No video game series has fetishised shooting someone in the face more than Sniper Elite. Though it’s flown under the radars of tiresome “video games cause violence” activist groups due to it never receiving a notable amount of attention from the gaming media, developer Rebellion’s World War II-era snipe ’em up is more shamelessly giddy about the bloodshed it allows you to cause than the likes of Grand Theft Auto V and any iteration in the Call of Duty series. This isn’t an inherently bad thing – we have age ratings for a reason – even if Rebellion’s notably immature take on war will prove to be a little off-putting for some. This is a silly game, but is it silly in a good way, or silly in a your drunk uncle at a wedding, dancing to Aqua kind of way?
The main draw of the Sniper Elite series has always been its employment of a gratuitous kill-cam. That remains unchanged in Sniper Elite 3. If you fire a perfect shot at your enemy, the game goes all slow-motion and gives you a close-up look of your bullet surging through the sky, before it spears its way through the unfortunate soul’s skull/heart/lungs/testicles. Yes, you can shoot a man in the testes in Sniper Elite 3, with the x-ray vision mode it enters giving you an incredibly detailed look at the effects of a bullet ripping apart a pair of ‘nads. The few times I managed to pull a ‘nad shot off was each met with an uncomfortable squirm, such is the gross nature of the spectacle. There’s no denying that it’s a lot of fun, though, and a lot more morbidly gratifying than your mere headshot.
That’s the best way to summarize Sniper Elite 3 – it’s morbidly gratifying. It’s a game that’s been built around these grotesque kill-cams, and each one I pulled off filled me with an almost worrying amount of glee. Unfortunately, while its most enticing feature manages to go the distance and remain entertaining throughout its duration, the game attached to the gimmick is distinctly lacking in polish.
Despite its title, Sniper Elite 3 isn’t all about sniping. While it only very occasionally devolves into typical third-person shooter run ‘n’ gun fare (and if this happens, it will only be as a result of the enemy spotting you), you’ll still engage in a lot of combat that doesn’t require you to be looking down a scope. Seeing as how your sniper rifle won’t come equipped with a silencer (you have the time period to thank for that), you can’t simply find a nice little camping spot and pick apart enemies from a distance. In order to take out an enemy without alerting his comrades, you need to be able to put yourself in an area in which the sound of your sniper’s gunshots can be masked, either by pitching yourself near noisy generators, or locating enemies who are engaged in a spot of target practice. To get to these areas, you’re going to need to carefully sneak around the map, hiding away in dimly lit areas, taking down the bad guys with your silenced pistol or by quietly dispatching of them with a melee stealth kill.
The stealth aspect of Sniper Elite 3 is perfunctory. The enemy AI is hopelessly dumb, with the radar system it employs giving you ample time to hide yourself away unnoticed even in the most seemingly impossible of situations. If an enemy hears you, sees you or finds one of the dead bodies you’ve left lying around, the icon above their head turns yellow. If you’ve given your position away completely, it turns red, and you need to kill them before they alert their buddies. However, it is incredibly easy to go back to being an elusive shadow in the night, even after ripping through a wave of enemies Rambo-style. Even if a soldier finds one of his dead friends, if you manage to go for long enough without being spotted, they’ll retreat to their post as if nothing ever happened.
On the other hand, the odd physics of the game meant that the enemy sometimes spotted me through no fault of my own. For instance, whilst doing one of the optional side-missions in which I was tasked with destroying a searchlight, I performed a stealth kill on the guard who was operating it. However, after the animation sequence had ended, the guard launched into an uncontrollable spasm and, hilariously, flung himself out of the window into the direction of the enemies below. Watching an enemy flail helplessly after they’ve been killed isn’t exactly an uncommon sight, either. The ragdoll physics in Sniper Elite 3 are implemented poorly, and while the game holds up fairly well in the visual department in most other regards – the sun-drenched African environment that the game takes place in is a much more welcome sight than the crumbling grey environments of its predecessors – it lets itself down greatly when you witness an enemy transforming into a Lovecraftian nightmare after becoming embedded in a wall, his limbs contorting into unsightly shapes that would make even The Thing want to vomit in disgust.
It’s a shame that the gameplay built around the kill-cam isn’t more proficient, because the maps featured in Sniper Elite 3 are its next best asset. Rather than go for the linear approach it had adopted in the previous games in the series, Rebellion has instead contained each level in an open-world environment, with you free to tackle each mission from whichever direction you choose. Missions are solely of the “go here, shoot this guy/thing” variety, but there’s a great deal of fun to be had in choosing your approach to a situation. If the enemy AI was more intelligent, the trip mines, land mines and dynamite you can carry on your person could be put to much more interesting use. Unfortunately, they mostly remained tucked away in my satchel as they’d typically cause more hassle than they were worth, with me favoring the more hands-on approach of stealth takedowns and sniping after kicking a generator and masking the sound of my gunshots.
On the plus side, Sniper Elite 3‘s campaign can be played in online co-op mode, which I managed to spend a couple of hours playing. Playing the game with a friend is an improvement due to the non-linear level design, meaning you can both tackle separate missions and take different routes to your goal. It’s a lengthy campaign, too, with there being 8 missions in total that each take a decent amount of time complete, so if you and a pal are looking for something to sink your teeth into during this July gaming drought, there is some fun to be had here – and yes, the kill-cams are still present in co-op mode.
Outside of co-op, Sniper Elite 3 features a handful of multiplayer modes. You’ve got your Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, alongside original modes such as Distance King, which dishes out points based upon the distance of your kills. There’s also No Cross, the highlight of the multiplayer offerings, which separates two teams completely and focuses solely upon the sniping, making for a unique experience.
Sniper Elite 3 is an improvement upon its predecessors, but the series is still yet to attach great gameplay to its entertaining gimmick. The kill-cam is the only thing that doesn’t grow redundant over time, and if it was removed from the package then there would be little left other than a sub-par stealth game. However, the clear effort that Rebellion has put into its level design is a great foundation for the developer to now build upon, and if this is become a tetralogy, fundamental changes to its existing AI and stealth mechanics could elevate the series from mediocrity to greatness. As it stands, though, Sniper Elite 3 is a misfire.
Paul Tamburro is the Associate Editor for CraveOnline’s Gaming channel. You can follow him on Twitter @PaulTamburro.
A copy wasn’t provided by the publisher. Sniper Elite 3 is available on PC, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360.
