Sniper Elite Series

The Gamestops in the U.S. delayed the release by a day. Picked up my copy and got my code for my Kill Hitler Mission.

Saw a guy playing a demo of it in my local game shop. Looked quite good and the kill cam videos were as already stated. Thing is, why the hell did it get a 15 certificate over here? It is far gorier and realistic than GTA San Andreas, which did get an 18 certificate.

Depends. Either the PEGI reviewers were feeling lazy that day and decided to let it off easy. Or the fact that your're one of the "good guys" and happen to be mainly shooting Nazis in comparison to innocent pedestrians might've made a difference.

GTA also has hookers, drugs, drinking, murder etc.

Ok before work I played through the tutorial mission and the first mission. I also took a quick stab at the singleplayer version of survival which allows you tweak the difficulty. I started the singleplayer campaign under custom difficulty for fun. I made the AI hard as I could simplified the shooting and took the middle on tactical aides. Things of note your threat indicator also indicates enemy awarness of your presence. It goes from green to red. Red they are not your friend and will be shooting at you.

Enemy AI is a bit more agressive then in the demo. The soldiers with the Gweher rifle will use the semi-auto fire more effectively. Stay in cover and pick off Snipers, riflemen, and machine gunners first. If you try to have an out and out fire fight they will surround you and hose your ass down with fire. I tried it once in a pitched street battle. They had riflemen above and cut off my movement with the SMG guys and just picked me apart. I was impressed. Then I retried the section and stealthed a bunch of guys first. Made it a lot easier.

The opening tutorial/mission was simple no brainer stuff. It basically shows you basic features and demonstrates tactics and technique. There was one briefly confusing part where you have to use a landmine near a body to act as a booby trap and it then tells you to just move. What it doesn't tell you is to look for the objective marker.

There are still elements of stealth. There is a close up stealth kill where you break the enemies neck. There is no melee attack just like in the first game. IF the enemy comes up to play either run or use one of your secondary weapons. Speaking of secondary weapons. Your submachine gun is very unlikely to have a lot of ammo for it so use it sparingly. You can find ammo for your pistol on bodies as well as trip wires, grenades, and mines.

Stealth is mostly moving lowly, slowly, and carefully. Keep yourself out of site of the enemy. Moving to different vantage points after shooting a couple shots can throw the enemy off and allow you to more easily pick them off.

If you spot an unmanned machine gun you can bet money that if you raise trouble someone will be on it. Pick them off quickly. SMG soldiers are most dangerous at mid to close range. At distance they may get some lucky hits. Riflemen are a actual serious threat at all ranges. Their shots hurt more. Snipers will shoot single shots but those shots hurt the most. Enemies with pistols are just hillarious when they are shooting at you from mid to long range.

There is some sound masking but it seems to be level dependant. The demo mission is the first mission after the tutorial. Not a whole lot more too it. There seemed to be more soldiers and the tank of course.

If you want it to be a bit of a challenge turn up enemy AI, shooting realism, and turn off tactical aides.

X-Ray shots seem to be a bit more sparse but that is fine. I got several grenade hits unintentionally. If you just watn to blast Nazis set the ai to supid mode and turn all the helpful stuff all the way up.

Enemy AI is better then int he demo. They shoot quite a bit more and seem to be a bit more agressive. Running in emptry streets still produces quite a noticeable echo.

Despite my best efforts, I have not yet managed to shoot someone in the dick, or blow their kneecaps out the side of their legs.

Ok been playing more obviously. The stealth does become more imporant if you don't to end up in a nastry drawn out fire fight. The first couple levels are pretty easy but the difficulty starts to ramp up noticeably. Enemies iwth rifles become a very serious threat especially with the AI on elite difficulty. There are a couple tough spots where if you screw up you will be swarmed by enemies with semi-auto rifles and smgs who then turn you into a dead body. When you choose your equipment pick the Welrod if your going for stealthy approaches.

The "stealthy" segments can be done noisly but you will have a easier time if you try to be sneaky.

Played the Assassinate Hitler Mission. Little bastard is pretty fast when he makes his final run. The first time I killed him I blew away both his testicles. The testicle shot is truly cringe worthy.

I bought the original Sniper Elite thanks to the demo of this game.

Don't see what's so amazingly great about it, But, then again, 2 missions in. Though, maybe I should up the difficulty a bit. I do love the Bullet Cam, though.

edited 3rd May '12 4:34:47 PM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

What folks liked was the bullet physics and the bulelt cam. That and your shooting Nazis. You learn to sneak around and quickly take out your enemies. It is pretty much a Niche game thoguh.

I like it, but I haven't gotten anywhere really "impressive" yet. Though I like the more strategic approach the game has, but I could just as easily grab a machine gun and start mowing down dudes. Maybe I should play it in a higher difficulty?

The physics make it fun, though. Mybe

You will find yourself running out of ammo pretty quickly. Enemies drop sparse amounts of ammo. Try upping the difficulty a bit. Or you could play it with a custom difficulty setting for giggles.

Just played a bunch of coop campaign missions. It was pretty cool. Having two snipers really makes it easier but it is also sort of fun to help be a spotter. It is interesting to watch some the bullets slap guys around.

Unfortunately it seems that a lot of the review sites aren't liking the game. Gamespot and IGN gave it a 6, and other sites are giving it mediocore ratings. Apparently the AI, storyline, and level linearity aren't sitting too well with them.

