Sniper Elite V2 Remastered Review – PC

Seven years ago last week (to the day) I wrote and posted my original review for Sniper Elite V2. At the time I found the game enjoyable, and despite having a few game gimmicks, offered a reasonably challenging and realistic sniping experience with an interesting self-insertion into WWII historical events. When I learned the game was being remastered for modern day tech I was very interested in seeing how this game would (or could) hold up after almost a decade of competition and even two direct sequels within its own franchise.

It’s worth noting that owners of the existing game can get this remastered upgrade for only $10 and rookie snipers can buy into the full Sniper Elite V2 experience for only $35. In additional to stunning new 4K support you also get all of the previously released DLC, a new photo mode to snap grisly pics of your favorite x-ray kill cam shots, some new playable characters along with seven multiplayer modes and co-op support for the entire campaign.

Despite some remarkable improvements in various aspects of the visual presentation, Sniper Elite V2 still shows its age, but that’s not to say the game isn’t stunning, but only when compared with its former self. Stack it up against either of the sequels that came after and parts of the game are still pretty rough. Likewise, the issues I had with the gameplay, both controls and level design remain firmly intact, and the weeks I spent playing the remastered version had me cursing in all the same spots for all the same reasons. Even the flashy new graphics couldn’t distract me from that.

As a veteran Army sniper and former instructor at the U.S. Army Sniper School as well as a WWII history buff I appreciated the effort Rebellion put into their game, blurring the lines of realistic simulator and entertainment. Thanks to movies and even other video games, there are a lot of romanticized misconceptions about snipers. Being an Army sniper takes a patient person, a disciplined person, a person who is willing to work alone for extended periods of time, often in hostile situations. In addition to marksmanship skills, you also have to be an expert on detecting and stalking a target, concealment and camouflage, and estimating the range of a target while factoring in values for wind and bullet drop. You have to have a keen observational awareness of your surroundings, not only in picking the ideal sniping spot, but also in anticipating enemy response and planning one or more escape routes.

Without hesitation, I started Sniper Elite V2 Remastered and picked the Sniper Elite difficulty that promised realistic bullet physic and deadly enemies. The game opens with some historical footage from WWII that deals with the Germans’ deadly use of V2 rocket technology to devastate their enemies from afar, a technology the Russians are now trying to obtain. It was going to be my job to go in and secure the technology and possibly get a few rocket scientists to defect, but most importantly, Russia could not get the V2 rockets.

The opening training mission does a good job of getting you comfortable with the controls. I used both mouse and keyboard and an Xbox 360 controller just for the sake of comparison. While the 360 gamepad worked as well as expected, the mouse and keyboard is an unbeatable combo when it comes to deadly pinpoint accuracy, and that’s what sniping is all about. You quickly learn some valuable skills such as setting tripwire traps, tossing rocks to bait enemies away from your destination, and even booby-trapping a dead soldier; all of which gets paid off later in the mission.

Eventually you will get to fire that first shot from your sniper rifle, and the game does an impressive job of putting the player in the proper mindset by mixing in believable visuals with an ominous thumping heartbeat; an audible representation of your pulse which factors into the accuracy of your shot. With your pulse and breathing under control you exhale to enter “focus time”. The world slows down around you in your heightened sense of awareness, and you get some additional zoom before you squeeze the trigger. What follows is probably the most gratuitous special effect and easily one of the most gruesome selling points for a game since Mortal Kombat fatalities.

Assuming you have properly accounted for wind shear and bullet drop, you will get to watch your bullet make a slow-motion trip, exploding from the end of your rifle and spiraling toward your target. Once it arrives you are treated to a bone-shattering, flesh-tearing, organ-exploding X-ray special effects sequence that is surprisingly not as exaggerated as you might think. Sadly, what is exaggerated are the “realistic bullet physics”. When you zoom in on a target you will get data on their distance, which you can then use to determine how much to offset your aim using the tick marks in the scope view. Some of my earlier shots were not hitting where they should given the indicated distance and my knowledge of parabolic shaped trajectories.

Just to satisfy my own curiosity I tried playing that same level on Marksman difficulty where a secondary reticle corrects for gravity and wind. Only then did I realize that the designers were apparently over-exaggerating the physics simply to make a point. A typical sniper rifle from the WWII era would likely be zeroed at approximately 100 meters, which means that you would always center your scope on a target at 100 meters. This happens to be the distance for many of the shots in Sniper Elite V2. It’s not until you start shooting at ranges of 200-300 meters that your bullets will actually start to noticeably drop anywhere from 3-11cm. I can’t really fault the game for trying to keep things fun and accessible. Short of months of training and years of experience or knowing how to read a bullet drop table, nobody would likely find a “pure sniper simulation” any fun.

