Pre-order Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts

For as long as there have been games featuring guns with sights and scopes, there have been snipers. These are the people who relish the act of picking off unsuspecting targets from a distance, and using every tool in his or her toolbox to remain relatively unseen. There's a bit of a wannabe sharpshooter in all of us, many because the simple act of doing it in the gaming space has never really stopped making one feel like the slickest, baddest person in the universe — for at least a second.

City Interactive has taken the art of modern sniping and built an entire series around it, starting with Sniper: Art of Victory in 2008. More than a decade and several games later, we got a look at Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts, which is due out later this year.

While the past Sniper games were built around the mythos of being a sniper in the U.S. military, you're under the mask of a paid super-assassin in Contracts. The premise is simple: You take on jobs and get paid to take out targets via a mission-oriented system with the opportunity with some sandboxing.

The demo we saw at E3 2019 featured a map of an area of Siberia, which appears to be the setting of most of the game. The main target was a scientist holed up in a military base that's heavily guarded and masked by swirling snow. The heart of the Sniper series experience is rooted in ultimate stealth, planning and stealth again. One uncovered body or errant shot can send the entire base into unwavering alert, with the enemies being smart, aware and dogged enough to make it practically impossible to action-hero your way out.

In addition to the main target, you can also trudge to other parts of the map and pull of "side" contracts, whether they're other targets or some kind of objective. We got a look at the new scope system that features visual cues that can help tell you when a shot has a chance to be good, taking into account realistic factors like distance, wind, and any other things shooters might have to think about instead of simply pointing the crosshairs at someone's head and pulling the trigger.

You'll also have different kinds of bullets. The armor-piercing bullets are pretty explanatory, but there are also tracking bullets that can be fired into an area and actually detect nearby enemies (like other snipers) as well as EMP bullets and "luring" bullets that emit sound to draw people out. The binoculars served as a layer recon tool, which we used to set up an epic shot through a tight sight window to take out the base's CCTV feeds, which then disabled the security cameras. It's a lot of tension-filled planning and execution, something augmented by what appears to be impressive and detailed visuals in snowy and freezing Siberia.

You get the feeling that the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series has been playing a little catch-up with the Sniper Elite series, but CI has promised Contracts will be the most complete experience they've built. Players will have a chance to train their sights on it later this year.