REVIEW: Sharpshooter 3D

Sharpshooter 3D is laced with flaws and tries to be the next Grezzo 2, but it’s just a glorified Doom mod.

Author: Aythadis
Steam: Released
Type: Single-player
Genre: FPS, Action
Developer: HeadHunterGames
Publisher: Dagestan Technology
Release date: 5 Sept, 2018

Warning! This Game may contain content not appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work: Frequent Violence or Gore, General Mature Content!

The first time I saw this game on the Steam store, I was very interested. Upon my first gaze at it, I knew this was a game I had to cover and talk about. Upon delay, after delay, after delay, finally it arrived! Was it worth the wait? Oh, god no! There is a lot of stuff to talk about in this game, and I’m not really sure where to start. However, allow me to try to organize my rambling thoughts into words so I can explain what in the actual fuck is Sharpshooter 3D.

Paid Mod

If you are a fan of old school shooters, you will easily see the resemblance here. Some would say it’s built on the “Build Engine”, the same engine such games as Duke Nukem or Shadow Warrior were built on, but you would be very wrong! This is a Doom Mod. How do I know? If you go and look at the game files, the game is in a .wad file, and uses a modified version of “GZDoom” to run the game. Let me be very clear, I was a Doom modder, and I still know my way around modding, how things work, and I can see things that maybe others won’t see unless they modded Doom. Like I said, it’s a .wad file and that means if you were to open it in a wad editor you would see all the files. However if you were to drag the wad and try to open it in another engine like an unmodified version of GZDoom, the game won’t work. It’s a shame, as I would have liked to have played around with the graphical settings to try and make it much nicer.

This is just one reason why I say it runs on a modified version of GZDoom. GZDoom in itself is a very powerful engine and has a vast variety of graphical options and settings. This game has just about all of those stripped out or locked out. There are no graphical options in this game. The max display size you can have is only 1280×720! If you wanted to change this to be any higher, you HAVE to go into the game files and edit the gzdoom.ini file! I’ve played around trying to make it look a little better, but frankly any big changes either break the game or makes it worse. I’ll also point out that this game is locked at 30-35 FPS and does tend to drop quite bad in some areas in the game. As it is, this is my MAIN reason why I give this a much lower score than other people, because this is a paid Doom mod, and frankly it’s not a very nice one either. I’ve played tons of Doom mods that have way more content and looked much nicer than this, yes even joke wads. Do you wanna know another way I know it’s a Doom mod? Every, and I mean EVERY cheat code Doom uses works here, because of GZDoom!

Weekend at South-Slovenko

So how is it in terms of a Doom mod? Well, it’s pretty iffy. The game looks ugly and the quality is all over the place. Some areas look decent, then others just look like garbage. With most of the graphics you can see a white outline around images, as in they didn’t crop around the image fully. I will say though this isn’t just a simple Doom mod. They definitely used features that only GZDoom could use, like custom coding for events, slopes, 3D floors, 3D doors, though they did not use dynamic lighting. Calling this a simple mod is far from the truth. There was work put into this, and you don’t need a Doom iwad to play it either! All the graphics and audio was custom made, though there were a few times that I could swear I’ve heard audio files from other Doom mods/assets being used. One flaw that I can point out, though, is the lack of telling an actual story. You are left having to interpret it for yourself. If you don’t read the story on the store page, you would have NO idea what’s going on, but even then it’s still hard to understand. Just know the Russian government hates you, druggies are everywhere, crazy cultists want to sacrifice you, and the world is spiraling into fire and chaos.

In terms of world-building, it’s pretty great! It definitely feels like a Doom mod, as there are different paths to take, secrets to find, and it is just an overall blast to explore around. However, most of the maps you will see do repeat themselves. You explore the same area three times! Everything else all flows together and makes it feel like a city. You start out in a small gas station out in the country, then ride your scooter back to the city to ride a train back home. Once back home, the cops raid your place and you have to escape, leading the chase back to the subway only to be caught and thrown into prison. Then you break out of prison and march through the streets to take down the Russian government. In terms of the levels, they are built wide open and do allow a decent amount of exploring (minus the train levels) where you can explore some buildings and crawl in vents to gain access to other rooms. The only real issue, though, is the multitude of invisible walls to deal with throughout the game. I would say there are multiple paths, but honestly there aren’t as they all lead to the same areas and to the same exit. From my two and a half playthroughs I didn’t find any secret levels or any difference in playing as the other characters other than a sprite change and player sounds. I will say this game is SHORT! It only took me just over an hour to beat it!

