The first target is General Tobias Schmidt who recorded the incident to use as propaganda. He is sent there to investigate and remove a new threat to the allied forces: a new German designed remote control missile recently used to sink the Royal Navy freighter the Orchidea. It’s a good ol’ Nazi-killing time and an amazing evolution-one I hope continues with the next outing.Set in 1943, right after the events of the third game, this fourth Sniper Elite title follows protagonist Karl Fairburne as he shoots his way across San Celini Island just off the coast of Italy.
#SNIPER ELITE 4 REVIEW SERIES#
While not as creative or as varied as some of its stealth peers, Sniper Elite 4 nevertheless reveals a series with serious ambitions, one that’s growing by leaps and bounds. Paired with unimpressive dialogue and paper-thin characters, it’d be easy to write the series off.īut I wouldn’t. The series is built around a silly gimmick, and makes no secret of that fact-every kill is a chance to revel in your prowess, to admire every exploding eyeball and shattered skull fragment as it flies through the air. To quote my own preview one more time: It’s easy for me to poke fun at Sniper Elite. That sort of gimmick, while still silly and fun in its own right, isn’t something Sniper Elite needs to rely on anymore. This time around the ultraviolent killcams feel more like an out-of-place reminder of where the series came from than a herald of its future. It’s an altogether more freeform experience, and the step Sniper Elite needed to take to grow into its ambitions. Or you can get up close and personal, taking him out with a knife to the brain stem. Want to kill your target from across the map, having never stepped foot inside his mansion? Yeah, you can do it.
Still, there’s certainly more verticality to Sniper Elite 4 than its predecessors, along with tons of alternate paths-caves, bunkers, and entire sections you can skirt past without firing a shot. You’re at the mercy of the devs whether you can clamber on a roof for a better vantage point or whether you’re stuck on the ground. But most of the game is still out of reach, and as a result there aren’t nearly as many paths through (for instance) a city block as you might expect. Prior to release, the developers were happy to talk about the game’s Assassin’s Creed-esque platforming, but it’s more like Prince of Persia or even The Witcher 3-there’s a clear delineation between where you can and cannot climb.Ĭlimbable? Some pipes, chains, and a few ledges. There’s lots of hiding in foliage, lots of jumping out and popping people in the head. I wish there was more penalty to being sloppy.Īnd the stealth systems, while improved, are still fairly limited. You’d think when dead Nazis started turning up all over a secret base the commanders might call for backup or something-or at least stay on alert for more than thirty seconds. The game has some AI woes, mostly due to stealth game tropes. Sniper Elite 4 counters with enormous maps and a sometimes overwhelming number of mission goals, secondary objectives, collectibles, and challenges, with each level taking well over an hour to experience fully.
Sniper Elite 3 was knocked for its short length and restrictive levels, a series of discrete arenas and chokepoints. A fourth involved a moonlit infiltration of a dockyard, paving the way for an American bombing mission by taking out the air defenses. The third took me to an enormous valley, pocked with enemy camps and gun emplacements, told to destroy a German railgun by blowing up the ravine-spanning Roman viaduct it rested upon. The second mission had me invade by beach, up through a harbor and crowded Italian streets, culminating in a battle outside a hilltop castle. But even armed with that knowledge ahead of time, I was still surprised at Sniper Elite 4’s scope.
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