Sniper Elite III is a game all about precision.
It’s a game about identifying a specific target from a mass of potential victims caught within the glassy maw of your scope. It’s a game about staggering your shot in between gasps of breath, hoping that your timing is as impeccably accurate as the bullet about to erupt from the barrel of your rifle. And it’s a game of being fittingly rewarded for your excellent judgment, as you’re treated to an x-ray glance at just how much damage your round caused as it rips through the fleshy being of your unwitting target.
But for all of the lungs that will rupture in torrents of crimson gore, for all of the bones that will shatter and burst with fervent motion, and for all of the testes that will eruct and explode as they’re devilishly and deliberately targeted, there’s still a whole other aspect to Sniper Elite III that is far less exaggerated, and far more impressive.
You see, for as much as Sniper Elite III will be noted for its rather delectable gory increment that adds that little bit of extra flavor to its sniping mechanic, there’s far more that the game excels at beyond simply giving us a more visceral look at the human anatomy.
Sniper Elite III is all about planning and deliberation, and it’s through this marriage of patience and performance that the game truly comes into its own.
The missions of Sniper Elite III seem to be designed in a way that makes each task ahead of you look like a daunting suicide mission. You are a lone gunman faced with the prospect of singlehandedly dismantling enemy fortifications with little more than a long-barrel rifle and a coarse intake of breath, with each successive mission seeming that much more foolhardy than the last. But, as we’ll come to realize, Snipers best work alone, with the benefits of being the lone figure fighting the storm largely being your lack of presence. You’re a ghost, a shadow and a creeping death that sows murder with an inimitable amount of precision. This sense of place against the ensuing tide is rarely, if ever, lost on the player.
Prior to the commencement of each mission, you’ll have the chance to pick the specific tools you want to take with you. It’s usually best to equip yourself with a load-out that’s balanced for all types of skirmish, but even if, like me, you choose to over-encumber yourself with explosive ordnance rather than take that extra med-kit, Sniper’s versatility means that you’ll always have a chance to use most of your gear regardless. If you’re thinking of remaining undetected for as long as you possibly can, then it’s be best to head into the fray with the silenced Welrod pistol and maybe a single trip-mine. If you’re thinking that you want to take the fight to the very infrastructure of the Nazi regime though, then you have M24 grenades, anti-tank mines, dynamite and two different types of infantry ordnance to choose from. Just how you use them however, is entirely up to you.
Over the course of my introductory play-through of Sniper’s campaign, I’ve destroyed entire vehicle pools with a single sliver of dynamite and a lit fuse, with the subsequent explosion offering me a great distraction so as to advance through the base undetected. On other occasions however, I’ve placed a shot directly into the shell casing of an artillery round, leading to a cacophonous cave-in that saw me complete my assigned objective with a certain unmistakable reverence. And of course, there’s no law in the Sniper manual that says you can’t simply eliminate the majority of your foes with a trusty shank to the neck and a swift concealing of the bodies.
Missions in Sniper Elite III are so expansive that you’ll regularly find yourself having to alter your tactics per each new area that you arrive in. But whether this is a small enemy encampment or a towering, storm-lit fortress, your Sniper Elite experience will always break down into two primary parts; planning and execution.
The planning stage is where you assess and deliberate over your next move. Using your tactical binoculars, you can designate specific enemy grunts and points of interest, allowing you free reign over how you approach the coming fight. Do you set off an enemy ammunition cache and use the ensuing racket that it creates to sequester yourself in a position closer to your remaining targets? Or will you stow such tactics in favor of deliberate, convincing shots that alert the whole encampment to your location? If you’ve already set a few trip-mines up at choke points across the way, then the latter option may not be as lax an approach as it would initially seem.
Before the rush of explosions and rifle fire comes though, you’ll need to be in the perfect position to oversee the slaughter. Sniper’s detailed and multi-layered environments offer a wealth of positions to get the drop on your enemies, from the expected offering of sniper gantries to all manner of building interiors, cliff-faces and bulrushes. And with your enemies prioritized, equipment in place and position secured then, and only then, can you advance to the joyous stage of execution. It’s here that Sniper Elite III evolves from that of a placid, tactical affair to something so viciously embellished that it almost seems to be contradicting itself. But, as you line up your target and hone your sights one final time before taking a deep, lasting breath of air, you become that much more accepting of the games duality, and far more appreciative of its inclusion.
With the bullet discharged, watch in wonderment as the vehicle pool at the other end of your rifle becomes hastily consumed in flames, and as a slew of patrolling enemies unlucky enough to be at the root of the explosion are unceremoniously tossed like into the air like a mess of lawn darts. And with the explosion offering up enough resonating sound to mask any further shots for around another ten seconds, bask in the bloody wreck of the massacred anatomy, as organs and tissue are turned into a diced clutter of deep red miscellany.
This is the payoff for all of your contrivance, and boy was it worth it.
If Sniper Elite III had been predominantly about the act of killing, then it may not have had the same lasting impression on me as it did. Instead, Sniper is about everything that surrounds the kill, with this amount of depth leaving the successful completion of a mission feeling tremendously satisfying. It helps that the game fails to take itself too seriously as well, with its monotone, dull-as-dishwater protagonist juxtaposed rather hilariously against the x-ray, x-rated gore that he leaves in his wake. His monologues, however bland, rarely feel like they’re meant to drive the plot significantly forward, with the cut-scenes that follow also leaving much to be desired.
But if Sniper Elite III strived to be a game more about the actual fighting and less about the context as to why you’re doing so, then it succeeded. This is a game that revels in its own depth and versatility, with its superb sniping mechanic working in tandem with the unhinged player freedom. And yet, although sniping may not actually be this glorious, Sniper Elite III at least makes a good case on its behalf, taking what is an FPS staple and giving it a joyous hyperbolic treatment. It’s for this reason why Sniper Elite III, despite not being one of the most delicately refined games I’ve ever played, is undoubtedly one of the most fulfilling.
GG staff writer Callum Rushworth loves video games, but particularly stealth video games. Though throughout his years of hiding in shadows and being held in the tender embrace of a convenient bush, he is pulling out his critical comb to pull apart what really, really, annoys him about stealth games.
Other than the recent Dishonored series, stealth games have gone the way of the dodo, I miss Sam Fisher.
Gazette gaming columnist Jake Magee writes that “Sniper Elite 4” shone brightest when it allowed him to do what the game handles best: sniping. Unfortunately, most other gameplay fell short.
Sniper Elite 4 is currently in development at Rebellion, according to the LinkedIn profile of an employee at Chinese digital arts company ADIA Entertainment.
