Time to grab your trusty Springfield and head back to WWII as an accomplished British sniper. First released in 2012, Rebellion’s Sniper Elite V2 has gotten a Remaster treatment and is re-releasing on modern platforms this week. Sniper Elite III and 4 have previously been released on current gen, and now V2 joins the fray. Side note, I first reviewed SEV2 seven years ago and enjoyed it. This review is a supplemental to that one as the core game is the same.
So with any remaster, a visual upgrade — ideally a significant visual upgrade — should be one of the main selling points. SEV2R doesn’t disappoint in this regard. Not only is there 4K + HDR support, but the graphics have received a major revamp as well. Everything from the characters, vehicles, weapons, environments, geometry, lighting, and much more has been very-noticeably upgraded. The last time I played this game was on the Wii U; playing this now on the Xbox One X in 4K HDR immediately provided a startling difference. The clarity of the game world is so vastly improved it’s practically like seeing the game for the first time again. As an aside, spotting those hidden wine bottles and gold bars (collectibles throughout the game) has gotten a lot easier thanks to the upgrades, ha.
Even on the Xbox One X, by default, the game does not always run in 60fps, but you can enable a Performance Mode from the menu that does enable 60fps. You can immediately see the difference (in reduced visual fidelity) by enabling Performance mode — for me, the tradeoff in fps just wasn’t worth it. Reason being is that typically the pace in SEV2R is more deliberate than twitch. If you’re trying to play this game with rapid, twitch motions, you’re probably doing it wrong. Custom difficulty settings can make this more of a typical shooter than a sniper “sim,” but close combat is always deadly. Accuracy, aiming, and moving around in close combat (with machine guns even) is a chore, and more than likely to get you killed than not. A sniper’s strength is in maintaining distance and being able to move discreetly anyway; so, all that to say I valued the higher res visuals over the fps.
The graphical upgrade can be shared with others thanks to a detailed Photo Mode, too. The bullet cam, which you can adjust the frequency of, already does a great job of capturing the beauty (and destruction) of a clean shot, but with the photo mode you can save your most epic shots. Frame-by-frame adjustment, filters, and lighting tweaks are available for you to “photoshop” your best shots.
SEV2R has some other goodies — namely, all previously released DLC is included (as it should be). New weapons, three new levels (which is about 1/3rd of the original game length), and the “Kill Hitler” mission. Multiplayer is fully supported with leaderboards and a variety of co-op and solo modes. Co-op campaign, as well we Kill Tally, Bombing Run, and Overwatch are here. Solo endeavors for multiplayer include Capture the Flag, Dog Tag Harvest, Distance King, and of course Deathmatch. It’s about too much to ask for these days, but I would have loved splitscreen couch co-op support, or even LAN support, but I can’t say I’m surprised that it’s not included here. There are, however, new playable characters that you can use in both the campaign and online: eight characters taken from the Zombie Army games that Rebellion developed several years ago.
Sniper Elite V2 is a good game at face value, and a great game if you’re into the genre or the franchise. The Remaster is very well done in terms of being complete, providing a massive upgrade in visuals, and sprinkling in a few new goodies as well. The core game still has some quirks and rust as it did originally seven years ago, but the overall experience, especially when played co-op with a buddy, is well worth it.
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