The original Sniper Elite was released nearly nine years ago. I played the hell out of it in local co-op with friends and had a great time. It was a challenge, not only dealing with the Nazi army, but also the game’s bugs. Ultimately, the sheer fun of the game won out over its numerous flaws. A couple of years ago, the series returned with V2, and while I really enjoyed it, I didn’t play it nearly as much as the original. It too had its share of bugs, so when I started taking notes on all of the issues — some big, some nitpicky — I was experiencing in Sniper Elite 3 (SE3), it was not too unexpected but nonetheless a letdown.
The bugs at this point are bad enough that, on the PS4 version that I am reviewing, I have yet to be able to play a multiplayer match of any type. I’m not suggesting I’ve been trying 24/7, but in all my few dozen attempts to play online, I’ve yet to be able to do so. Rebellion is of course working feverishly to repair this, and let’s be honest — few, if any games are perfect on release date (see Battlefield 4, which has a much larger customer base and budget than 505 and Rebellion). We’re all accustomed to launch day patches and beyond, sometimes ones that are staggering in size. So while it’s definitely bad I can’t get a multiplayer game working yet, I’m confident such a critical part of the product will be working, perhaps even by the time you read this…
All that said, SE3 offers a very engaging single player campaign that takes you into the toasty desert warfare of Africa during WWII. Expecting large scale, open maps and lots of sunshine? You’ll have that in spades, which is honestly a welcomed change from the darker, tighter quarters common from the first two games. Usually you have at least a couple of paths you can take, and while they expectedly end up at the same place, it’s still a plus to have options in which direction you want to go first. Multiple routes can also keep you very busy as it becomes necessary to watch for ‘stragglers’ who might seek you out from behind. Land mines and tripwire bombs are at your disposal to help you out with that, and it’s obviously satisfying to see the “Trap Kill” message pop-up in your HUD when one of your traps was successful.
Traps are cool and nigh necessary at times, but as the title would suggest, this game is all about sniping. Indeed, you’ll have to deal with enemies in close quarters sometimes, and unfortunately there is still no graceful way to handle melee encounters — not even striking an enemy with your rifle, or using a knife. It’s awkward, and if you’re caught in such a situation you’re probably going down because the close quarters fighting still needs some work. There are stealth kills, including both with a knife and at some distance with the Welrod, a silenced pistol, but these are more calculated approaches than the scenario of getting caught in a surprise melee encounter, which inevitably happens. Anyway, your advantage is to maintain distance, and the game is good about reminding you to snipe, relocate, and snipe some more. A new meter in the HUD lets you know if the enemy is aware of your whereabouts or not. Fire a single, hidden shot and you’re probably fine. Fire a second, and especially a third, and they’re onto you for sure, meaning you’ll have to relocate or try to deal with enough of them to clear the immediate area. Simply camping in a spot and not being “forced” to relocate would be a bore anyway, so I’m glad Rebellion put emphasis on this all important, yet not-often-enforced role of a sniper.
The act of taking the shot is still wonderfully compelling. Thanks to the custom difficulty settings which I’ve always liked about this series, you can make this a near-sim or get some tactical assistance with regard to sniping. Bullet-drop, your heart rate, and distance have to be accounted for in the elite setting, and indeed it takes some practice to understand the physics of it. I preferred to play with some assists still on, at least in this play-through, such as a small reticule that appears whenever you exhale, which you can only do if your heart rate is low enough. You’ll know immediately if your shot is a good one as you’re often thrown into the infamous killcam that’s more graphic than ever, including new squishy and gurgling sounds that emanate from the enemy upon impact. The variety of kill shots is impressive, including head, neck, liver, and even testicle shots, that leave your enemy thrashed in a multitude of ways. Interestingly, whether torn apart by your bullet or explosion, should you ever go visually inspect the body, you’ll find that at most it’s covered in bloody red spots as opposed to the carnage shown in the killcam, which is kind of an oddity, but a forgivable one. It’s worth pointing out that the killcam takes a variety of cool angles, and should it become too much for you, can be skipped by pressing X or I believe entirely disabled in the options.
