Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a solid sequel to a solid first entry in the spin-off to the Sniper Ghost Warrior series; a series that hasn’t been seen since the poor reception of the third game. Contracts is more of a sandbox (pun intended) than the mainline series that does service to the story and has more in common with Hitman than the mainline game.



Like the first game, you play a nameless and faceless sniper codenamed Raven. Hired by a mysterious organization, Raven is tasked with assassinating a series of targets in each mission - each deserving of death - as they serve a middle eastern dictator hell bent on revenge for the assassination of her husband. Her thirst for blood threatens to plunge the region and probably the world into chaos and war.

The writers of the Sniper Ghost Warrior Contract 2, unlike their PR company, have taken a less stereotypical Hollywood approach to the game as the story openly admits that Raven’s real mission is too maintain the status quo of protecting Western economic interest via the supply of oil and maintaining a reasonable price rather than a desire to prevent a war on humanitarian grounds.



The organization you work for is kind enough to provide you with a high-tech mask that assists in identifying and tracking bad guys as well in targeting them. However, they too are working on a budget as for every upgrade you unlock, you must earn money and buy these upgrades. If you ask me, they are ripping you off by making you buy your own equipment.

While the Hitman series has delivered large sandboxes to play in with multiple routes and methods of dispatch, this game has put those levels to shame just in terms of sheer size.

While the game may seem small, just five missions in all, each mission takes place on an enormous map, with multiple routes to sniper perches that will get you closer and closer to your target. While the Hitman series has delivered large sandboxes to play in with multiple routes and methods of dispatch, this game has put those levels to shame just in terms of sheer size. From a variety standpoint you don’t get to wear disguises or create elaborate plans to poison or drown your target in a toilet. However, the game provides you with opportunities to snipe from ever increasing distances, including distances exceeding a kilometre as well as using your sniping skills to kill targets by dropping hanging objects on them or blowing up conveniently combustible items.



If Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 was just a sniping simulator, it would not provide the variety that gamers crave. Just as in the previous game, this one allows you to run and gun and while you are not nearly as invulnerable as you would be in a traditional FPS, you can easily get out of sticky situations by sheer brute force. I however preferred to play this like Hitman, scouting an area, identifying guards to avoid or kill, and then sneaking around. To assist you, you can throw objects to distract targets as well as place explosives and other traps around to lure the guards into. When that isn’t enough, you can silently assassinate them with a knife and as a last resort switch to a handgun or automatic weapon to gun them down.

My main criticism of the last game was that the maps were difficult to navigate and thankfully this has been fixed in this sequel. Finding your way around these expansive maps is much easier and you never feel like you are battling the map as well as the enemies.



A welcome addition to the game is that you can approach the levels in two ways. The sneak around, get close, snipe the bad guy and maybe have to run and gun to get away or into position is available to you. But if you want the challenge of the greater than a kilometre away kill, you can find your way to one of those perches, still fraught with peril as you must avoid or neutralise patrols and other guards. Once you get there, you still have a large amount of work to do.

...the game handily provides you with an indicator when you aim as to where to place your crosshairs.

Set up like a Hitman level, patience and observation are required as targets are often not in plain sight, and you must figure out how to draw them out. To do this you need to eliminate various patrolling guards so that when you sabotage some piece of equipment, they don’t raise an alarm. Knowing where these patrols are and where they overlap is crucial as taking out patrols in the wrong order can raise the alarm and lose you the opportunity to take out your target.



Long distance sniping brings its own challenges. Without getting into the physics of it, mainly because I don’t understand it completely, you must account for the curvature of the earth at these extreme distances as well as bullet drop, target movement and wind direction and strength. All this makes for a tense time as you line up your shot, squeeze that trigger and wait what seems like a lifetime to see if your bullet strikes the target. That lifetime is, in reality, 5 to 8 seconds but in the moment, it seems like forever.

Luckily developer CI has not created a true to life simulator. Explained in game by your high-tech mask, the game handily provides you with an indicator when you aim as to where to place your crosshairs. Add to that different difficulty levels that make things as easy or difficult as you like and the game is accessible to all skill levels.



Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts is fast becoming what I want CI to concentrate on as it is far more interesting in terms of design, story, and mechanics than the mainline series. If you enjoy sniping, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is for you.

*PS5 Review code provided by CI Games