Sniper Ghost Warrior 3

This game got savaged by critics and players alike when it was released for being too much like a discount Far Cry game, despite being an indie game from a small company in Eastern Europe. The comparisons to Far Cry are fairly apt - the game features a small open world for the player to walk, drive, or zipline through, there are outposts to clear and sidequests to engage in, and a small variety of collectibles to gather. Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 lacks the more unique and fun features of Far Cry, though, such as animal attacks, hunting, flight, weapon variety, customization, the scale of the world,  and a good story. What sets Sniper apart, however, is the gunplay mechanics.

The conceit of Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is that it has realistic bullet physics modeled into its weapons, and the missions focus on stealth sniping missions where the player must travel to a vantage point and shoot at his targets from long range. Had the game kept this focus and not forced an open world into its design, it probably could have avoided all the negative comparisons.

In Far Cry, the silenced sniper rifle is one of the harder weapons to obtain because it is almost overpowered, but in Sniper Ghost Warrior it is your primary weapon. Sniper Ghost Warrior tries to balance the effectiveness of this weapon by placing a large number of counter snipers and mortars on the enemy posts, and by balancing the AI around hiding behind cover and spotting you from afar, which in theory should force the player off their sniper perch (but in practice never really works right).

But the mechanic that really makes sniping far more fun in Sniper Ghost Warrior is that the bullet is modeled as an actual projectile which realistically travels through the air, so the player must account for the travel time and lead his targets. Wind resistance, direction, and bullet drop are also taken into account, and the best way to use this mechanic is to turn the "aim indicator" off, since it shows you exactly where the bullet will land, thus negating the whole point of judging those variables for yourself.  If you make a wrong judgement and miss, the report of your bullet will alert your target to your presence, which I still find exciting even if I missed. To me, it is far more satisfying to see the bullet actually fly to my target rather than instantly hitting them, and I'm not talking about the slow motion killcam, which is actually less satisfying to me than just seeing my target drop from a well aimed shot.

In the Far Cry series, all the bullets are hitscan, and I don't think they're even affected by gravity, which means that they're essentially the Railgun from Quake, and they're serviceable in an action context but lack the complexity and thrill of sniping from Sniper Ghost Warrior.

There is another sniper game series that opened to much better reviews and always gets compared more favorably than the Ghost Warrior series, and that is Sniper Elite. Sniper Elite 4 also has large levels that function as pseudo open worlds, a stress on stealth and long range gameplay, and a calculation of wind, distance and bullet drop in its sniping mechanics. One thing it does far and away better are the many different ways you can kill your targets - you can use bullets to blow holes in gas tanks, engines, tires, exposed grenades and more, leading to spectacular explosions, you can drop heavy objects onto your opponents, trick them, bait them, and do so much more.

Despite all this, I consider its actual shooting mechanics to be lesser than Sniper Ghost Warrior's, because the weapons in Sniper Elite are all hitscan. What this means is that even though you account for distance, wind direction and bullet drop, none of it really matters because all it does is make you adjust your aim a little on a 2D plane, as in simply choosing a different (x,y) coordinate on which to place your crosshair, rather than meaningfully visualizing the path of your bullet.  Sniper Elite's method of balancing this is to make your bullet slightly inaccurate unless you hold your breath for the accuracy to gradually increase.  Unfortunately it also has an aim indicator, which I always turn off.

Also, I have a few random complaints against Sniper Elite, such as its 3rd person perspective in which the character blocks your view of the weapon, and the fact that cycling the bolt and reloading the magazine do not cause the player to scope out. Where Sniper Ghost Warrior plays like a discount Far Cry, Sniper Elite plays like a discount Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The latter game actually does a lot of things right that Sniper Elite does wrong. Metal Gear gives you nonlethal options to confront a level and there is way more interaction with guards in terms of interrogations, holdups, and combat. "Aiming down sights" in MGS is required since without it the player character will use his fists to strike or throw an opponent, in Sniper Elite he is always holding his weapon so why does he need to go into a special aim mode to fire? MGS also gives a first person view option which Sniper Elite lacks except technically on rifle scopes.  Metal Gear also pseudo models the necessity to lead your targets by changing the calculations on bullet hit for moving targets, which Sniper Elite doesn't implement. Also there are weirder, more fun weapons in Metal Gear and the standard tranquilizer pistol is an actual projectile weapon.

The only other game series I know of with projectile sniper weapons is the Battlefield series. In fact it was my experience sniping in Battlefield 1 that compelled me to find another game with deep sniping mechanics, as Battlefield is multiplayer only and as such has a shelf life and subjects you to other problems if you just want to enjoy the game, like network lag, finding a server, finding a good team, etc.

