being a ballistic maths nerd these things irked me allot to say it was "realistic" ballistics.