So you like to play a sniper who goes after his enemy without them ever knowing you were around. Sounds like fun but did you play any of the Sniper Elite games? You have? Then there is nothing new to tell you. Let's get to the jist of this before my fingers fall asleep.
Sniper Elite 3 takes place in Africa during WWII. Not a fun place to be but it has its moments. There are no rogue camels to shoot or recalcitrant Arabs wanting to declare Jihad on you. All you get are Italian and German troops. I have nothing against Italians or Germans in Africa. I am here to kill them so let's get on with it.
Now I didn't know that I had completed the game after playing it. That's how bad it was as you meander around the desert landscapes hoping your enemies won't hear your gun shots. The game is surprisingly short for starters. You could order a pizza and finish the game when it's delivered to you. Ok, I am being cynical. I hate the game.
Why I hate the game is clear. It offers nothing new to the third person shooter genre. What's more it suffers from sloppy story telling. Like the part where you go out to rescue a bunch of English servicemen, and instead of running out of their jail cell, they just stay there and tell you to move on while the have a wank. The lost transitions that connect the story together is very badly written. The cut scenes are no better, it just feels very messy.
Another problem I had was the load outs are restricted to just your sniper rifle, a Welrod bolt action pistol and a Stern gun. God sakes, those were the guns I got in the previous Sniper Elite. Where is the variety? This has to be a joke. When you up your experience points, you get to choose only from three types of weapons for first, secondary and third. There is no knife for you to melee your enemy so walking close to them would only lead to more fart attacks.
You are allowed to carry one rifle, which can be upgraded once you have scored enough points to take the Gewehr 43, which remains my favourite rifle of choice. The game hasn't evolved but devolved since the last instalment. Completely dumbed down for an idiot. You can't melee your enemy while being confronted head on and the only choice is your guns. If you ran out of ammo for all three weapons, you might as well do a river dance to distract them.
Enemy A.I hasn't changed either. The lot of them you face up to are tone deaf. If you pack a Luger 08, and took a shot at them, it has the same effect as a silenced Welrod. Go figure.
If you care to look around, the gameplay borrows heavily from Hitman. You crawl around hitting your targets in the most silent manner but even if you don't play that way, the tone deaf enemies you are facing won't know the difference. You can blow up a truck nearby and the guys won't even hear a whisper or bother to check out what the loud explosion was all about. Which lead me to think either they are very lazy or Buddhist.
The slo-mo sequences where the bullet enters the heard, heart or balls are all there. I don't know why people get turned on by such fetishes but it is a utter turn off for me. And this gets extremely annoying in a action packed sequence, the last thing you want is to see how you blew that guy's left kidney in slo-mo when there are heaps more shooting at you.
Trusted that you should play this game slowly or risk dying quickly doesn't really apply at all. Instead you have morons who shoot when they are shot at and even if you created a ruckus outside their camp won't even ring a bell for them.
There are so many ways the game could have improved over Sniper Elite 2 but Rebellion, the coders behind the game didn't think you want them. The lack of firearm choices is one deafening omission. You get to pick a Panzerschreck as a secondary weapon which you know won't work against troops. Creative liberties like this spoil the game experience for the gamer. Also missing from the equation is the anti tank sniper rifles used during WWII. These can be used effectively against a half track but in the game you need the Panzerschreck to snuff out a truck. I do like the idea that mines only damage a Tiger tank, but should dynamite be used to blow it up? Hey, I could write a better game outline than that mute they have who produced this crap.
There is also the use of trip wires to blow oncoming enemy. Stupid really when they don't really come after you in the first place. The idea of this game is that you shoot them from afar and even if they do come after you. You won't be expecting a huge onslaught. They come at you one at a time, as if ordering pizza.
Ammo is another problem as you pick it off the dead. Now as far as I know, you can't possibly pick off Welrod ammo from a German but in the game you can. I would have preferred that the player discharge all his ammo or pick up Axis gun and ammo instead. There are very few intense moments and your only fear on the field is another sniper with his sights on you. But in the game, even an enemy with a MP40 machine pistol will do you damage from a long distance. Come one! Can't you throw in a Stg44? Was this famed assault rife so difficult to render to the point you had to reuse the old design of the MP40 from the previous Sniper Elite??
Conclusion
Being a realist, and an avid vintage gun fan. More attention should have been given to gun dynamics and gameplay. The game's landscaping is beautiful and breath taking, you can't help but admire the talent behind them but the game itself is a huge disappointment.How many ball busting shots do you have to make before you get tired of the shooting? Or for that matter, the morons who you battle with who have the IQ equivalent of their shoe size?
Morally, the developers have done a huge injustice to the game and they can't deny this rushed effort just to appease the crowds who were happy with their previous instalment. Sorry but I don't buy such crap.
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