Marine Sharpshooter 3

If nothing else, Marine Sharpshooter 3 lives up to its billing. You play a marine. You do a lot of sharpshooting. And that's about it. The box-cover blurb claims that this franchise has sold over a million copies, but it's hard to see how a game this dumb and derivative could ever develop a fan base. While the game isn't horrific looking, and there is a lot of shooting going on, all you do is stalk through linear levels sniping everything that moves. Retro shooter fans might enjoy this monotonous killing for an hour or so, then look for the uninstall icon.


Still, at least the game is topical. Marine Sharpshooter 3 kicks off with a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad soundalike at a press conference where he claims that Iran is no threat to the world and that "using nuclear weapons is against the rules of Islam." Uh-huh. It's a good thing that the US doesn't believe that nonsense because it turns out that the Iranians are both messing around with nukes and arming terrorists in nearby Iraq. So what starts as a recon mission where you're ordered not to engage the enemy unless absolutely necessary soon turns into a search-and-destroy crusade where you gun down everybody you see. "Absolutely necessary" actually comes into play right after receiving the above directive because you have to kill a half-dozen Iranian soldiers within a minute of starting the game. So much for the sanctions.

The levels resemble movie sets more than war zones. Virtually all of the terrain and architecture could have been excerpted from any of a dozen clichéd World War II shooters based on the Unreal engine. Nothing here is particularly awful, it's all just really uninspired. For example, perishing enemies display ridiculous rag-doll contortions that would put Cirque de Soleil to shame, and baddies never seem to say anything other than "Take cover!" or "Send for reinforcements!" during battle. It's amazing how so many Arab and Iranian terrorists speak such good English.

There is little to no enemy artificial intelligence in this shooting gallery either, so these acrobatic bad guys materialize from around corners, pop up from behind boxes, and appear in the back of trucks like rabbits out of hats. The jihadist thugs just stand in place shooting at you, ignoring cover inches away or running headlong at your position. Smarts are only on display during close-up firefights with pistols or machine guns, which is when you will occasionally get flanked. But most of the time, it's more like these terrorists are mindlessly running around rather than trying to save their skins or trying to kill you.



The friendly AI is even dumber than your enemies. You can swap between the titular sniper and a machine gun-armed spotter on demand, although both are brain-dead when running on autopilot. For starters, your so-called ally doesn't even bother to fire back at enemies blasting away at you much of the time. Movement and attack commands given through the simple order screen never seem to be obeyed. If you tell your pal to act aggressively, he'll just freeze in place until you tell him to follow you. Even when your teammate does actually do something like shoot back, he can't hit the broad side of a mosque. The only thing he can do is block your way in narrow corridors or on stairwells because the AI isn't even swift enough to get the hell out of the road when you're pushing to get past.

It's best to forget about having a teammate and solo through missions as the sniper until you run out of ammo, then switch to the spotter to blast through the final stages. Solo missions in the campaign (there is no multiplayer) are so formulaic that this approach works perfectly. You run forward, stop and crouch when you start taking enemy fire, then go to the scope to kill all of the swarthy terrorist types in sight. Lather, rinse, repeat. Objectives typically involve straight assassinations, or recon missions that play like straight assassinations, because you can't wrap anything without stacking up quite a few bodies.



However, even meeting these lame goals is often painful. The aforementioned AI problems are maddening, as is the ability of enemies to target you from crazy distances and apparently spot you through brick walls or tall grass. Enemies can seem to shoot you when you're totally hunkered down out of sight behind a car or a rock. Levels also involve a lot of backtracking to complete objectives because direct routes to goals are typically blocked by fences, walls, and junk in alleyways, which is a transparent attempt to drag out the game without going to the expense of creating new maps. Still, as long as you're patient enough not to run around too many corners, you'll be able to pick off most foes before you can smell the shawarma they had for lunch. But being this cautious is a real trial because the sheer awfulness of everything means that you can't help but try and rush through missions as quickly as possible.

The grueling checkpoint system and long load times only add to the frustration, but surely you've read more than enough. It's an appalling shooter on multiple levels, and it's not worth playing in the slightest.