While I was able to eventually work out my issues with bullet drop the one area of the game that defied all realism and logic was the omniscient enemy AI that could magically spot me if I lingered in an open doorway a half-mile down the road for a second too long. Even worse is making a huge trek to the top of a tower or roof of a crumbled building to find your perfect vantage point only to fire that first shot and have the entire Third Reich open up on your exact position. Snipers are trained to reposition after firing to keep their location a mystery and confuse the enemy, but the enemies in Sniper Elite V2 can pick you out of the rubble with GPS-like precision, and on Sniper Elite difficulty they will aggressively storm and flank your location. Knowing this, it is imperative that you properly defend your position with land and tripwire mines before making yourself known.

Sniper Elite V2 does a few inventive things like having you plant explosives then detonating them with sniper fire – basically WWII’s version of a remote C4 charge – and you can also shoot explosive canisters or even blast the gas caps on tanks and trucks to blow them up – not entirely realistic but incredibly fun. You even have dynamite you can drop or throw then detonate it later with sniper fire. Much of the game revolves around your sniper rifle, which will get upgraded throughout the game as you find newer and deadlier models. Before each mission you can go into your loadout screen and select which weapons and explosive ordnance you wish to take as well as check the map for ideal vantage points.

When the enemies get close you’ll need to switch to something like the Thompson or MP40 SMG. You also have a “silenced pistol” that can kill with a single headshot, although the gunshot seems just as loud as any other to me. And if you get really close you can physically snap a guy’s neck. Guards are somewhat observant of their comrades, so you may need to pick-up and hide a body before a patrol stumbles upon it – that or trap it with a landmine, but that trick can summon more trouble than it’s worth.

I was very impressed with the updated visuals for Sniper Elite V2 Remastered. Running at max settings in 4K at 60fps barely broke a sweat on my GTX 1080ti card, and the level of environmental detail and enhanced textures and lighting definitely helped usher this game into the low end of current generation presentation. Some of the levels are truly spectacular with these huge Hollywood reveals, as you step through a door and look out through a missing section of wall to see a bombed out city with hundreds of planes and zeppelins filling the sky, or make a daring fiery dash out of an exploding V2 rocket factory. The slow-motion kill cams continue to steal the show and the X-ray bullet impacts that make each kill just as much fun and original as the last never get old, but if they do you can change their frequency in the options menu.

The weapons all sound realistic enough with the exception of the loud “silenced” pistol, and there is an interesting slow-motion effect on sound when you exhale just before your shot followed by a nice Doppler effect during the focus time bullet cam. There is an inspirational WWII soundtrack for the menus and some combat music in the game that signals when you are in trouble and fades away when everyone else is dead. Other than that you have some nice environmental and wartime sound effects, the occasional German banter, and a nice self-narrated mission briefing before each new level.

It took me around 10-12 hours to get through all ten missions on the Sniper Elite difficulty. There are collectible items like gold bars and wine bottles you can find in each level if you want to explore every nook and crevice in the game. I found about half of them in my travels and I wasn’t even looking. The remastered version also supports co-op multiplayer that lets you play the story missions with a friend or you can check out modes like Kill Tally, a survival mode where you defend against endless waves of enemies to see how long you can survive, or Bombing Run, where you need scramble around the level finding parts to repair your vehicle so you can escape before an impending bombing run. Overwatch is easily my favorite modes and has one person playing the sniper armed only with a sniper rifle and the other acting as an Operative, who must protect the sniper with his SMG and call out targets for his partner using binoculars. This is a great mode if you have a friend who takes the game as seriously as you do.

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is a fun and challenging third-person shooter that gives gamers a small taste of what it must have been like to be a sniper in WWII. Certain liberties were taken with bullet physics and enemy AI, but the game doesn’t suffer from it. In fact, the only real issues I have with the game is, “why can’t I rest my weapon on a sandbag or window ledge when kneeling or prone?”, and “why can’t I switch shoulders for iron sights?”, and if that is the biggest complaint I can take away from this game then Sniper Elite V2 is definitely a sniper game worth playing. Whether it’s a game worth “replaying” just for fresh graphics is entirely up to you and your nostalgia for a seven year old game and your attachment to Alexander Hamilton.

Author: Mitch Cullen
Retired Army Special Forces and Elite Sniper School instructor with a passion for team-based military and tactical shooters.

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