Sniper Elite Review

Played on PC

Developed by Rebellion Developments

Released 30th September 2005

My previous experiences with Rebellion's games consist of the fantastically awful 'Rogue Warrior' and some time with 'Sniper Elite 4' before my Gamepass subscription had run out. Since I've had my eye on the 'Sniper Elite' series for quite some time now, and the most recent entry had come out this year, I figured I'd give Rebellion another chance with their craftsmanship and take a deep dive to the game that started it all for the series that would become the studio's pride and joy.

Rebellion's origins start in 1992 when the studio was set up in Oxford by 2 recently graduated brothers. While at first they would be restrained to doing commissioned work for Atari UK, this would lead them to develop the 'Alien vs Predator' game for the Jaguar system, but the rewards and accolades out of that project didn't procure a hype train for them to board as between then and 2005, they didn't gain much traction. Another 'Alien Versus Predator' game, assisting development for 'Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six' and a couple misses here and there, Rebellion wouldn't find themselves another game gold mine until later. However, where they did find success during that time was with their expansion into the comic book industry with their purchase of '2000 AD', giving them the rights to characters like Judge Dredd. Then, in 2005, Rebellion created a project as the testing grounds for animation. That game would become 'Sniper Elite' and spring forth a franchise now spanning 20 years, 5 mainline sequels and 4 spin-offs.

Story

The 'Sniper Elite' games fit into this category, where the gameplay is at its forefront, with the narratives serving as nothing more than backdrops, and this is definitely the case with the first game. Set in 1945 Berlin, you play as an American OSS agent, Karl Fairburne, to prevent the Soviet Union from obtaining all the personnel and intel on the German nuclear weapons program. A very standard espionage plot that has been seen in multiple settings before, especially in the World War 2 environment. In the early 2000s, there was an insane influx of WW2 games, the same way there was the rise of the zombie genre in the early 2010s, and this historical backdrop is probably the most reused setting in not just video games but across all media like movies, TV shows and books. Yet, despite this, the game makes little to no effort to differentiate itself from its equally shallow contemporaries in the narrative department, and while that doesn't ruin the game, it does sap the interest and motivation you have as a player. To be fair, the game's unique identity stems from its gameplay mechanics instead, and its 20-year-old age does indicate that there wasn't too much of a need to be different lore-wise upon its release. However, from these retrospective goggles, it's easy to become disinterested in its tale as you're already all-too familiar with how it would unravel its plot concerning nuclear programs, Soviet scientists and other WW2 shenanigans that have already been depicted numerous times.

Gameplay

Despite some elements of it having obvious rust to them, 'Sniper Elite' presents a solid stealth experience that holds up to this day. Like the title suggests, you're supposed to be the pinnacle of long-range shooting, and that's where a lot of the emphasis is placed here, as all you're equipped with is a sniper and a silenced pistol at the start of each chapter. There's wind direction, breathing patterns and distance drop-off to account for when shooting at enemies if you want to line up the perfect shot, and when you do, it's the utmost rewarding feeling. Carefully lining up a shot from hundreds of meters away, getting a double kill or successfully masking your shot with the background noises are some of the merits of this nuanced sniping system. This also works out because the game is so focused on stealth.

While you can run and gun with a machine gun or use an anti-tank missile launcher occasionally, the level design, enemy placement and detection systems rely on the player carefully approaching the scene. Crawling between covers, using your binoculars to check for unexpected enemy sniper posts and more. You're a glass cannon; you can shoot deadly, but a couple of bullets come your way, and your fragile health bar will deplete instantly. The silenced pistol adds to this as you can only secure a deathblow right next to an enemy, otherwise it'll take many peppering shots, each with enough intervals for the enemy to call for backup. The whole focus on sound is an intriguing concept, but its execution was quite underdeveloped compared to what it was seeking to be. While crawling the streets of Berlin, you'll have planes fly over and artillery strike the areas near you, all sonically present. Using these background sounds, you'll be able to mask your loud sniper rifle shots, making them silent in the process. It's a neat trick to add onto your sneaking tactics, but knowing which sounds you can use and when to sync them up with your firing is never explained and was, at best, a guessing game throughout.

