Sniper Elite V2 (PC)

The other day I finished the final mission of Sniper Elite V2, the shooter/stealth game from Rebellion Developments, released last year, and figured a review would be in order.

Sniper Elite V2 takes place in Berlin, 1945. You play Karl Fairburne, an OSS officer and elite sniper. Karl is assigned to Operation Paperclip, and tasked with recruiting German scientists for the US, though you mostly spend your time killing said scientists in order to deny them to the Soviets. If this is because Rebellion Developments wanted to minimize the impact of Operation Paperclip or because most gamers hate escort missions, I'll let you decide, but as I'm writing this, I can only remember one escort mission, and the only thing you had to do was give a guy cover fire, so not all that many escort jobs in total.

This game is extremely atmospheric. It oozes mood in every mission. Between the music, the sound effects and the graphics, the game does everything it can to draw you in. And it does it well. No complaints there whatsoever.

But pretty sights and sounds only go so far. The devil is in the details, and in all games, those details are in the gameplay.

Not to worry though. The gameplay in Sniper Elite V2 is quite good. They haven't re-invented the wheel, which is fine, since it allows you to dive right in.

You have a cover system that works well most of the time, but it handles corners somewhat poorly. The rest of the ”day to day” gameplay is pretty standard. You sneak through the ruins of Berlin, carefully scanning the buildings for enemy snipers, dodging (or eliminating) patrols, and when you have the target in your sights, you eliminate him. If you choose to play on higher difficulties, you will have to contend with accurate bullet physics, which will of course make things harder.

A couple of things really stand out from other games though.

The first is the X-ray damage camera. When this effect occurs, you get a graphic view of your bullet tearing it's way through the enemy. You get to see bone exploding, blood spurting, and organs being ruptured. Quite a graphic reminder of what getting shot means. You can set the frequency of how often this occurs, and it can get annoying if it happens too often. I have to say though, that it can be very satisfying to see your target go down so vividly.

The second thing that really sticks out is not so good. It is in fact, pretty silly. You see, from time to time, you will encounter tanks, and you destroy these tanks, not with anti tank weapons like bazookas, but by sniping their bright red fuel tank covers. That's right, you can kill tanks with one well placed bullet. It's very silly, but in the grand scheme of this game, it's a very small thing. It is in fact the only bad thing I can say about it.

In conclusion, if you like assassination games, and you are a fan of WWII, you'd do well to pick up this game. It's a lot of fun to find that right spot to shoot from, while large groups of bombers sail overhead. Then you wait for a bomb to explode in order to cover the noise of your gun, and bang! Mission successful.

I leave you with this trailer: