You can use guard towers to mark nearby enemies, harness the cover of anti-aircraft cannons to mask your fire and sneak through rock formations to quietly dispatch a nearby Nazi squad. Now you can have multiple objectives at once, with the option to complete them in any order as you make your way through each substantially larger location. By embracing a new generation of hardware with Sniper Elite 3, Rebellion produced single-player environments that can finally be called ‘sandbox’ in nature. Sniper Elite V2 was hyped as an open-ended experience with multiple routes to complete each map, but in reality, the occasional side-street and open building weren’t enough to hide the fact it was actually a far more linear experience. You can still kill enemies up close with your silenced Welrod pistol (or the variety of other weapons you can equip during and in-between missions), but the XP offered for anything other than rifled-based kills is still a little too low, ultimately forcing you to fight loudly or at distance. With a longer period elapsing between a guard’s suspicion and outright aggression, and a far more open approach to map design, you can now relocate to a new area when spotted and reestablish the hunt. Stealth was revamped somewhat for this entry, offering a fairer approach to ‘line of sight’ evasion that sees an outline of Karl appear whenever an enemy sees him for long enough (much like the system Splinter Cell started using for Conviction). It’s gratuitous violence on an almost pornographic scale and we will admit to feeling slightly disgusted with ourselves at several points, but it’s the ultimate payoff in a game like Sniper Elite 3, where it really is a kill-or-be-killed world. The thunderous sound of its approach as it strikes its victim, shredding brain, lung and testicle with equal ferocity. You’ll pull the trigger and watch as the bullet leaves your rifle, the Coriolis Effect warping the air around it as it heads across the map. You’ll look to down your scope, hold your breath by pressing ‘R’ and watch as a red reticule shrinks into place. Every part of sniping is given a suitably dramatic role to play. That slower, purposefully methodical approach to gameplay returns for its threequel, as does its real calling card: those grisly, triumphantly graphic X-ray kills that signal a successfully lined-up shot. So let’s get back to why Sniper Elite 3 is still a killer addition to the franchise. Motion controls are also included, and they make lining up a particularly lengthy shot or tagging enemies with your binoculars a lot easier so much so it's genuinely hard to go back to aiming with the sticks. This is, after all, a game that made its way onto PS3 and Xbox 360, so it’s a good fit for Switch’s hardware. There’s barely any slowdown – even when things go awry and you’re outrunning a couple of tanks and an entire platoon of angry Nazis – and at most there’s the occasional bit blurring and some jagged asset edges. Sniper Elite 3 Ultimate Edition takes every bit of content the original release enjoyed – including the single-player campaign, all the subsequent DLC missions and all the multiplayer/co-op modes – and wraps it all up in one delicious portable package. And boy, did those changes make a huge difference.īut before we jump into all the things this third-person, WW2-set shooter did so well in 2014 (and today), let’s get into the real reason you’re reading this review: does this port do that original version justice? Well, we can confirm it absolutely does. With a new setting – the heat of the North African conflict in 1942 – the Oxford-based developer introduced even larger sandbox maps and finally reworked the sometimes clunky stealth system. Fans of Rebellion’s period sniper simulator often look to Sniper Elite V2 (which also got a Nintendo Switch re-release earlier this year), with its campaign through the ruins of Berlin, as the moment the series really found its groove, but it’s the sequel that followed two years later that truly took all the things we love about Karl Fairburne’s stealthy murder spree and turned up the dial.
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