The latest entry into the Sniper Elite franchise brings Rebellion’s venerable shooter into VR for the first time. Co-developed with Just Add Water and Coatsink, this foray into the WWII shooter has players in the boots of a partisan in southern Italy in the year 1943. A full-fledged VR experience, and priced at just $30, Sniper Elite VR (SEVR) is one game you may want to set your sights on.
The game is told in flashbacks as the protagonist recounts his war stories. No, this isn’t Karl Fairbourne from the main series, you’re instead a nameless, though very well voiced-over character who has many harrowing adventures to tell. His stories play out across eighteen campaign missions, each of which includes various collectibles and things to try to spot and find (or shoot) along the way. Players are rated based on their performance during these missions and there is a leaderboard for those seeking bragging rights. Mission length is good for being a VR game, meaning they are neither too long nor too short, though everyone’s tolerance with VR varies. For those who have played some of the main series, the mission lengths can be quite long, but you won’t find the same lengthy missions in SEVR.
Now, before diving in, there are a few steps to setting up your SEVR experience, just as you find with most any VR title. I was quite impressed with the amount of options that were included to accommodate players. You can adjust settings related to your VR comfort level, with single-select options like teleport movement and snap, or up to full freedom movement with no comfort features activated. Difficulty settings are available to make your shooting experience more arcade-like or more sim-like, too. There are display options for adjusting how often the Bullet/X-ray Camera should activate, how much HUD to display, so on, as well. There is even a nice option for indicating that you’re a left-handed player. Anyhow, I began the game playing with full freedom movement, but found myself discomforted fairly quickly while playing standing and using the PS Aim Controller. Taking a seat sure helped, but suffice it to say that you should be able to adjust the settings enough to find your own comfort level.
SEVR provides players with multiple controller options as well. I very briefly tried using a DualShock4, and then two Move controllers, but the clear choice is the Aim Controller. It was nice to break this out as I rarely play PSVR, and when I do, the Aim Controller doesn’t always make sense to use — but it certainly does here. I was impressed with the intuitive use and feel of it — to take aim down your scope, you literally raise the Aim Controller up to your eye-level, and press L2 to Focus to tighten up your aim. Positioning on this is important, as if you aren’t holding your eye and the scope in the right area much of the scope becomes clouded in black, just like in real life. I appreciated this nod to realism that requires players to put a little bit of due extra care.
That said, on the default difficulty level, you also get a red reticule to indicate where your shot is going to land. Between the braindead AI and the forgiveness of physics, this becomes largely a matter of spot, point, and ‘click,’ to take out enemies. I found myself reducing the use of the kill/x-ray camera within about fifteen minutes of play as there’s only so many times that it’s worth seeing yet another short-range chest shot against another ‘clone’ enemy. I liked that I could re-center my controller position in the gameworld by holding the Option button, which keeps you from having to pause the action. Having to re-center was something that I had to do from time to time, but not too much as to be a major problem.
Mission types typically have you sniping at some range, but, there are also plenty of instances where you can look down upon your belt and grab a potato-stick grenade, or times when you can use one of several historical close range weapons, ranging from pistols to machineguns to the old Panzerfaust. There are options for going stealth, but these aren’t fleshed out well, and to be honest, I wasn’t wanting to dawdle around in VR for too long at a time anyway. So, I was glad that going in with force was always an option. Taking coverage and hitting explosive targets near enemies are two key ways to stay alive, but I found the game pretty forgiving in terms of how much damage you can take.
As far as presentation goes, the graphics are pretty good for a VR title and the level of detail is quite good for a VR experience. To find all of the collectibles will take some care and a sharp eye; looking over the weapons in your hand as you physically rotate them around is neat, too. The Italian landscape, which I think the main series’ fourth title expounded on, is bright and colorful, and looks pleasant. The soundscape is quite good; the series has always had good music, and the voice-acting here would give the main series’ protagonist a run for his money. Solid sound effects add a lot to the immersion as well. Load times on PS5 were snappy, too.
For a VR experience, I have to say Sniper Elite VR is one of the better titles I have played. Part of that is surely from both the familiarity of the FPS genre and even more specifically the series itself. However, the variety of options lends itself well to a comfortable and enjoyable experience. The Aim Controller worked great, and though sure there are some camera/position glitches and some graphical issues from time to time as most any VR experience has, none of these were so off-putting as to keep me from playing. The narrative was interesting and well-told, too. Mission design is balanced well for a VR experience, meaning that it’s much more than ‘tech demo’ or entirely on rains, but, it’s not as wide in scope or sandboxy as a non-VR title either. In sum, for anyone looking for a good sniping experience in VR, this is an easy one to recommend.
