Sniper Elite 3

June 1942, North Africa. The Germans have taken Tobruk, but American sniper Karl Fairburne distinguishes himself on the battlefield. A skilled marksman who works best alone, Karl is recruited to help Allied intelligence track down General Franz Vahlen, a German engineer who is working on a rumoured "superweapon" to help the Axis win the war. Fairburne has to fight his way across several German strongholds in the northern Sahara and along the Mediterranean coast to track down and destroy Vahlen's project.

Defying traditional chronology, Sniper Elite 3 is the chronologically earliest game in the Sniper Elite series, but the developers eschew the chance to give its square-jawed, squared-headed, testosterone -embodied hero any kind of origin story. Karl Fairburne is a good sniper and is given a frankly preposterous set of missions to single-handedly infiltrate a bunch of Nazi fortresses to discover what's going with a secret project. Karl just says "okay," and that's about it. The game is basically about you killing many, many Nazis, and has no interest in putting anything in the way of that.

I had previously played Sniper Elite 4, which was solidly enjoyable, and had been planning to visit the rest of the series, but as usual plans were somewhat delayed. Going back to the previous game in the series is an interesting experience. Sniper Elite 3 was released in 2014, three years before its successor, and was designed to work on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, meaning it had to work with much greater limitations of memory. This means the maps are smaller, the set-pieces less impressive and the graphics less accomplished.

However, for an eleven-year-old game, it scales nicely on modern hardware and is still very much a good time. The smaller maps do mean a more focused game, with a faster completion time (this game can be put away in under 8 hours, about two-thirds the length of Sniper Elite 4, so if you do check it out, make sure you get it on sale). Large-scale sniper duels across immense maps aren't so much the order of the day here, with the closer quarters instead requiring players to more freely mix and match long-range and close-quarters combat on the fly, moving from stealth to head-on confrontations more liberally. The game generally does a good job of dealing with this, even if some of its tricks become a bit predictable (like the end of every mission - the exfiltration bit - usually being accompanied by the arrival of large numbers of enemy reinforcements between you and the exit).

The game's selling point is its ridiculously gory "kill-cam," which shows your bullet tearing up the internal organs of the bad guys in unnecessary, but sometimes comical, detail. Setting up trick shots, trying to shoot three enemies in a line with the same bullet etc can yield more experience points (allowing you to requisition better equipment between missions) and achievements. Sniping is entertaining, moreso as close-quarters combat can be more hit or miss: using your silenced sidearm can only guarantee kills on headshots and the various submachine guns have the accuracy of a drunk camel trying to perfectly touch down a moon lander.

The map design is pretty strong, given the technical constraints they were under, and the tension in the game can revolve around the effort expended to get into a good sniping positions versus that enemies will generally locate you within two to three kills and start swarming your location. Your character is more fragile than most video game protagonists so preserving your own life becomes a major priority when considering avenues of attack.

The plot is entertaining bobbins (and is actually based on a real German plan, though it didn't develop as far as during the game), character development is non-existent but also not required, but the game is graphically solid with some excellent sound design. If you want to while away two afternoons or so dispatching ludicrous numbers of bad guys with a chunky array of weapons, Sniper Elite 3 ticks the box quite nicely.

On the negative side, the game's AI is not always the best (and is particularly poor at counter-sniping), and a plethora of bugs remain in the game. Attempting to assassinate one high-priority target proved redundant when he instead fell through the ground and plunged screaming to die on the bottom of the map. Getting caught on the edges of object geometry, usually at the worst possible moment, is depressingly common. This is not the most polished game in history, though I've certainly experienced far worse.

Sniper Elite 3 (***½) executes well what it set out to do: a series of interesting, challenging sniper missions, with a dark sense of humour and some satisfying action, but is showing its age with limited map sizes and some minor jank. Just try not to pay too much for it.

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