Sure, I understand that a sniper shot draws attention, but the loss of the element of surprise often turns the game into a traditional third-person shooter, especially during the second half of the game. It’s a shame, however, that these backup mechanics undermine some of the best aspects of the sniper genre – true stealth. And if all else fails, you’re given dynamite, grenades, and automatic weapons as backup for when things get hairy. You can do things such as lay landmines and tripmines before luring your prey into them with a rock throw, take non-lethal shots at your enemies to lure others to their position, or shoot gas tanks on vehicles to leave chaos and death in your wake. There’s the expected genre option of stealth killing via silenced pistols or melee, but Sniper Elite V2 gives you plenty of more unique ways to complete your objectives using various tools and a bit of creative thought. The remainder of the game is a mixed bag of passable gameplay mechanics and downright awful ones. "You can take a shot and move to a new position to leave enemies searching for you, but because the AI is so irregular and varies from running right at you with reckless abandon to searching endlessly to no avail, there’s not much consistency to rely on." But if you’re intrigued by watching a bullet enter a face and utterly decimate a person’s jaw bones into a thousand fragmented pieces, well, I think you may have found your game. If you’ve got a weak stomach, Sniper Elite isn’t a franchise for you.
You don’t just get to watch the bullet penetrate and leave the body the game will switch to x-ray vision to showcase the enemy’s insides and allow you to stare in awe as you explode various bone structures and organs. And thanks to the aforementioned brutal and satisfying bullet cam, many of those shots will result in grotesque slow motion bullet entry. It can be a truly mathematical endeavor that makes you feel like a real sniper as you’re perched atop a crumbled building working out the specifics before taking pulling the trigger. Beyond that, you can expect to spend a lot of time adjusting for drop distance and wind as you line up perfect shots.
Running even short distances can raise it exceptionally high, and since slowing time is very important to lining up great shots, there’s a fun bit of risk and reward involved in managing the meter. My favorite detail is that the game ties your time-slowing ability to your heartrate. There’s a lot of attention paid to this element of gameplay that works really well. The game’s best feature is its primary one – sniping. Still, there’s enough intrigue here to propel players into the conflict and give them purpose for putting bullets through as many skulls as they can. The setup is a run-of-the-mill WWII story switched up just enough to make the sniping gameplay logical, and our hero follows suit by being as generic as possible. Players are placed in the shoes of Lieutenant Karl Fairburne and given the task of running down and taking out German scientists before Russian operatives capture them. There’s a lot of attention paid to this element of gameplay that works really well."īeyond these traditional remaster improvements, Sniper Elite V2 is the exact same game it was seven years ago. "The game’s best feature is its primary one – sniping. Since the only other notable addition to the remastered version of Sniper Elite V2 is an average photo mode, it’s a shame the visuals aren’t more impressive to showcase players’ best moments. Still, the game is several years old, and it shows. Dynamic lighting and improved particle effects are welcomed, and I noticed some hefty changes to the game’s character models.
Sniper Elite V2 wasn’t very pretty to begin with, and although the upgrade to 4k and HDR is an improvement worth noting, it doesn’t magically improve the dated visuals in any drastic way. Years later, a remaster no one asked for has arrived to bring the game to modern consoles, but not much has changed beyond some enhancements to the graphics. There was a lot of fun to be had watching these gruesome deaths, but within a few hours, the otherwise stiff gameplay and poorly-implemented mechanics wore on me and led me to retire the game fairly early on. Bones crunched and countless hard-to-watch organ shots ensued.
When I first played Sniper Elite V2 on the PlayStation 3 in 2012, I was enamored with the franchise’s signature bullet cam that displays the sniper bullets piercing their fleshy targets in graphic, gut-wrenching detail.