Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3

I was looking for a good FPS single player game on PC and came across Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 in another store for $4.04 for the Season Pass Edition. After much research I decided to give it a try. (it is still $4, more or less if you search) Just be sure to buy the Season Pass Edition.
First of all I was surprised at how good the game looks and also at the detail that CI put into the graphics. Little things like the blue vice on the workbench with worn paint, threads on the perfectly round bolts that hold the vice down, and even a missing nut. Graphics in game are very good for the most part, with trees of all kinds swaying in the wind, weeds and flowers blowing in the breeze which you will definitely notice when you are prone looking through your scope and a branch or weeds are swaying back and forth in front of your scope. I am running at 2560 x 1440 - 120 FPS and this 7 year old game ran surprisingly smooth. The buildings aren't anything special, and some houses can't be entered, but doesn't affect the game, just how that portion of it looks.
There is a learning curve that takes some time to really get into the game. If you are looking for a run and gun game, this isn't it. The game requires stealth and patients to fill the Ghost and Warrior Trees. There are some close quarters battles, but that isn't the main game. CI includes a Prologue with a learning mission that does help to get you started. You will have several key bindings to learn, and I found myself going back and changing some for awhile. The biggest problem I had is the "F" key is bound to deploy whatever is selected in the gadget slot and I have always used that key for "reload" going back to Quake and beyond. No matter what I bound it to, it always functions the same. It did cause a few problems for me, but slowly used to it, sort of. (I use a very old Zboard Fang Keypad with thousands of hours use)( The F key is in the exact same place the F on a keyboard.)
If you buy the SGW3- Season pass edition, you will have the McMillan TAC 338 sniper and scope at the start and I found it to be probably the best sniper overall. There are a couple of 50 cal. snipers, but neither have a silencer available, so unless you are across the map, you will alert every enemy in your mission area with your first shot. But, you don't have to worry about killing your target if you don't miss. Which brings me to the bullet cam, a slow motion video of your bullet from when it leaves your rifle, until it does serious damage to your targets head. I turned it off after a short time as it really adds little to the actual game.
I wasn't so sure if I liked this game in the beginning, but the more I played and learned, the more I enjoyed it. I like to stick with a game for a few hours to learn as much as I can, and with this game, the more I learned, the more fun and challenging it became. I found Scout Mode to be my friend. SGW3 has now become one of my favorite games.
There are 3 skill trees, Sniper, Ghost, and Warrior that have 42 points in each tree with points earned for XP in each tree. Sniper is easy to fill, but I believe there are better skills to unlock in Ghost and Warrior. To earn those points you will have to do more stealth and CQB, (and die more!!) But it does add more fun and tension. I played on Sharpshooter difficulty and there are 2 higher levels if you want a more challenging experience. On Sharpshooter the Ai is not as smart for the most part, but can become quite aggressive when you are discovered, especially in a group of 6 or more. Sometimes they seem to come from everywhere.
I found the main story about Jon, a Marine sniper, and his younger brother, Robert, to be decent and interesting, always leaving you to wonder what will happen to them. (If you are new to this game, it would be best to not research the story and let it play out when you play it.) There are also several side missions, plus a ton of other things to do, like explore 191 points of interest, find collectibles, and more. (all shown on your main maps) The music is good and is well done, adding to the mission. This isn't true open world, but gives a lot of freedom of movement, and I found I was able to climb some mountains in areas that weren't really designated for it.

Dialog is good and I found that I really needed to pay attention to conversations or I could miss a part of my mission.
Cutscenes are usually fairly short, interesting, and add to the game and the missions.
There are many weapons to unlock, but I found that most weren't that great, and you will end up with a few favorites. 90% of enemies will be carrying AKA 47's which I wasn't fond of.
There are some flaws and glithes in the game, but none game breaking, at least for me. I did get hung up on something 5 times in over 200 hours of play and had to quit the game or kill myself to get loose. For some reason the devs, decided that silencers wear out fairly quickly, and you have to repair them often to keep them working properly.
I have read issues in the forums where saves are lost. There is no manual save and the game saves only when it feels like it. I found when you quit the game, then go to the Steam Library, the game will show "still running" for a minute or longer, than say 100%, and then return to your library list. I have to wonder if when the game says "still running" it is saving to the cloud. If you shut down Steam during this time, your save would be corrupt. I most always finished my session in the Safe House, waited a bit, then quit, went to Steam library, waited for the game to finish running to 100%, then quit Steam. I didn't have a problem after that.
I don't know for sure if this will work for everyone or not, but sure doesn't hurt just to be safe!
I have grown to really like this game, and highly recommend it to anyone who likes FPS's, and can take the time to learn and appreciate the work that went into this game.
There are many more things I could add to this review, but it is already too long. If you have a question, please ask after this review and I will do my best to answer it.