What do you guys think? Is the score justified, or are they being too harsh?

Never trust a critic. Ever. Form your own opinions on things.

edited 7th May '12 12:17:12 AM by Cganale

True, I find the game to be good and believe that it deserved a better score than that. Thing is, game publishers tend to listen to those reviews or Metacritic's aggregate scores a lot, which means that a bunch of bad reviews (even if the game has a dedicated fanbase) may end up killing any chance of a sequel. Hence why I sometimes worry when a game I like gets trashed by the critics.

Some levels are more open then others and the AI really is dependent on difficulty. 1st one was linear as well. I hope no one was going into this thinking it would be some WWII Open Sand Box Nazi Murder Sim.

edited 7th May '12 2:44:17 AM by TuefelHundenIV

And the funny thing is, the levels in this game are far larger and have more alternate routes than your typical COD level!

Indeed. I noticed the user rating is higher then the "critics" rating. It seems to be popular with the PS 3 crowd. Problem with meta critic is it is based on other reviewers hardly a good indicator.

I wish developers would fucking learn to make good fucking checkpoints. I'm an adult. I don't have the time to repeat 20 minutes of my life for your fucking levels.

Save anywhere or make short checkpoints.

When you have long checkpoints, it tells me you made a short game and are trying to artificially inflate it.

Checkpoints didn't bother me at all. It allowed me to go back far enough to try doing something different instead of stacking screw up on top of screw up.

I wish people in Multi-player would stop pussing out. Oh no you lost a match. Try again you whimps. Multiplayer is pretty challenging.

Playing on Sniper Elite Difficulty. The Flak Tower sucks hard. Several guards and they are the great coat wearing ones not the generic smucks.

It gets worse from then on. After that level the game starts to use waaaay too much of those snipers that can headshot you no matter the distance or obstacles in the way. It gets to the point of feeling cheap since you realize that not only can they detect you no matter how well you hide or relocate yourself, but that the ONLY way you'll ever be able to find them is to deliberatly get shot so you can trace their bullets (while at the same time hoping he doesn't immediately finish you off with the second shot). It's not realistic or fun at all by that point.

Snipers with the semi-auto rifles are entering into God Damn Bats Territory.

The Next level where you have to pick off the Russian Sniper team is just evil. The next one where you get ambushed on the roof top is almost worse. I got really good at quickly siting in and nailing them. They never miss under 120m. I have noticed at about 130m they can miss if your quick. Not quite always head shots so much as soon as you pop up they shoot you. I would stand and duck really quickly to force them to reload then site in on them and pick them off.

On the V2 Launch level next. The Mg emplacements are going to drive me spare. I am considering doing Coop for the rest of it.

The snipers are nasty in and of themselves. It is the Gehewr rifle elites that are nasty fucks. More of them spawn on Sniper Elite difficulty then on others.

edited 13th May '12 9:51:56 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Are you kidding? That part with the MG nests was easy! You just gotta stay stealthy by timing your shots with the thunder, and occasionally picking off the gunners whenever they notice you. It's not even necessary to kill any of them: your objective is get to the trench entrance past the Church, and only one of the them actually has the entrance in their line of sight. The trench is even easier if you have the Welrod equipped: pick 'em off quietly when you can, and 'nade 'em when you can't.

But stopping the rocket itself?... Yeah, now THAT part was a bitch. The only way you'll survive is to set up your trap explosives in the right place. You'll need at least three trap explosives in the basement of the building you'll be shooting from (that spot is guaranteed to be overwhelmed by the Russians eventually), as well as several on the far right side of the trainstation where all the wrecked train cars are at (the enemy is capable of climbing them to reach you!) Also, place one IN FRONT of the ground level windows you're shooting from, because at least one enemy will spawn around there armed with an SMG when you least expect it. When the time comes for shooting the gas pump you'll just have to ignore all the gunfire and either bring a rifle with good muzzle velocity or one that you can quickly shoot in succession in case you miss.

Oh, and one more thing: don't take too long setting up the explosives. Either the launch officer will turn around and notice you, or an enemy will randomly spawn and stumble onto your trap, thus starting the attack.

Now the level afterwards? Yeah, get ready to see how the wind can TOTALLY mess up your aim...

Lol. Shortly after I posted that I beat the level then game. Nailed the final Nazi bastard on the first shot :3.

The level was easier then I expected. I spent a fair amount of time crouched behind a half-chunk of wall near the church. I just sat there and got a shitload of head shots. Then I realized there infinite enemies. I got bored and shot a guys grenade. That set off explodables in the machine gun pit destroying the gun. So I checked out the church tower and realized you have a shot on some explodables into the machine gun pits from there.

The V2 shot was easy. I snapped the two guys necks in the stations main floor. Placed a mine at the top and bottom of the stair. I noticed the SMG ammo box so I whipped out the PPsh and watched as Russians blindly jumped into he basement and got bullet hosed. The fuel spot shot wasn't that bad at all. I was using the Gewehr rifle the whole time.

Final level was only slightly more challenging. I managed to stealth kill most of the Russians before the last two noticed me. The open area was amusing with the sniper festival going on. Thankfully they seemed to lose some of their accuracy for some reason.

Only have Bombing Run and Sniper Overwatch achievements left. Then I will finish up with the bottles and gold bars. The single player challenges are kind of interesting. You can get a panzer Faust in some of them.

edited 14th May '12 1:01:43 PM by TuefelHundenIV