Or maybe you did that after making sure to attract as much attention as possible, and set the trip mine to activate after a two-second delay to ensure you’d catch as many soldiers in it as possible. Stay there and do nothing, and they may get up the courage to investigate… which is too bad for them, because you’ve already put down a trip mine and hopped out the window. Move before you shoot, and they’ll be confused. Keep firing from the same location and they’ll figure out where you are for sure. Mind you, the soldiers nearer you? They might’ve heard the shot, and they will have an idea of where you are. They’ll panic, but they won’t really be able to do anything about it, and the distance means it won’t suddenly alert every guard on the map. However, they won’t know where you are, barring a general idea of what direction you’re in. He’ll notice bits of scenery crumbling around him and will duck for cover and shout for help, alerting all the guards in the vicinity. As an example, let’s say you pop off a shot at the officer who’s 400 metres away, and miss by an inch.
The improved AI and weapon functionality both let you tinker with these big sandboxes in interesting ways. That isn’t even the entirety of the level, either: it’s multiple large segments like that, all seamlessly linked into one huge environment. And if you’re lucky and skilled, you can even spot your target as he wanders out of the building and maybe take him down when you’re still basically at the very start of the level. Searching the corpse of a nearby officer might give you a duty roster, instantly tagging an entire squad for you. There’s a route down to a beach, which leads to the base of a ravine that goes below the field. I mean, there are plenty of bushes that provide some nice sneaky options for crossing the field. On the other hand, how you get there and what you do on the way? That’s up to you. Regardless of how you opt to do the level, you will have to reach that mansion, as searching his corpse is one of the primary goals of the level. In the distance you can see your eventual goal – the mansion housing a Nazi officer. One of the first sights you’ll see on the first level, for instance, is a wide-open field dotted with small houses. Where its predecessor’s maps tended to funnel you into relatively obvious paths or chokepoints, Sniper Elite 4 usually offers a greater number of paths and hides any linearity in those paths rather well. In terms of raw numbers they’re apparently at least three times bigger than those of previous games, but regardless of physical size, they feel both larger and more open. Let’s start with the maps, both because they’re a big part of what makes Sniper Elite 4 work, and because they’re just bloody big. If you haven’t played Sniper Elite 3, you might’ve thought I was joking.
Or you just slap the game onto an easy difficulty and shoot people in the balls from a distance of 500 metres. But all of this is there to support the core gameplay of, essentially, being a sneaky sniper-man behind enemy lines, who needs to use cunning and guile to succeed against superior numbers and weapons. There are more kill-cams, more traps, bigger maps, and better AI, all of which creates a host of new opportunities for your sneaky murderfests. Sniper Elite 4 does absolutely nothing to change this, and is entirely content to refine and polish what’s already there. It’s about misdirection, stealth, and preparation more than it is quick reactions and snap-reflex killshots. It’s a shooter with a focus on sniper rifles it’s a stealth game with a lot of gunplay. To my mind, Sniper Elite has always been in a genre of its own. Good political climate to release a game that’s about shooting fascists in the face and/or balls, eh? Karl Fairburne, bane of Nazi testicles everywhere, is back – but this time, he and his rifle are heading across Italy in search of Nazis to shoot in the nuts.