I have to start this review by stating, categorically, that due to the nature of this game – Some of the images featured in the below are NSFW (Mostly the testicle explosion ones). With this out the way – Let’s take a looksee if Rebellions 4th instalment to the Sniper Franchise is worth your cold hard cash.
Speaking of money, Karl is unbelievable underpaid for his work as a sniper in the war. I remember killing around 40-50 people, taking out a couple of tanks and anti aircraft guns and single handedly winning an area of the country over from the nazis – only to be paid THREE DOLLARS…
Anyway, onto my review.
Gameplay
I am so bad at Sniper Elite 4, it has to be said from the get go. I am just not smart enough or patient enough to be able to get good at a game such as this. That being said, Sniper Elite 4 is an amazingly fun game to play that whilst playing through the games 8 missions you really begin to understand just how powerful Snipers can be in the middle of a warzone.
Initially (due to the name of the game) I felt as though I had to play the game purely using my sniper rifle, I tried to push through the first level by finding a good vantage point in the level and proceed to pick off all the enemies in the game – It was trying to play Sniper Elite 4 in this way that I came to quickly realise that ”Sniper” is a bit of a misnomer and this is not how the game is intended to be played.
I always avoided the Sniper Elite series up to this point as I often felt that it would just be a gorier version of the ”Hitman Sniper” minigame that was released a few years back but upon picking this up I feel almost cheated that I spent so long avoiding this as there is so much more than simply sniping a bunch of Nazi’s, you will easily spend as much time up close with your knife in a nazi’s heart as you will shooting his dick off.
The gameplay mechanics of this game are just a perfect blend of stealth and sniping mechanics that will reward patience by making you feel really badass and smart.
There was a moment on Sniper Elite 4 where I actually felt smart as balls: I killed a Nazi with my knife then booby trapped the body, from here I put his body in the middle of an open area and proceeded to have a bunch of other guards come to investigate before BOOM! I was able to take out an entire area’s worth of guards in one go.
In order to get better guns and items in Sniper Elite 4 you have to buy them by earning money for levelling up and completing certain optional objectives in the game, you have to be really careful with what you purchase using the in game currency because you will never really have enough money, I mentioned above that I was able to earn 3 dollars in one mission – well each rifle costs a total of 5 so I would pick the rifle you want to play with straight away and stick to it, with spending the rest of your money on supressed ammo or tnt to set up the traps.
Sniper Elite 4 is just a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, it just lets you have loads of fun with it and I had an absolute blast with the gameplay, I could go on and on for hours about how fun it is and my experiences with the game but you really need to play it to understand just HOW FUN this game really is. (Seriously it’s like £38 here: http://www.thegamecollection.net/sniper-elite-4-limited-edition-ps4/?tduid=140dc681ed9f72d318157a457a651dbe)
One final thing I have to say about the gameplay – the rock is the most powerful item in Karl’s arsenal, seriously I spent so much time say in bushes luring people over to me with rocks only for them to have a knife in the face. USE THE ROCKS.
Story
The story is a little bit of a humdrum affair that I very quickly lost all interest in. You basically play as Karl, a Sniper (I KNOW SHOCK HORROR) who is put in the middle of a warzone in Italy and tasked with taking out specific targets or fulfilling certain objectives, whilst this is nothing original or amazing it does the job fine of giving enough reason to push through the games 12 hour campaign mode.
The story is told by having you walk through brief intermissions in between levels speaking to characters, I don’t really understand why this could not just be done with cut scenes as this felt a little pointless and by halfway through the game I was just passing everyone by in order to get to the next fantastic level.
Normally I would talk here about the specific ups and downs of the story but the above is pretty much all that can be said of it – nobody is buying this game for the story.
Appearance & Setting
The level design and settings are some of the real high points in Sniper Elite 4’s 8 mission campaign mode, the levels are just so open to you so that you can really get into the meat of it all – essentially Karl is just plonked into each mission with a whole bunch of objectives and it just lets you get on with it in any order that you want too.
I felt that the graphics of Sniper Elite 4 often left a little to be desired but with so many moving parts in the game this was probably a necessary sacrifice to be able to run as smoothly as it does, however the graphics to really shine when you pull of the kill shots/assassinations in the game and the infamous Sniper Elite ”X-ray mode” kicks in showing exactly where the bullet impacts the body as you take out lung after heart with lots of exploding testicles – as someone fairly new to the Sniper Elite series, I loved this little touch and found myself aiming at specific parts of the body just to see these animations once again.
… Okay I admit it, I’m not proud of it but I exploded SO MANY testicles in this game, I just couldn’t help myself.
Verdict
I had tons of fun with this game and found myself often going back into the previous missions to try and find the collectibles or simply do the mission a little better, whilst this may seem standard for a lot of players it has been a long while since a game has provided me with such levels of fun and variety that had me crawling back for more.