Sniper Elite war game

Sniper Elite (2005)

Categories: first person shooterssniper gamesspy gamesurban warfare games

During the last days of World War 2 OSS (Office of Strategic Services) recruits the veteran sniper to take up the mission inside Berlin, still torn between Germans and Russians. His part in this story is tough one - avoiding both sides of the fights he has to make sure that the Russians won’t gain access to the prototypes of different weapons that German scientists were working on. Of course his skills as a sniper will be of great help on the way.

Stealth kind of war game, in which it is more important to find good solution in difficult situation than just burst in and start shooting. The game was developed using advice from former British snipers and thus gives the feeling of "real thing" - we have to take under the consideration the wind, the bullet drop with long distance as well as the breath and pulse of the sniper. Since it is World War 2 reality there is no computer assistance while aiming (the only one is the wind indicator on lower difficulty levels).

The game is well balanced between the shooting skills and finding the way to beat the enemies that always have advantage in numbers. The missions vary from one another - in some of them we have the good spot and it is a matter of dealing with the advancing enemy, in others we have to sneak into guarded area and find the best spot. In some cases there is also time pressure (f.e. in one of the missions you have to stop couriers on motorbikes, which means you have to find the best spot before next courier will be sent).

The best thing about the missions in Sniper Elite is that usually (with few exceptions) there is more than one way to reach the target - if you can use your stealth skills and avoid guards then it’s great, if you can’t and will try to fight your way through it’s fine too. You simply have a goal to reach no matter how you will do it. The exceptions are that in some cases you can’t be detected before reaching f.e. a waypoint, because that would make it impossible to reach the target. In other cases when detected you will have to deal with more enemies (sometimes even tanks), so it is unwise to be detected, but this does not stop the game.

Apart from the sniper rifle (obviously) we have silenced pistol, grenades, we can pick up the enemy machine guns and use them. Ammo is of importance - there are no tons of bullets just lying around, so you have to choose wisely which weapon would be best to use in the given situation. Also we can make traps from grenades using trip-wire, which adds a lot to the game.

A very good game that the player a lot of freedom to choose his own way of finding the way to survive or reach the target. Still highly recommended.