Sniper Elite 4

Sniper Elite 4, more sniping action during World War 2! There is a story, but it’s just sort of there. It’s an excuse to go on cool missions as your one man sniper army and methodically go through enemies to complete your mission.

Or not. You can go loud, too. This game is a sandbox where you can choose how to do things, and they give you a lot of toys to play with.

Find it at your local game stores.

Sniper Elite 4 is pretty much a sandbox game where you are thrown into a map, given objectives and told to do them. You figure out the best way. For me, I chose to snipe as much as possible, because it’s called Sniper Elite. So I had to.

It’s not so easy to go full stealth since all your ranged attacks are loud. There are ways to mask your sound, and that will confuse the enemies as to where you’re attacking from. But make too much noise and they’ll pinpoint your location. That’s when I made a tactical retreat.

Or you could change to a sub machine gun and take them head on. Or you can start throwing grenades. You pretty much have a full kit available from the beginning. Though that also means you don’t gain many new things as the stages went on. There are different weapons with different stats, but I haven’t tried them that much, yet.

Each weapon can be mastered by using it in certain ways. For instance, the default sniper rifle has a mastery requirement of getting kills over 100 km. But that’s that easy. There is bullet physics in the game and wind. Learning to manage that is how you’ll land the long shots. I am the sniper that goes down to 20km hiding in the bushes before taking the shot.

There are also stealth takedowns in melee. Or not so stealth. I’m pretty sure you can run up to an enemy to take them down, if you survive getting shot at. And you’re treated to some ridiculous kill cams. Both melee takedowns and sniper shots will give you gruesome shots.

It’s the little things that make actions rewarding.

Aside from that, you have trip mines, pressure mines, and healing items in your pack. You can booby trap bodies or lay traps for passing vehicles. They’re not always useful, but you’ll be glad to have them at certain times.

Each stage is quite large. I play a bit slow, and it takes me several hours to clear a map, like over 2. However, the gameplay doesn’t change that much. You’re introduced to new enemies, and you start facing vehicles, but your toys stay the same. You might find a strategy and stick with that all the time.

It might get old if you play for too long at a time. But with a generous quicksave quickload system, you can try out various techniques on a tough part or go for full stealth and reload if you mess up. Or just try to do the map with no saving.

There really is a lot of freedom to do things the way you like. And the maps are pretty varied with lots of routes. Still, the game feels the same if I play it for too long. It does have a coop mode and an online versus mode, though I haven’t tried them. There are also lots of collectibles on maps that are fun messages by the enemy.

There’s also a shooting range where you can test out guns and learn how to snipe at long distances.

If you want to be a one man stealth badass, Sniper Elite 4 will give it to  you. It will just give it all to you in the first stage and remain that way later on. And new enemies can be taken out by your same old tricks, or it might just be my sniper-centric playstyle that lets me handle them all that way. It is the name of the game, after all.

Find it at your local gamestores.