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is an indie game masquerading around as a triple A studio title, and that becomes noticeable once you see all the rough spots just underneath the surface. I actually commend the development team for taking on such ambitions and aiming for the leaders in the industry, rather than being an intentionally budget title like most indie games. The open world is the critical flaw and I feel that if they had focused on making a pure sniper sim the game would have been better received. The development team did talk of their passion for emergent gameplay, and the earlier Sniper Ghost Warrior games were criticized for their restrictive linearity, so I see why they experimented in this direction. While many better games exist and do more than what Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 does, it does one thing that they do not do and does the pure sniping much better than its competitors.

*as an aside, I don't know if the pistols and assault rifles in Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 are hitscan or projectiles so fast that they seem hitscan. The enemies don't move or strafe fast enough for leading them to become a necessity, and with realistic bullet velocities its hard to discern over short ranges anyway. For the sniper rifles it is easy to see the bullet travel with a long range scope, however the same is not apparent on unscoped or iron sight pistols, rifles and shotguns.

*the best difficulty to play Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 on is the second-hardest. Realistic difficulty makes most weapons one shot to kill, which forces players to stay hidden in stealth longer. While that might be more enjoyable to sniping purists, I find that it just drags out the game and throws weapon balance right out the window, thus making little distinction between the damage your primary sniper rifle does and what a pistol does. In fact, in realistic mode I would simply mark my targets then take them out with a silenced pistol instead, which you can't do on on the second-hardest difficulty since the pistol will take 3 bullets to kill and the first hit will alert the enemy to your presence.

Should you buy Star Wars: Battlefront?

Honestly, they're both pretty thin on content, with casual gameplay that's a stripped down version of Battlefield's gunplay. They're both heavily online multiplayer focused, yet the population for both is quite small and about the same for both. In terms of offline play, Battlefront 1 has the better content, since its largest game mode, Walker Assault is included in the skirmish mode, while the Arcade mode of Battlefront 2 only has two game types - a team deathmatch equivalent and a horde mode/survival equivalent. The 'mission' game types of Battlefront 1 also give you different experiences such as driving a speeder bike or flying a snow speeder, which is not available in Battlefront 2's offline modes. While Battlefront 2 has an offline story campaign, its utterly boring and forgettable, short and offers no replay value.

The only reason to get either is if you love the Star Wars universe and can't get enough, in which case Battlefront 1 has more weapons, power ups, better game modes and heroes, while Battlefront 2 has better space and vehicle modes.

Due to fan backlash and overrall poor reception, I predict both games will hit bargain price very quickly, especially after Battlefront 2's support cycle ends.

Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) is better than Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017)

When Battlefront 1 was released it was rightly criticized for its thin content and casual gameplay. However after all the DLC released and a few free content patches were given, it now has more than enough content to warrant a full price purchase. It's an exploitative business practice to rely on DLC to make your game fully featured by charging double, but EA makes the fictitious Galactic Empire look like care bears by comparison. Also all the content can be bought in the Ultimate Edition for a reduced price.

Battlefront II promised to make up for all the errors of the original game by distributing all DLC for free, having more content at launch, and having deeper gameplay, but now almost a year after launch we have learned that all those promises were false, and Battlefront 2 is worse in every way than it's predecessor.

To start with, while Battlefront 2 has more maps than Battlefront 1, several DLC maps of Battlefront  2 are just ports of Battlefront 1 maps. Honestly this isn't as big of a deal for me as I generally find that players online gravitate to one or two maps that they really like, and just play them over and over, such as de_dust and Italy back during the CS beta days.

A major issue however, is that Battlefront II has less weapons to use. Related to that is that the class system from Battlefront II is actually worse than the star card system from Battlefront 1. And the third related issue is that Battlefront II still uses star cards despite also having a class system.

The reason this is a problem is because it gates content away from the player. Nominally, this is to balance the gameplay better, however the weapons and abilities can still be balanced without locking them behind specific classes. Battlefront's implementation of classes also makes the gameplay inconsistent, as now your weapon's effectiveness varies depending on the health and resistance of your opponent.* It also killed the in game customization, since all classes need to remain visually recognizable for players to gauge their opponents in game.

Admittedly, the jump pack broke the balance of Battlefront 1 and became a "must pick" star card for every player, so Battlefront 2 made a rational change in locking it to an elite class, but that's really the only positive change.

