Sniper Elite V2

OK, I do play the odd shooting game however I'm not one that likes to have to charge hell for leather blasting randomly hoping that you take out the enemy. Whats my style? To be honest I love sniping, that getting into the right position to deliver the assassination blade or bolt or to take that longshot to take out the enemy quite a distance away that feels rewarding when you hit the mark,

What Sniper Elite does for me as a player is bring all the elements I love together, gives me chance to take out difficult targets but also allows me to lay traps for my own protection when facing overwhelming numbers. The graphics are solid, the sound effects decent but my favourite element is seeing the damage done to the body with carefully placed shots. Add to this having to keep picking up ammunition, target raids as well as enemies that adjust to your playing style and for me this is a game I'll have fun playing through quite a few times. Great stuff.

Sniper Elite V2 is an absolutely compelling game experience that you'll struggle to find elsewhere - despite its flaws and lack of polish.

The game is a third person shooter with a heavy emphasis on taking your time, watching enemy patrols through your bincoulars, and planning which targets to takedown and which path to take. You'll be looking for flashes of sunlight reflecting off enemy snipers' scopes. And when you do line up a sniper shot, you'll need to take into account wind, gravity's affect on the bullet, and distance - althoughthis will vary with whichever diffuclty you are playing on. Once you've cleared an area is dash to scavange ammo and traps from bodies (although this does get tedious after a while, although these are the aspects that make it really enjoyable).

As many people have said before, the X-Ray kill cam is thrilling, but this is only a small part of what you get to do - and if you are only seeing the X-Ray kill cam as the best bit, you are playing it wrong.

Hightlights include:
- planting a stick of dynamite in the road, waiting for a truck to passover - and sniping the dynamite to kill 7 enemies in one go.
- sniping fuel tanks on vehicles to make them explode
- sniping a grenade attached to a soldiers belt to kill a group
- have one sniper bullet penetrate 2 or 3 enemies
- sneaking up behind and enemy and doing a stealth kill, then plant a landmine next to his dead body, run away, and then watch from a distance as another soldier rushes over to see whats happened only to blown up
- setup an elaborate network of landmine and trip mines
- throw a rock to dsitract an enemy and sneak past

The game features 10 campaign levels (excluding the pre-order DLC), and although they are quite small in size you are often presented with multiple routes (and vantage points) to complete the mission. This lends itself well to co-op.

The game has 2 player co-op on Xbox 360 & PS3 going up against the game's AI (on PC you also get Team Deathmatch against other humans). The modes are campaign, kill tally, bombing run and overwatch. In any of the modes if anyone of you takes to much fire you'll get knocked down, you have 60 seconds to revive the player or its game over. Playing on Cadet (easy) or Marksman (medium) will allow you and you teammate to "tag" enemies so they show up on each others HUD. Very handy, but you don't get that luxury with with the Sniper Elite difficulty (hard).

Co-op campaign is the complete 10 missions available with another player, and when playing co-op the game only seems to throw in a couple of extra enemies to balance out the combined extra firepower you now have, add to this the 60 second revive timer and the campaign becomes much easier - even on Sniper Elite difficulty. Though it's still enjoyable.

Kill Tally, Bombing Run and Overwatch only allow you to play on 3 maps picked from the campaign - its a shame really as I feel other maps from the campaign could've been used.

Kill Tally is a good survival mode game type. You and a friend are held in an enclosed area and need to defend yourselves from 10 waves of enemies of soldies weilding machine guns, counter snipers, rcket launchers and armored vehicles. You're generally free to develop whatever strategy you like. I prefer to booby trap the hell out of a building and then have you and you partner take out everone from the roof. It worked well for a while until we got to the satge we were facing 6 countr-snipers. Brilliantly tense.

Bombing Run is where you have 6 parts to gather from an open are map, in order to rebuild you escape vehicle. Strangely you can approach them at your own pace - the final timer doesn't start until you've fitted the 4th part out of 6 to the vehicle - at which point you get overwhelmed and have to try to gather the last 2 parts before the time runs out and and the titlar bombing run occurs.

Overwatch is the most interesting. One of you is a dedicated sniper. No pistol. No machine gun. You'll be purched on a ledge while the spotter (who has everything except a sniper rifle) is completing objective in the ground below amongst dozens of enemies.

The flaws need to be pointed out though. Certainly graphically it isn't the best, and your characters' movements aren't graceful, the AI doesn't understand the idea of self-preservation much but these can be forgiven - since the game gives a relly satisfying experience.

I have just completed SNIPER ELITE V2 and dont see where all the bad reviews are coming from as far as sniping games go this is definately the best one i have played. I did about 90% of the game with stealth and yes there are parts where you have no option but to have a full on firefight but it is still good gameplay. I see a lot of people saying its too unrealistic having a firefight as a sniper which is true but this is only a GAME and a very good one at that. I for one would not buy a 100% realistic sniper game as it would involve spending days in a bush to kill 1 target :)So i will end my first review with the closing statement of: I thought it was that good i wrote a review about it.