The enemy detection was also lopsided, ranging from seeming normal and fair to having the enemy pinpoint your location from across the street while you're prone. Because there is no way of tagging enemies with markers or anything of the sort, as there was in gaming a couple of years later, you can never tell why or how you messed up, causing you to rerun the same setup until you figure it out, or until it works. The detection here functions off of the player's visibility meter, which increments by 25% when you blend in with your environment, hide beneath cars, hide in the shadows, prone and more. But this never acts as a guarantee of whether the enemy will see you, and more like a suggestion that you can ease your efforts of running around while hidden, but like I said earlier, the enemy will find you anyway. The enemy variety here isn't anything impressive and becomes slightly drab by the halfway point within this 12-hour campaign. You get the regular gunmen, the sparse sniper on a rooftop and a patrolling tank. I would've loved for some enemies that would try to counter your stealth operations, but the AI provided was off to a strong start, maybe too strong of a start. Besides the unpredictability of their detection, the enemies' accuracy is ridiculously good, with easier difficulties still resulting in the player getting obliterated by an SMG wielder from down the street. Besides this, their behaviours operate incredibly well for a 2005 product. Hearing noises like the player's footsteps and slowly moving towards them, helping their wounded allies, or doing callouts where the player has relocated.

Now, all of these are great, but sometimes the level design doesn't do it justice. Sometimes you get a fantastically designed level like the U-Bahn train station or the Nordsig water plant, where enemy placement, sniping locations and spare supplies are perfectly positioned to fuel those sniping fantasies. However, other times, more specifically in the latter half of the game, you get these boxes of levels that aren't well-thought-out for the stealth aspects you've been refining. These levels tend to also rely more on pure firefights as the player can get spotted much easier than before, or you get booted into the enemy crossfire, all of which don't work as well since the foundations of the game were built upon sneaking around and positioning, rather than run'n'gunning. Add on the fairly generic mission structure of either sabotage, assassination or providing covering fire, and you have something that overstays its welcome.

But with how enjoyable the game can be, its highs far outweigh its lows, with only a few janky hitboxes and collisions getting in the way of that. Compared to more modern titles, there are significantly better offers out there for some silent shooting, but from what I can gather, none are set in this time period despite its obvious grasp on the industry. All WW2 games tend to move into that chaotic gunnery energy, but only 'Sniper Elite' seems to offer the more silent, slow and semi-realistic approach to the era, and with how polished it tends to be, it'd still recommend it. While there isn't much breadth to its mechanics, its depth still warrants a pleasant playtime.

Characters

As for the characters, they were as significant as the story to enjoy the game, which isn't much. Besides the occasional spy ally, there isn't much of a roster of characters for you to be engaged to. Dr. Max Lohmann is one of the few noteworthy characters as he has a prominent speaking role throughout, but even then, it boils down to "a scientist who needs rescuing and escorting". As for the protagonist, Karl Fairburne's speaking role has that retro charm that mid-2000s voice acting tends to have, where he would spew off edgy one-liners amidst the cutscenes, but humoursly enough, it would sound like he's loudly whispering them as if he's unsure if he even believes what he's saying. It's not great, in fact, it's quite bad, but it has enough of that charisma that older games naturally come with to excuse its faults.

Atmosphere

The grittiness that is often associated with war and combat is greatly translated here with visuals and audio, aiming for a sense of realism. The simplified colour palette being restricted to the dirty blend of greys and browns drives home that warfare effect, with the only colour pops being the red that splashes out of the enemies. Destroyed vehicles, crumbling structures, scrappy attempts at barricades, there's a dense population of assets to further that immersion into a Berlin that's standing on its last legs due to World War II. Blaring sirens, ground-rumbling artillery, the zooms of planes overhead, distant barrages of gunfire; audibly, you're in this land of constant battle and there couldn't of been a better way to approach the sound of a game like this, especially with its integration into the stealth mechanics (when it works). The soundtrack was decent as well. Whenever it would peer its head out, it would put on this mood of triumph with battle horns rising as a form of inspiration, which was entertaining and fit the mood oddly well. This isn't to say the game's atmosphere is perfect. The rigidly made models from the mid-2000s show their age here, which is never ideal for a game that intends to mimic reality. The design of the buildings and choice of colour do work to its advantage as it only makes the experience more smudged and muddy (like a war should be) but the issue of monotony amongst areas does start to get raised later on, even though specific levels like the U-Bahn train station attempt to differ themselves in that regard. Besides that, miraculously, there were no technical issues besides the occasional incorrect aspect ratio upon start up, which is impressive as the older the game, the more it refuses to be played on newer hardware.

Story - 5/10

Gameplay - 7/10

Characters - 5/10

Atmosphere - 7/10

MEDIOCRE

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