CI Games is not a name most people will know, they make good games, but they mostly fly under the radar, which I think works for them, but with the upcoming Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, they wanted to do something different from past Sniper games and so far it's heading down the right track.

I was lucky enough to sit down with the developers and see a live demo of the game at E3 and I came away way more impressed than I thought. The game at no point holds your hand and it will test you, but that is where the fun lies. A civil war has erupted in Georgia between nationalists and Russian speaking ethnic forces and as such is has become a war between the USA and Russia, though neither side is admitting to it. You were retired but have been reactivated for the sole purpose of going in and doing what you can to sought it out.

It was at this point our demo started, we were making our way from our starting location back towards our safehouse, which was not really a safehouse as much as it was a cave, but never mind that. On the way, we had to maintain cover when near the edge of a cliff as there were jets doing fly-bys and if we were spotted they could call it in and we would have to deal with soldiers. As we approached a camp up a ways, using the scope from the rifle we were carrying, we were able to spot some soldiers and a sniper, who were on guard duty, noting where they were gave us the chance to slip around them and as we did, some foot prints were found.

A sniper goes through some serious training and using that in the game, we were able to track back the footprints and along the way found where they had deployed some landmines, which we were able to avoid by following the soldiers foot prints who left them on the ground. After making our way around those traps we were headed straight for our safehouse, which lead to us getting a mission. Now it was at this point that the devs running the demo session advised that at no point is anything set in stone, we could have taken that mission and gone ahead with it, or we could have taken it and then moved onto something else, the world runs all the time.

They had already unlocked a second safehouse closer to objective for the mission we collected, so we fast travelled there, the devs pointed out this was not teleportation, it was the sniper making his way from point a to point b, all the while the world keeps moving. Once we were in our other safehouse, we could equip the gear we wanted to take on the mission and we then set out, but now the world was not bright and sunny the clouds had rolled in and the weather had turned against us. After making our way to a point near the base, we were able to determine a good vantage point for looking at everything, the devs got our guy up there, pausing for a few moments to let a pair of soldiers pass on by.

It was at this point the dev guys noted that soldiers are not just going to go for a little walk, stand still and light a smoke and say ‘I am here, please kill me’ because that is not how real soldiers do things. Once we were able to move forward again, we set off and soon found ourselves overlooking the camp where the enemy had set up. Again using the scope of the rifle, we were able to take a look around, note where soldiers were setup and where everything else was. An enemy sniper was perched on the roof, who was scanning all the time for anything out of the ordinary, like us for example. We saw a data server which we could use to access the camera feed around the place, but we could not wander in there ourselves, so it would be up to the drone we carry, of course that sniper was still in the way.

This is where the refined sniper mechanics came into play, we were able to determine how far away the sniper was, the wind speed and temp, which would all indicate how the bullet would travel. It was here that the dev team advised that every bullet counts in the game, meaning you can’t just run in there all one man army and try to take them all out. After making sure everything was good, the shot was taken and the enemy sniper was removed, making it clear for our drone to take off. Once in the air, we took control of the drone and went about making our way into the room where the data server was stored, while the sniper was gone, we still had to be careful as the drone could have been spotted.

After a few close calls, which included bouncing the drone of some walls, we made it into the room and were able to determine where our target was, the general who was brought in to get the facility back on schedule. Once we had determined the location of our target, we were given a multitude of choices in terms of location to make our move, one of them had us at 3 meters behind the general, which would have meant a knife kill, but there were others where our sniping skills were better applied. The big thing to note here is that we were told whatever way you make your way in to kill, you need to be able to locate your own way out, there is no magic ending, you need to get yourself out of any danger you put yourself in.

We were able, with a few hiccups along the way, to make it to our chosen location, there were already soldiers there, one sniper and one spotter. After taking out the spotter, we were able to take out the sniper and then settle in for our moment. Through the scope we were able to see the general deal very harshly with some of the workers who decided to take things outside and as he dealt with that, we dealt with him. A single shot and down he went and up went the alarm bells, though we were not really close, soldiers were coming from us, guns going off around us and more, it was time for us to get out of there. It was at this point in the demo that a helicopter came in to get us out, something that won’t happen in the game, only for the E3 demo and what a demo it was. Everything was on point, the visuals looked amazing, even though it was only marked as alpha, If the gameplay can keep as fun and engaging the whole way through, this might just be something special.