Motion on one side will register far and wide, for better and for worse. It’s an odd thing to say, but after only a level or two, I began to see Sniper’s maps as a giant spider web. The placement of the body hadn’t been random. They all rushed over to check on the commotion, but they didn’t consider the fuel tanks right behind them. When he checked the body, it exploded and drew over a handful of other enemies. Once a guard on patrol came near I tossed a rock to make a sound that would draw his attention and lure him close to the body. For example, a quick, favorite technique of mine: after killing a Nazi officer I planted a grenade on his body that would explode when jostled. Once you’ve played enough Sniper Elite to understand its options you can set up kills like dominoes with incredibly satisfying results. You have the tools to go full Dark Knight on these guys. In Sniper Elite 4, you don’t have to just take out enemies with wanton aggression. These modifiers complement the already varied gameplay in a way that keeps you alert and improvising. Another map has heavily armed gunboats patrolling its edges, making the typically safe outskirts a riskier route. For example, one map has a massive railgun that periodically fires off into the distance, and if you synchronize your shots with its blasts you can mask your rifle’s sounds and stay hidden, like real snipers are known to do in thunderstorms. More importantly, most levels have a mechanic or a geographical feature that differentiates them from the others. In a game where you spend lots of time staring at the environment and waiting for someone to do something foolish, such as moving, it’s great to always have a refreshing new location to scope out. Your European tour takes you to a remote island, a radar facility, a fortified mansion, and a viaduct in the woods (among others). Repetition fatigue is also countered by the fact that Sniper Elite 4 packs tons of variety into its eight levels, both visually and functionally. This is far longer than most shooter missions, but because you make your own path and do only what you want to do, they didn’t drag at all. I didn’t finish a single one in under an hour, and many took closer to two. Sniper Elite’s humdrum World War II story is spread across eight huge campaign levels. So, unless you’re bent on playing like a masochist, a healthy chunk of Sniper Elite 4’s ideas fall into the “take it or leave it” category. On hard, escaping this scenario becomes much more painful because sniping is harder and enemies are tougher, and on Authentic, every tiny bit of caution is warranted because your HUD is limited. On normal mode, if you miss a shot and blow your cover you can gun down foes with a pistol or an SMG and you’ll probably be fine. As I mentioned at the beginning, Sniper Elite 4 often asks more from you than it actually requires. The difference between difficulty modes is astounding, and that corresponds heavily with the level of effort you’ll need to put into your play. There is a side-effect to Sniper’s smorgasbord of options, though. Few shooters pack so much consequence into each copper casing. It sounds like it could be cumbersome or tedious, but the satisfaction of learning the systems and, eventually, intuitively “feeling” the bullets makes it gratifying to experiment, fail, and improve. All of these factors matter, and they make each long-range shot into a miniature math problem. If you crank up it up to “Authentic” mode, you’ll also have to contend with wind speed and direction, weapon spread, more scope drift, ammo scarcity, realistic magazines (losing the bullets you didn’t fire from a clip when you reload early), and more. And that’s just for the standard difficulty.
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