Sniper Elite III on PS3 – The DVDfever Review

Sniper Elite III is here and while there is a story, you know that the reason you’re here is for the moments where you get to fire off a slow-motion sniper shot, resulting in an X-ray image of you shooting off some Nazi testicles. Yes, as is shouted in Inglorious Basterds, “Say auf wiedersehen to your Nazi balls!”

And after you’ve bumped them off, you can then search their bodies for ammo, bandages and so on.

Okay, so the story for the single-player mode, which has 8 huge levels, is basically that you are American OSS agent Karl Fairburne, and you’re traversing through North Africa during World War II, and as well as dealing with the Afrika Korps, the Germans have plans to build a ‘wunderwaffe’, aka a ‘wonder weapon’, which will splatter your Allied forces six ways from Sunday, and turn the tide of the whole war in their favour.

And like in Sniper Elite V2, I have made a mash-up of kill-cam shots, this time to Vampire Weekend‘s A-Punk.

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Sniper Elite III – Night-time Headshots (Vampire Weekend – A-Punk) (720p HD)

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Various random observations that have come about as I’ve played this game:

• Your bullet doesn’t hit where your gun’s crosshairs meet, but where some ‘eye’ thing is as you empty your lung, which is just beneath the crosshairs.

• Graphics can be a bit glitchy sometimes as you walk round, as well as not feeling quite as fluid as in Sniper Elite V2. Explosions and body shots also don’t feel as strong as they were in that game. In addition, elements of the landscape flicker on and off, and I threw a corpse at one point, and found it ‘sank’ through a rock! Elsewhere, I could walk *through* the ropes surrounding a tent, too.

• On a plus side for the graphics, when you’re crawling through the weeds and rushes, they’re still reasonably detailed up close, rather than most games which at that point would look like a bad accident with a 3DFX card.

• The game says it’s an “open world” adventure, but really, you might have the option to choose which of four locations to conquer at any one time, and you can take them in any order you like, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, and you’ve to go from one path to another in that kind of a linear fashion.

• The AI isn’t great, as I was hidden in the destroyed corner of what was once a building, yet while the three men surrounding me knew where I was, they were happy to constantly shoot at the indestructible stone rather than come round and blast me into next week.

• Gameplay can be a little problematic at times as you’re getting into the game, and with so many different buttons to press, you try to sneak a quiet Welrod pistol shot off into someone’s head, but instead throw a grenade against the wall you’re standing next to. However, this is the bain of many such games, so it’s not exclusive to the Sniper Elite series.

Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game.

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Sniper Elite III – Launch Trailer

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