The corruption within the country of Kuamar is heating up while the Commission is moving on assassinating people currently in power. Learn more about the gameplay and story behind our exclusive review of Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 here.
Power of the Rashida Regime
Following the assassination of President Al-Bakr, the wrestle for power over a two decade history has allowed Al-Bakr’s wife Bibi Rashida into power as the country of Kuamar’s new President and new “dictator.”
Despite many reports of the Al-Bakr/Rashida Regime being outright brutal to the people of Kuamar, there was no commission to step in until Rashida and the regime threatened a neighboring country in the Middle East of war that could have consequences of inflation in the oil industry and crippling of the country of Kuamar’s economy.
Further details indicate that Rashida’s stronghold on the country is not as weak as it seems as she has connections to rogue military servicemen and warlords that provide mercenaries, weapons, and bad influence to keeping Kuamar under tyrannical control.
In addition to being supported by common warlords, the Rashida Regime is funded by Lars Hellstrom (a computer hacker and crypto-currency tycoon) who influences the Kuamar government in pushing for rigged elections while extorting money from corporations across the world that go against the Rashida tyranny.
Unknowns of Raven
Only known by his American or Canadian accent, the unknown soldier to the commission going by the codename “Raven” is not just an ordinary sniper; but, a sniper with similar skills in a class that even Bob Lee Swagger can manage to pull off in a long-distance sniping competition.
Raven is the typical contract assassin although he even pays a tribute to the “Assassin’s Creed” series by wearing a cloak similar to the majority of the assassin main characters in those type of action-adventure games…bottom line, it makes Raven look equally a stealthy bad-a** character.
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 Gameplay
Contracts 2 gameplay picks up where it left off with the first Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts game keeping the gameplay on a set map somewhere in this case in Kuamar with the player traveling on foot to each objective area.
By completing each main objective in the 7 maps, the player can choose an extraction point to send the data to Raven’s handler and these extraction points can act as fast travels; but, the fast travels will only be available when not in the middle of extraction or when in the middle of combat with the enemy.
Out in the field, Raven can remain stealthy by getting into a prone position in the weeds or in a crouched position in the bushes to stay out of line of sight from the enemy (the HUD will fade to black on the edges to indicate when Raven is invisible).
As for weaponry and gadgets, it’s much similar from the previous game with Raven’s armory making up short to long-distance sniper rifles, pistols, secondary weapons (machine guns, SMG’s, shotguns, etc.) compound bow, and selections of throwables (throwing knives, decoy traps, warning devices, etc.).
Raven’s armory also includes a RWS SR-50 sniper turret to assist on the field in setting up sync shots to take out multiple targets at a time.
As for development upgrades available to Raven’s character, there are choices to upgrade his prototype mask (similar mask to Seeker in SGWC) in order to unlock capabilities such as auto tagging enemies within a short range and detecting land mines when taking a route through the mine field.
Additionally, Raven’s stealth perks can be improved as far as upgrading to “universal” camo to make it harder for enemies to spot him and capabilities to improve sound generation when moving.
Other perks included in the perk upgrade system are improve drone battery life, adding EMP modules to the drone to fry surveillance servers and other electronics, ammo and med kit pouch capacity increases, and more of the same perks in the upgrade system as found in the 1st SGWC game.
Long Shot & Classical Contracts
The major difference and change-up found in Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is the mixture of long-shot and the typical classical contract missions.
The first Sniper Ghost Warrior Contract game made it optional to assassinate targets from long-distances in each mission while leaving it up to the player on whether to take out targets up close and personal or from a distance in each classical contract. This is no different in the 2nd Contracts game!
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contract 2 forces the player to take on long-shot contracts to take out targets beyond 1000+ meters away which requires an extreme range scope with a combination of using distractions (luring ammo) and strategy of how to take out enemies protecting the high value targets without raising an alarm…remember the player can’t get up close and personal in long-shot contracts.
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 Collectibles
Throughout the campaign, there are a total of 60 collectibles (including in the 1 mission expansion) with 24 collectibles making up relics resembling middle eastern history and treasures found out of the way in each map.
The other 18 collectibles are notebooks/diaries detailing notes of each of the warlords, some of the mercenaries and scientists working within the Rashida Regime, and some of the local middle eastern villagers witnessing events the Regime is doing.
In the mix of collectibles is finding all 18 camouflage caches to use in making your sniper rifle, side-arm, secondary weapons, and compound bow pop or in other cases blend in with the Kuamar environment. These are required to be picked up to meet the 100% completion of the game.
To find each of the collectibles, follow the yellow signal on the mini-map to locate the collectible…the stronger the signal, the closer the player is getting to finding the collectible.
When the player is on top of the collectible, the icon of the collectible will show up on the mini map.
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 Personal Views
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is still a “short-and-sweet,” simple and straight to the point game that had too many similarities to the 1st Contracts game while it made some slight change ups to the gameplay.
Discussing the long-shot contracts, they provided a needed challenge for a mini-series game like Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts to not make it as easy to kill a high-value target; but, the agile ammo would quickly bypass the challenge of reading wind direction and distance.
Playing the game on the “Deadeye” difficulty, I noticed that there was no wind reading indicator in the HUD when looking through the scope which made it more challenging to predict where to put a long distance shot; but, I was able to just follow the descending meter lines/hairs on the scope along with the direction of the wind to make an easier prediction.
The wind reading indicator feature was later fixed before the release of the Butcher’s Banquet and was made as a feature that could be disabled by the player. Nice Save, CI Games!
Before a fix was put in the works, CI Games released SGWC 2 with a minor bug where Raven would sometimes get stuck trying to climb even the smallest rocks on the ground that ruined some opportunities to sneak up behind enemies or to access cover…this was only a slight annoyance to not being able to do a simple action that is more than capable in-game.
Onto some of the other cons, the game starts you out with an unsuppressed sniper rifle and suppressed side-arm which means you’ll have to take out any enemies around that could hear the shot and come running to you.
In addition, there is too many limitations to the kind of ammo each sniper rifle supports to use which means careful selection and half the weapons don’t have suppressors (for those that want to do a stealth walkthrough of the game and don’t want to get into a fire-fight) including the side-arms which again raises limitation disadvantages.
Finally, the final mission (not the Butcher’s Craving extension) has a scripted moment regardless of whether you would take the target out without anyone looking (play the game to know) or not, then there will be some mercs spawning behind you and shooting you in the back…a poor scripted part of the game in my book when the other 90% of the game can be played stealthily.