So, what do you do? Pretty much just kill everyone in your way. Your selection of weapons is extremely limited. To make things even worse, you can only hold one weapon at a time! Meaning you can’t pick up anything until you use up or throw your current weapon. There are only 16 weapons: a box cutter, hammer, chainsaw, fire extinguisher, power drill, beer bottle, pepper spray, spray paint, weight, toilet lid, razor blade, Molotov cocktail, prison shiv, a four-shot pistol that you can only carry one extra clip, a shotgun (with infinite ammo), and of course your fists and mighty foot. The biggest annoyance is when you defeat enemies as they will drop the weapon they are using, For instance, if you defeat a cop who had a baton, you can’t use it because it’s not a weapon. There are tons of times you think you would be able to use such things as weapons, like a knife, needle, shield, etc. However, you can’t. Even worse, when you can only carry one weapon at a time you end up having to run back to pick up another weapon when the one you were using decides to break. When using most weapons other than the pistol and pepper spray, you have no idea how much durability your weapon has left until it breaks, or doesn’t shoot anymore. Using any shooting weapon can kill any enemy in 1-2 shots, whereas melee weapons can take quite a few hits. To be fair, you don’t even need to use a weapon. Using your fists can make ANY enemy easy, as hitting them will cause them to be “stunned” for a second, you can just mash the attack button and they will not be able to attack you. The only time that you can’t do that is if you get swarmed.

Combat in general, though, is satisfying. As you beat the living crap out of a bum, spurts of blood fly out of him, with the odd tooth flying out, littering the ground. Stabbing enemies will usually lead to enemies gushing blood from the neck before they fall over dead. Using the chainsaw causes the heads of enemies to look like they are being ripped off, though they never actually tear off. Using the shotgun on some will cause some glorious gibs and expose rib cages or rip off an arm, sometimes even decapitating them! Throwing a Molotov will set people on fire and cause them to run around screaming in pain before falling over, though this doesn’t cause the fire to spread to other enemies (like POSTAL.)

Knockoff of a knockoff.

At one point in the game, you get to play a “video game” which is a knockoff of Doom, but you play as a Terminator going into an alien world. Sounds like fun right? Well, sadly it’s horribly easy and gives no real challenge. There is only one alien that only has a melee attack, and that dies in one shot. Even the “Boss” alien dies in just three shots and didn’t it even attack me. This sequence is very short, only taking me two minutes to actually finish before going back to the main game. In terms of any other “mini-games” or the like, there aren’t any. I found no other special things to interact with in the world. There are items throughout the world that you can destroy, but otherwise it’s mostly doors, light switches, and the odd switch. For the most part, the game is just killing.

Edgelord

There are a few parts in this game that just made me shake my head and say “Really?” The first time you play on a train level, right when you load up, you can see two enemies, one with a pipe, the other with a camera, beating up on a black guy, and he is the ONLY black guy in the entire game. I wish I was joking when I say that, but no it’s right there right in front of your face. Yes, you can go and kill those guys, but I feel they could have used any other character other than a black guy, or just not even have it to begin with! Another one is in one alley where, after you walk down there, you run into some punks that were spray-painting a swastika on the wall. To be honest these two things really don’t need to be in the game. I feel if they didn’t include these, the game would have been fine because all they really do is try to make things edgy and controversial just for the sake of it.

JUST DONT DEAD.

Since this is a Russian-made game, there are some serious English grammar issues. It’s a minor complaint that does make you laugh a bit, repeating what they said in your mind with a Russian accent. A far worse issue with this game is the fire. There is NO damage from fire in this game. At one point, one of my allies threw so many Molotovs that it filled an entire room and I had to wade through that just to advance. Because fire doesn’t disappear, I figured I’d just have to run through and take some damage, only to find out it doesn’t hurt! I figured it must have been because it was a friendly that used it, so eventually I used a Molotov as well and ran through the fire. Again, I received no damage. Eventually, I found some fire that happened to be in the world, stood in it, and still didn’t take any damage. Even down in the subway, I’ve stood in front of trains and didn’t take any damage. There were only two times they had instant death triggers set up, where if a train went by (even though it was basically just a still image) the trigger would kill instead of the train itself.

Speaking of damage, good god every enemy in this game deals way too much damage! A basic enemy can deal 30-40 points of damage! Combine that with no armor in this game or usable items or powerups and this game can be extremely difficult at times. There are situations where you will get mobbed and surrounded, and if that happens you are pretty much dead. You have to exploit the simple AI and either kite them down narrow passages, or let your fellow comrades do all the killing for you.

Verdict

In the end, it was definitely an experience, but is it worth the money? No! Had this been free I’d have given it a much higher rating and praise the game. However, the fact that I paid money for a Doom mod is gross. I feel that issue combined with some very questionable content and a very short length, thus providing no replay value, makes me give it a hard pass. Avoid this game unless it’s on a deep discount or free.