Racking up kills increases your XP, with modifiers like ‘low profile’ meaning you were prone, or long range, etc., all of which have different point values. Points are tallied at the end of the match and as you rank up, more goodies become available such as new rifles, sidearms, explosives, as well as scope and binocular upgrades. The binoculars are as useful as ever by the way, and the ability to tag eight or so enemies (human or vehicle) is a huge advantage in that you can easily monitor the whereabouts of those you marked, even if they move out of sight behind walls. Should you eventually kill the marked foes, one of the score bonuses is “Premeditated” meaning you had them marked before taking them down. Similarly, the mini-map, if left enabled, can show you the direction nearby enemies are looking in, as well as their alert level which includes four stages of alertness. Another icon in the HUD, an eyeball, widens and thins depending on how visible you are, with shadows and your stance making a significant difference in your visibility. Actually, while on the topic of the HUD, which I do not believe you can fully disable, I liked that the HUD messages are usually fairly small and off to the right-side of the screen. However, initial objective markers do clutter things somewhat, but more importantly I thought the ‘Star’ objective markers gave away too much info right at the start of the mission. Fortunately, and as a staple of the series, objectives do update throughout the mission, with new ones being added just as you think you’re done, which is a design idea I really like.
In fact there’s a lot to like about SE3, but there’s a pretty big list of things, be they bugs or gameplay design, that I don’t like. I’d actually start, or continue this discussion, with the main character. A generic ‘lonewolf’ dude, Karl came across much less interesting and likeable this time around than the previous two outings, an impression that stuck with me after some of his first words were a blunt dismissal of his fellow soldiers. It’s also somehow annoying that Karl never gets dirty and his hair is always perfect. Moving on to other issues, I’ve already mentioned the multiplayer trouble, but another odd goof was the 3D Support. In the options, the game does suggest it supports Stereoscopic 3D. However, after moving my PS4 and connecting it to my Sony 3DTV, this option remained grayed out, suggesting to me that perhaps its not actually working. In-game, I had a problem with one of the first objectives, in which you’re tasked with taking out four Nebelwerfer crews. What was weird was that I got an Objective Complete notification on this, even though I actually had not yet completed the objective until a couple of minutes later. Another, more persistently nagging issue are the button prompts for Searching Bodies. This is a very common task because the bodies do not disappear (which is great), and it’s always worth searching them for ammo or bandages, or the rare weapon parts collectibles. Anyway, the appearance of the button prompt to search a body can be finicky, as can its subsequent animation, which may show Karl, the protagonist, clipping through the fallen body, or searching in an empty area next to it.
Speaking of dead bodies, at times it makes sense to pick them up and move them, either by walking to your location and dropping them, or by throwing them, maybe over a cliff or something. By the way, Search them before you pick them up, otherwise you cannot, for some reason, Search them again. Oddly, the player’s heart rate is completely unaffected by these actions; you would think that picking up a 180lbs soldier and carrying them, or certainly throwing them, would cause a spike in heart rate as it does in real life, but ole Karl’s ticker keeps clocking in the mid 60s. SE3 also has those cool opportunities to time your shots with loud noises in the area, to help mask your presence. Things like airplanes flying over or a flaky gas generator that backfires at regular intervals. With the generators, you’re supposed to be able to shoot them to cause them to malfunction, but strangely this rarely (if at all, actually) worked for me. The fix? Get up to it and Sabotage it, which amounts to Karl literally just elbowing the control panel once. Is this a game or experience breaking mishap? No, but it’s one of a laundry list of things that are either unpolished, overlooked, or buggy. Add to it AI which sometimes calls off the search too soon or otherwise exhibits ‘robotic’ behavior.
On the other hand, as with the previous two Sniper Elite games, all of these shortcomings still can’t deny the inherent fun of the game, even in single player. I’m counting on multiplayer getting fixed and I somehow hope they squeeze in couch co-op or at least LAN play, but honestly, even without multiplayer SE3 still provides a hell of a good time. I enjoyed the larger, more open and brighter maps. I love that I can still save my progress, in numerous save slots, anytime, and do so quickly. Load times are similarly near instant as long as you’re loading within the same mission. This encourages experimentation, because if I don’t have to worry about going all the way back to the start of the mission or to some checkpoint a half hour ago should my experimentation fail, I’m much more apt to try things, and I think that’s great. I’m glad Rebellion maintained the custom difficulty settings, I like the XP and leveling system and being able to assign different loadouts that I can easily change to in between missions. The controls, which I’ve yet to mention, are also nicely done. The Radial Menu features quick access to all of your weapons and inventory items, and favorites can be assigned to the d-pad, with the Touchpad assigned to show you the map and objectives. Hidden items throughout the campaign missions — War Diaries, Sniper Nests, Long Shots, Playing Cards — make it worth scouring around the maps, especially given how well some of these items are hidden. Bottomline, there’s enough good things about SE3 to overwhelm the bad, although that margin is closer than it ought to be for the third game in the franchise.
To the summary…
