As a marksman-in-training, I will write my review less on the game play and story and more on the technical stuff. I make no claims at being 100% accurate on the factual information I provide, but I will do my best. If you want my overall opinion skip to the bottom. For the rest of you who want to be bored by my technical babble, read on my friends.

Lets start with the stuff i found realistic from my experiences.

When looking down a scope, your field of view (FOV) is usually fairly narrow (it depends on what scope you have and a myriad of other factors). So when you look down the scope in Ghost Warrior it does give a fairly realistic FOV. Although this is frustrating, it does lend itself to the real world fairly well.

When you squeeze off a shot intended for someone more than about 100 yards down range, the bullet will drop at a calculated rate, and the wind will do its best to make your bullet fly away in the wrong direction. These are very real problems that do manifest themselves well in GW. In fact, this is why most snipers/spotters have binoculars- which GW neglects to give you.

I personally own a rifle that is very similar to the SA-25 so I can say GW does do it justice. The effective range is roughly 1000 yards. This means that any shot taken that is less than 1000 yards should be accurate. While playing GW, the gun is extremely accurate, and in my opinion does the real world justice.

However, this is really where the realism starts to taper off… quickly.

The most frustrating part for me was how much the gun bounces around, even while prone. While standing, yes it will bounce around a lot, and the game does a good job of showing you that. However, when you are prone or crouching the gun sill bounces around at an unrealistic rate. The guns have bi-pods on the front for just this reason. No its not perfect, but at least you can get a stable shot off.

Next, as i stated earlier, the effective range of the SA-25 is roughly 1000 yards. This means you should be able to be accurate at roughly 1000 yards. The effective range of an AK-47 is roughly 300 yards (I am being a bit generous). The longest engagement i can remember was roughly 250 yards. This means that the enemy will have no trouble shooting back at me with a great deal of accuracy. As a sniper, this puts you in a bad position. If you miss, or you are discovered, the enemy can shoot back and kill you.

I believe this is the fundamental flaw of this game. Almost every engagement you get into has enemies shooting back at you. If this game is supposed to give you the experience of being a elite sniper, why does it force you into a situation that a trained sniper would intentionally avoid? If i were in the position of needing to take out an enemy, i would use my own strengths… that is, i would put a lot of ground in between me and my target… say 500 to 600 yards? And i sure as hell wouldn’t put 100 yards between me and my enemy as this game does time and time again.

Nevertheless, I think there is a good reason the game does this. Anyone who has never shot a gun before could go out to a range and shoot reasonably accurately at 200 yards after about a day. Shooting at 600 yards is a totally different story. As there are probably more people out there who cannot shoot at 600 yards than people who can, the game needs to be tailored to them. So, annoyingly, your restricted to close-quarters engagements.

OVERALL:

In the end the game was fairly entertaining. Watching the bullet-cam is very entertaining (in a sick, twisted way). Sneaking around enemies with X-Ray vision and telepathic powers is fairly infuriating. Fortunately, this game does give a nice mix of the two. I just wish it were more of a real sniper game. Overall, I think its worth the $30 despite the plethora of AI flaws, game engine annoyances, and game play lapses which im sure you will read in other people’s reviews.

Rating: 3 / 5