Sniper: Ghost Warrior review

You are codename Razor four six, real name: something or other. You've been sent to a fake Spanish island to shoot people out from under their hats. You're a sniper. You're also a warrior. You're not a ghost warrior – you're wearing a Christmas tree.

You've got to rescue a member of your unit, because your unit lives by the mantra 'No man left behind'. Then you spend the next eight missions or so getting left behind, as you escort a team to a drop point only to be forced to cover their escape. There's lots of awkward swearing and “Hoo-ah!” nonsense from the military types, and every single hostile guard spends his time standing around on the phone telling his boss how everything is “muy tranquilo”. Until you murder his face, that is.

The AI is a surprise: it's decent. Kill a guy, get noticed, and you have a few seconds to off him before he gets shooty. If you cock that up and he lets a round off, you can just keep on top of the chain of guards who'll notice you, and it'll quiet down again. They'll spot you from across the map, they'll hear you on floorboards, yet they'll walk right past you in the bushes when you're hidden.

Calling the shots

The sniping is the best I've ever experienced. Not only does it show your pulse and the wind conditions, and give you a little red circle to represent where the bullet will go, it lets you slow down time to kill a few people before any of them can say, “Miguel, that christmas tree just shot Pablo”. It also does something very cool when you score a perfect headshot – you're treated to a slowmotion cinematic that captures a fly-by of the shiny bullet as it sails towards El Bonce.

The mission format is usually to make your way to a sniper post, get ready to shoot a guy, recoil in shock as something goes tits up, then run all the way to the boat – which leaves without you. Sometimes there's more of the groundwork than you'd like, but it's all sniping, and you're never properly screwed if you get spotted occasionally.

Then there are the shitty missions where you play as a Delta Force guy with an assault rifle. It's just a poor man's Modern Warfare – a mad scramble up an oil rig getting shot at from every side with two idiot squad mates. Why is it here? Why doesn't it go off to some other game and be mediocre there?

The multiplayer is alright. They shouldn't have let people spawn with grenades, but it's fine, if nothing special. If we're talking niggles, there's a hell of a lot of sticky scenery, and there are too many clumsy action sections to deserve a pristine score. £25 is a tad on the high side, too, but I've never played a sniper game that hit the spot with such deadly accuracy – at least, one that didn't also want you firing rockets at helicopters. This is purely stealth and sudden gooey headaches.