Sniper Elite V2 Review

Sniper Elite V2 lets players get creative.

War is hell, and in Sniper Elite V2, you're Hell with a gun.

The story of Sniper Elite V2 isn't anything special. You're a sniper in Europe during World War II, and you're killing people to stop the Nazis from winning the war. Simple and uncomplicated. It's not crazy, it's not going to win any awards, and I appreciate that about the game. It doesn't try to be anything more than it is - a game where you shoot people from far away and sneak around trying to get to your objectives.

It's like Mortal Sniper Kombat Elite V2 or something.

That being said, you kind of have to laugh at how grizzled and badass sounding the main character is. He sounds like Solid Snake and it's a little silly. The graphics aren't anything impressive until you get to the X-Ray-zoom-in-shots of your bullet slicing through someone's trachea and, by God, that is gloriously morbid. It's the WWII shooter version of Mortal Kombat.

The real trial of the game is attempting to do it the way it wants you to. There's not a lot of room for fire-fights and standing your ground with the enemy being less than 50m from you. Your best bet is to keep them at 100m or more to still pick them off.

It's intensely satisfying to play mind-games with the AI though. You're able to booby-trap and confuse them to no end. My personal favorite is putting a landmine on a dead body and watching someone investigate it and then blow themselves to kingdom come.

In the demo you're able to set traps on the sidewalks of a bombed out street and stop an armored convoy as it rolls down the road. When they stop and begin to take cover from you, it's like a horrendous fireworks display watching the plumes of smoke and fire erupt as their safe positions become their graves.

Reading that entire paragraph back to myself right now makes me feel like some crazed sociopath, but honestly this entire game is just one big guilty pleasure. You're able to use rocks to throw the Nazis off with sound and they'll play right into your traps.

The power of this game is in the multiplayer. There's three different versions of it and each one is just as fun as the next. Overwatch has to be the most well made mode, however. You and a friend can take up positions in an area from the main campaign, and fend off wave after wave of enemies for as long as possible. You would think that would get boring, but it keeps you on your toes and if you have a good team, you and your friend will have a blast.

Set some traps and watch the show.

Co-oping the campaign is very satisfying too. I mean, it's just playing the game with a friend. Same story, same levels, just more enemies and no explanation as to why there are now two snipers instead of one. WHO CARES?! THIS GAME IS HILARIOUSLY FUN!!

Looking at the composition of the game and whether or not it is innovative or ground-breaking, the score for this is probably a  7 or so. But based purely on the fun factor, this game is probably a 9 or a 10. It's the oddest thing. The game isn't beautiful, it's nothing new, but it's executed spectacularly. It will most definitely stay under the radar, but if you ever pick it up you will likely never part with it. And if you get a friend and play this? Fuggetaboutit. You'll never stop. This is a prime game to represents the idea that some of the best games aren't blockbusters - some aren't even terribly innovative - they're fun.

Sniper Elite V2 Demo Impressions

Do you like sniping things? How about WWII? Of course you do. What if the two of those things are blended together? Whoa now, don't get too excited! Let me tell you about a little game called Sniper Elite V2 coming out May 2012.

Premise: You are a sniper, in World War 2. Go. No, but in all seriousness it's a demo out on the XBLA so there isn't much setup for you other than you're an American in what I can only assume is France and you're sniping Nazis to get to your target at the end of the demo. The target, of course, is a Nazi scientist that you have to kill. Bada bing bada boom. Easy peasy.



Think Splinter Cell wrapped in Call of Duty 2. You remember that one? The one set in WWII? Yeah, no one remembers that one. The mechanics in this game are fairly simple, cover system, 3rd-person over-the-shoulder camera. You have binoculars to mark targets in the field and a scope on your rifle to zoom.

What I was impressed with was the physics element of the game. Depending on the level of difficulty you choose, the game becomes more and more realistic. The most minimal physics the game throws at you is gravity. You have to compensate for the bullet's drop over time and distance. Hardest difficulty? You have to account for the wind and gravity. I mean, the game comes at you HARD when you fight with those two conditions on.

Something fun is that you can turn the enemy AI down so it's not on the hardest mode, but the physics difficulty up to max so you can have semi-dumb enemies in your physically realistic simulation. But the enemies are hit and miss with their AI anyway. You shoot one guy who is maybe 50 meters away from a group, and they do nothing. You shoot one guy 30m away and they go berserk.

I think what the game devs were trying to do is make sight and sound important. That being said, if I heard a sniper shot within a block radius, I'd duck and cover and start shouting. There is a lot of shelling and gunfire in the background so I suppose the devs are saying that "it's really loud out there and they can't place the sounds," and that would work if it just wasn't based off of distance from the last person shot.

I guess what I'm saying is that the AI is a little sound-depth-deaf. What is fun though is that you can mess with the soldiers by throwing rocks and making them investigate that sound, but not the rife shot that blew one of their comrade's head to pieces.

The idea of trying to manipulate the enemies and sneak around them or get them into your line of sight is actually a really genius idea. Unfortunately, the mechanic doesn't really work well in the demo.

Really though you can pretty much avoid the enemies and find a good place to snipe from at all times. It's just a matter of thinking about it. For those of you who are good at shooting and hitting the vitals on your Nazis, you're rewarded with an x-ray slow motion shot of where the bullet exactly goes into the hapless soldier. After the fifteenth time that this happens you begin to get jaded by it but it is still fun to watch.

This is the attempt to make the game feel really action packed when it's more suspenseful than anything. The constant breaks in action to follow the bullet to its home is sometimes tedious but honestly, who doesn't love seeing bones shatter and organs rip apart as a bullet slashes through them? The demo alone becomes a sort of morbid guilty pleasure.

The graphics are close to the new Mortal Kombat but the textures and body physics leave something to be desired. It is a war zone so the color palate isn't too diverse, but after a while the entire map begins to blend together. However those with good eyesight are rewarded by spotting enemies far away or lying down trying to counter-snipe you.

Weapons? Your trusty rifle, a small assault weapon (in the demo a Thompson or the looted MG from the Nazis) and a silenced pistol. You don't get to carry a lot of ammo for anything other than the rifle, so the game really does try to make you snipe than stand up and shoot. Though through your journey you will pick up mines and dynamite and grenades and the like to ambush, which is extremely satisfying to watch as people run over explosives to avoid your gunfire.

Based off the demo, I'm extremely hooked. I will definitely be reviewing the full version of this game. What concerns me most is that I think what I'm seeing in the demo is the whole game. Of course there will be a story and such and there is multiplayer mentioned as well, but I really feel like I've got the single-player down cold. Keep your eyes on the Vault for the full review when it comes out in May!