The Star Card system was never as good as Battlefield's equipment system or Call of Duty's loadouts, but in Battlefront 1 it still potentially allowed you the freedom to experiment and choose what you wanted to complement a play style. In Battlefront 2 the star cards do not allow you to customize and experiment, and you are locked to a small selection of Star Cards per class and the majority of them are just direct upgrades to your existing abilities. A great deal of depth is lost and eventually you just end up playing the same class the same way.

There are only four weapons per class in Battlefront 2, and the default weapon just changes appearance depending on which faction you are playing. This is a straight downgrade from Battlefront 1 where every weapon was available to the player, and all had their own unique stats.

And as a Star Wars nerd, I fault Battlefront II for including the sequel trilogy and spinoffs, and now the Clone Wars. Battlefront 1 stuck to the universe of the original trilogy, where everything is iconic, and not the other movies, where everything is a pale copycat.  Battlefront 1 does have a map set on Jakku, a planet introduced in the 7th film, and it makes my point for me - there is nothing on this map that makes it distinct from Tattoine, apart from brighter colored sand and a fallen Star Destroyer in the distance. The final DLC adds content from the spinoff movie Rogue One, and the forgettable quality of that also proves my point.

And the most important reason why Battlefront 1 is just better, is that the gunplay in Battlefront 2 is just worse. The first Battlefront was heavily criticized for extremely casual gameplay, such as low spread, little to no recoil, no difference between firing "from the hip" and zoom in aiming. The people complaining about that are idiots. All of those are very good things, and everyone agrees, even the detractors, that accurate led to a faster, more aggressive playstyle. The community was expecting something slower like the Battlefield, which is more about tactical positioning than it is about aiming and tracking your opponents. Battlefront also has more movement options with the addition of the dodge roll and yes, the jumppack, which leads to more dynamic gameplay and discourages camping.

Battlefront 2 brought in the mechanics of military shooters, much to its own detriment. Reloading/"cooling" became a central aspect of the metagame, the weapons were made less accurate in "hip fire" mode but thankfully not to the severe levels in Call of Duty or Battlefield, and the time to kill on weapons was shortened. This coupled with the lack of variety in weapons per class, the balance problems between each class, and the awful star card system lead to gameplay that is much less about player skill than it is about the setup of the player and random luck.

What Battlefront 2 should have done instead is either copy the loadout system wholesale from the Battlefield or Call of Duty series, or stick to the rigid class system of Pandemic's original Battlefront series, where there was no customization in class at all but there were something like 6 classes per faction and extra unlockable classes.

And finally, one idea that Battlefront 2 had that was technically better than Battlefront 1, but failed in execution was the removal of the token pick ups. Battlefront 1 had tokens scattered throughout the map which would give players a random extra ability or let them spawn in as a hero or vehicle, and Battlefront 2 removed this in favor of a point system. The system in Battlefront 1 was random and frustrating, and all the hero and vehicle pickups would be camped by players who wanted to lock them down, so the battle point system of Battlefront 2 sounds better on paper, however it is hobbled by the need to unlock heroes and vehicles outside the match before playing, and the number restriction on vehicles, which means players that are built to farm battle points will lock those down before other players. Also this system means that the fourth ability slot is lost.

Battlefront 2 did only one thing better than Battlefront 1, and that is the starfighter gameplay. However, the vehicles actually handle exactly the same as the first game, there is just the option to manually control your roll. Still, it is technically a straight improvement over Battlefront 1 and the added UI elements like the missile lock notification and aim indicator, and the removal of auto-aim fire, greatly benefit the starfighter gameplay.

In conclusion, Battlefront 2 made a lot of promises to improve Battlefront 1, and came up short. The only ones it did deliver on were a larger number of maps and vehicles, however the gameplay is still bland and unexciting, the star card system actually got worse, and the new class system actually created more problems and removed the few good things from the first game. I hope the fan backlash from two successive failures from EA discourage them from making a Battlefront 3, but it is still sad to see one of my favorite shooter series and fictional universe lose such potential.

Battlefront 1 has more weapons, larger star card variety, better balance (but you still must pick the jetpack on any loadout), better game modes and faster gameplay. It also has a litany of problems, however those are not addressed in Battlefront 2 at all. Battlefront 1 now sells in the Ultimate Edition, which bundles in all the DLC and makes it a much more compelling purchase than Battlefront 2.



*This is also a criticism levied against Quake Champions, but the "champions" of Quake champions do not lock weapons to a specific hero, and while health, armor and speed vary between champions, the added active and passive abilities give players more tools to make their character more effective, even if the weapons take longer to kill your opponent if he has a higher health and armor limit. Admittedly, it's not perfect, Quake 3 was as close to perfect in it's way, but if you want that experience then play with active and passive abilities turned off, and force Ranger as the only playable champion.