Title: Sniper Elite 3
Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: 505 Games, Origin Marketing (India)
Platform(s): PC (reviewed), PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One
Genre: TPS
Price: ₹1,499 (PC), ₹2,799 (PS3 and Xbox 360), ₹3,999 (PS4)
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A lone German soldier patrols in the scorching desert heat of North Africa going about minding his own business when he hears a generator misfire. Cursing the heat, the desert, the curious lack of Nazi symbols on his attire and in the base, and above all the generator for failing, he continues diligently on his patrol clutching to fading memories of his home in the Third Reich. Just as he stops to scan his surroundings, the generator misfires again. And a moment later a Bullet passes through his head causing bits of skull and brain to explode everywhere. Nobody notices his death till a figure sneaks in from the shadows and searches his corpse for anything of use before blending in to the same shadows again. And that sums up what Sniper Elite 3 essentially is.
The game is set in North Africa during World War 2 (WW2), which is a rare setting for WW2 games. You play it as a third person cover based shooter with elements of stealth, except for the first person view when scouting locations through your binoculars to tag targets and while sniping those marked targets subsequently. There are 4 standard levels of difficulty with ‘Sniper Elite’ providing the right mix of realistic bullet ballistics and gamification. You can also set a custom difficulty to suit your preferences in addition to these. You will however, not find any Nazi symbols in the game despite them being the chief enemy, thanks to a design decision taken to better allocate game funds to make the game better, if you read the explanation from the developers.
The game looks quite good graphically with plenty of effects bringing the game’s environment to life. AMD users will also be able to use the Mantle version for more performance. The most touted feature of Sniper Elite is the Kill Cam which depicts internal damage caused by your sniping to the enemies. If you are a fan of gore you will enjoy the slightly exaggerated internal destruction, which is even more detailed in this game. The kill cam will interrupt your game quite often and you can turn it off if you so wish. However, it feels like a good reward for your skilful shot. The kill cam now shows internal destruction of vehicles as well, if you hit them in the vulnerable parts.
The gameplay is quite engaging despite the limited choice of sniper rifles at your disposal. You can upgrade parts of a rifle to better suit your shooting style as well. You can also customise your loadout before each mission. While Sniper Rifles are the showpiece of the game, the other guns show the lack of attention. Hip firing the sub machine guns or pistols is awful as is the targeted firing. The game forces you to play the sneaky sniper who kills enemies from afar or sneaks up on them for a stabby takedown. You can hide the bodies of victims or relocate them to confuse your enemies. Getting spotted by enemies will get you killed, and quickly. If you do take some damage, you will need to heal yourself using bandages or med kits since there is limited auto regeneration of health, which will refill parts of 1 bar of the 5 of the health bar. You can scavenge for these in the environment of search the corpses of your victims for them, and ammunition as well.
An annoying issue with the game is that despite the relatively open environments, multiple approach paths, and long range zoom capabilities of your rifle, the enemies won’t spawn at a location till you are within a set distance from it. This makes it imperative to constantly check ahead for enemies with your binoculars as you progress through the level. Your minimap indicates enemies in close proximity that you can kill with a variety of lures and traps, but the main game map shows no enemies, not even the tagged ones. The map is also partially useful for locating the game’s collectibles since it shows the sniper’s nests, some of which have the long shots, but doesn’t hint at the war diary or collectible card locations.
Since the game is centred on Sniping, it makes you play like a sneaky sniper, constantly relocating and picking off enemies from afar one by one, causing general havoc in the enemy ranks. If you relocate fast enough after your first kill, you can enter ghost mode which has faster relocation and enemy alertness cooldown. The game encourages you to relocate often as three shots from the same area will expose your position and send a lot of enemies your way. You can hold your breath to get a steady shot indicated by a red reticule that turns grey if the shot is blocked. This only works if your heart rate is below 80 bpm. So you need to be calm and slow, rather than trying to rush through the somewhat short 8 chapter campaign. Curiously the game seems to lack a bullet penetration model since we got no multi kills from one shot despite the targets being lined up properly. Shots through leaves were also unable to hit their targets.
Besides the campaign, which may have few missions, but each one keeps you engaged for a long time. There are also challenge maps to extend your playtime. You can play these and the campaign in co-op mode with a friend. Multiplayer is the standard sniper Elite Fare with Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Distance King, Team Distance King as well as No Cross variants. There are plenty of servers available after the issues at launch and the multiplayer seems quite active at the time of this review.
All in all, Sniper Elite 3 is a good game with some hitches holding it back from being great. You can have great fun in this game or get extremely bored, depending on how much you love its kill cam and gore.
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What’s iLL
+One of the most rewardingly gore filled and detailed kill cams of any game
+Accurate depiction of bullet ballistics
+Makes you play as a Sniper would
What’s not
-Bullets don’t penetrate foliage
-Guns other than sniper rifles aren’t fun to use
-Small selection of sniper rifles in base game