As of May 4th 2024,
Alright so this game has lots of negative reviews which I don't understand. It's far from being a bad game but it's not the GOTY either.
Runs pretty well, encontered no crashes during the whole 18 hours full campaign.
Story is ok, georgian music is ok but I don't know why loading from region to region are incredibly long even when the game is installed on SSD and the main music that you find fun to hear at first become kind awful to listen to after a while.
Anyway, there are 4 Acts in 3 areas that are kinda mini open world. If you're a collector or love to do extra side activities, they are plenty, not always great though. Overall it fells in some way like a Far Cry but you don't have the outpost to free to discover the map.
For an 8 years old game, it's still good, graphics are a tad ugly but gameplay wise and mecanics are good.
Unlocking side mission is kinda trash though, you'll need to go to the map ping to unlock the first mission of that specific mission line, once done you take the following line side mission from the computer. Took me a while to figure it out. No need to thanks me.
Better be equipped and plan ahead as it will be a 1 bullet death if you rush in without thinking a bit.
As for the gameplay, I enjoyed it. It's mostly based on sniper but you can use a rifle or gun if that fits more your style.
I paid this game 2,99€ with the 2 DLC campaign full package. Frankly for 3€ and if you like fps you should give it a try. I'm glad I did as I enjoyed it.

Delightfully snipey little game. I played on hard mode and bullets (in both directions) were delightfully punchy. Some of the later game enemies were some kind of cyborg/had heavy armor so they needed heavier rounds but that was well developed by the game's plot. There were a few places where I had to clear it out two or three times for different reasons, which was annoying. There were another few places where it was possible to killbox a whole group of enemies. The way that works is you go to the back of a room such as an apartment with some form of cover and a narrow entryway. The broken AI would simply march the enemies into your kill box single file, which was sad... There were some issues with draw distances too, where you wanted to engage some targets at 330m but they only drew at 200m. Other cases where you were like "ok, mission, cool"... and run off with your normal silenced rifle and then get into a situation where you were set up for 100m - 300m easy shooting and have to make a 500m longshot. Still, the game did satisfy my desire to do some sniping so I'm upvoting it. Technical note: it ships with some standard libraries from very early in the Windows 10 era, those should probably be moved to a backup folder for the smoothest experience.

Great game, simple plot, really cool amunition and not overly complicated. I wish there was a 4th season

Good effort, but somewhat dated, glitchy, and repetitious.
Get it on sale ($5).

This is easily one of the best sniper games I've played. Good physics, various tactical positions with the freedom to choose what angle/style you want to approach from. One of the few games I've played recently where I lose track of time. This gets an easy 9/10 from me. Is it worth the current full price of ~$20? Hell yes.
Update: Ran into a few minor bugs - ammo going missing after maxing a certain AR, not the end of the world. Had a few CTDs but are few and far between. New rating: 8.5/10 and still worth $20.

Played through on hardest difficulty right away. From start, pretty good, nothing i would complain about. Till the end tho, especially after introducing enemies that wont die after even a headshot, it got a bit frustrating. Also, if enemies know where you are, and they are turning a corner to face you, they start shooting even before they go in the door. Which is just plain dumb.
Selection of guns is decent, no complains there really. Money is pretty low from start, but as you go on, especially if you go through the most wanted list and side missions, and if you loot nearly every enemy you kill, you will have way more than enough around Act 2, and even more going into Act 3.
Overall, yes, i recommend this. Especially now that it can be got for cheap as a bundle, ESPECIALLY with the car, which i would call a must have, and cant believe they actually made it a DLC.