Sniper Elite 4

  

 

 

Always thought the Sniper Elite games were pretty fun action shooters with a hint of tactical realism in there, in Sniper Elite 4 they changed it up a bit in making it feel more open world relative to the previous ones. Now, there are only 8 missions, but they are huge open worlds with tons of side objectives where you can choose which order to do the objectives in, but the consequence of this is it kind of makes each level feel like a massive deathmatch bot match instead of a cohesive linear campaign.

Every level you will start off and just start wandering around from objective to objective, usually just exploding things, killing an officier, finding an item etc. In this regard the actual objectives are very forgettable, like the previous games, but where the game shines is through its immersion and especially grasphics. The enviorments are huge and expansive with big draw distances, and it makes the sniper combat shine.
The difficulty is pretty unforgiving in that theres no health regen, so you constantly have to search corpses for med kits and bandages to regain your health, as well as ammo being pretty conservative too. The combat is largely the same as previous games, with a mechanic to hold your breath and then it shows you exactly where your bullet will go, and then upon successful hits you usually get a gruesome kill cam  , then experience based on how well you shot.  All of this is pretty rewarding, and the game is especially enhanced when playing Co op. I feel like these games are a perfect co op campaign experience, and definitely one of the best out there in this area.

I played the whole game in co op, on 3/5 difficulty as usual, and it was a great fun and painless experience to get through in only two or three sessions. Theres plenty of opportunity to work together with your partner, planning which objectives to go for, helping eachother out with revives, and coordinating shots. The game definitely has a lot of challenge and satisfaction in learning the mechanics and playing strategically and tactically, as the enemies damage and unforgiving health forces you to play smart. The incentive to do optional objectives is because it helps you to unlock more of the skill tree and weapons, although this part felt very shoe horned and kinda insignificant.

The worst parts of the game were actually the beginning of every mission where you just stand around talking to NPC's with some very dull and generic flavor story and cutscenes. The story is incredibly boring and generic and is definitely the worst part about the game, it hardly mattered at all. None of the characters or cutscenes felt important or meaningful, just forced.

 The levels themselves are also forgettable, I mean its not like other shooter campaigns where you can remember every single nook and cranny of a level and remember unique details about the level design, No, Sniper Elite instead almost feels like some huge randomly generated terrrain with little villages and swarms of enemies coming at you. Its not exactly a bad thing, its just that the levels will not remain in your memory after you complete the game.

overall its another fun coop campaign in the Sniper franchise, not sure if its better or worse than the previous. Probably the best in the series, or atleast better than 3, and maybe as good or better than 2.
 

8/10