Each level is as big as the last, and except for a couple moving convoys to deal with, most of the objectives play out the same: sneak or shoot your way in and grab the documents or plant the bomb. My biggest criticism of the campaign is that the pace is flat and my approach never varied much.

Who needs headshots when you have a friend? The animations and environments lack much character-best described as ‘World War 2 videogame art’-but the Italian hills and villas are pretty, and on my old Nvidia GTX Titan it runs at a comfortable 60-80 fps at 2560x1080. The big levels take seconds to load on my SSD, it supports ultrawide resolutions, and outside of tiny graphical glitches I’ve noticed during cut scenes, it looks sharp.

And several guns already require DLC to unlock. So far I’ve had no incentive to try guns other than my starting Springfield, which has better stats than any of the other rifles I could unlock thanks to upgrades I’ve earned by using it. The weapon progression isn’t great either. Thankfully it’s possible to manually save whenever you want, a necessary discipline. Sniper Elite 4 tends to autosave in the middle of fights, after being spotted and going on the run, rather than during safe moments. Plus, two things I noted the absence of in my review of Sniper Elite 3 have been added: the ability to zero the scope and a practice range. It does feel markedly better to sink a shot without such direct help, though, so I'm at least glad both ends of the difficulty spectrum are represented: a pleasant romp through Italy, or a nightmare of missed shots. Using the guide removes a lot of the challenge to aiming, while having no guide (it can be switched off in the options menu) requires intimate familiarity with a rifle’s bullet velocity, and given how many times I died when I could hit things, I'll save it for a second playthrough. Regardless of how complex you make it, letting out your breath slows time and produces a big red box that shows you where your bullet will hit, so it’s still not hard to nail someone in the eye. You can remove ballistics altogether-bullets always go where the crosshairs meet-or include gravity and wind in the equation. It’s really satisfying to walk up to a big AA gun and plant a bomb on it completely uncontested, because earlier I wiped out half the sentries from a ledge.ĭepending on your settings, sniping is as simple or difficult as you want it to be. I don’t care who hears me, I’ll declare by firing my extremely loud rifle at someone’s head, and as long as I have a good position and a few bandages I can snipe at an objective until it’s empty. One tactic I’m fond of is to take a shot to make some noise, then circle around the alerted soldiers and embarrass them, shooting the backs of their heads while they look the wrong way. You could hypothetically ghost every level-the game is a completionist’s dream-but I’ve found more joy in a mixed approach, sneaking up on some, luring out others, getting into big firefights here and there, and ultimately wiping the map clean of fascism. I’m more interested in being a menace than being silent and precise, anyway. Sniper Elite 4 would rather you pick up and relocate often, though it does give you more opportunities to snipe quietly than Sniper Elite 3 did thanks to small supplies of ‘suppressed ammo’ you can carry. I enjoy camping, but waiting for noise takes a lot of patience. I once plopped down in a bush and spent 20 minutes killing soldiers on a bridge, using the explosions from a railway gun to mask my shots.

If you wait for sound cover-planes overhead, artillery fire, or malfunctioning generators-you can ghost snipe.

Sniper elite 4 deluxe edition vs normal