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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.
Sniper Elite III – Night-time Headshots (Vampire Weekend – A-Punk) (720p HD)
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.
Sniper Elite III – Launch Trailer
More observations on the game:
- This time round, you die way too often, as you can only take a couple of bullets, so it’s rather like real life, but it’s still annoying.
- There’s way too much stealthy behaviour required in this game, rather than sniping, so it’s more like Hitman (before it started finishing off the levels for you) rather than Sniper Elite.
- Oddly, you can’t walk through a brief stretch of water, not even when it’s clearly shallow. “Open world”, my best hat!
- Checkpoints can be badly placed. For example, in the second level, you have to kill 3 specific baddies and search their bodies for intel. Sometimes I did a couple of them, then got killed when going after the next one, and it completely ignored the fact that I’d killed the second one!
- It’s fun to sneak round the environment when you know a baddie is trying to track you down, so you take the route round to follow him from behind and shoot him in the back of the head.
- When the Nazis get together and shout, they sound like they’re saying “Black and Decker!”
- And When they grumble and moan at you, they sound like Gumby from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Sniper Elite III – Multiplayer Trailer
I just go for single player gaming, as a preference, but multiplayer fans are catered for with 12-player Multiplayer and two-player online co-op modes. You can see the trailer for this above.
Downloadable content is also available on Steam, in the form of the Lost Valley map, set in the jungle, and is one of four free maps available. You can negotiate through excavated ruins, vertical terrain, a sinkhole, open jungle and sea shallows, as well as a temporary airfield and tented camps.
The other DLC pack available on the PC via Steam is the Sniper Rifles weapons pack, which includes a M1917 Enfield, Kar 98k and a specially-tuned Springfield rifle. This one will be available for consoles in due course.
There are two more free map packs due later this summer, including more missions in the Save Churchill DLC campaign. in which you have to save Winston Churchill from a German assassination attempt. Check out the DLC Announcement trailer for this one below.
Check out more gaming footage on loads of games on my DVDfeverGames Youtube channel.
Sniper Elite III – Save Churchill DLC Announcement
Important info:
- Publisher: 505 Games
- Players: single player: 1; multiplayer: 12
- HDTV options: 720p
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
- Subtitles in English
GRAPHICS
SOUND
GAMEPLAY
ENJOYMENT8
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8OVERALL 8 Producers: Jean-Baptiste Bolcato, Steve Hart and Andrew Shenton
Music: Mark RutherfordCast:
Karl Fairburne: Tom Clarke Hill
Brauer/Vahlen/German Soldiers: Klemens Koehring
German Soldiers: Daniel Alexander
Italian Soldiers: Giovanni Noto and Fernando TiberiniReviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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