Sniper Elite (or 1337).

[FullAuto]

In the days of wayback, when I slid down dinosaurs after work, I reviewed Sniper Elite and with the recent re-release on the Wii (and constant availability on Steam) I'd be daft not to play it again.

 

And what a surprise, a good game is still good, and still stands out from the pack. It's probably the only shooter I've ever played where I feel sorry for a lot of the people I kill.

 

Squeeze off a round, and they have a fleshy crater where their teeth used to be. The next bloke catches one in the bridge of the nose, opening up a cavity I could fit a fist into. The next unfortunate, his jaw splays like a gory flower. I think it's because most games don't bother depicting entry/exit wounds, they just settle for pink mist.

 

The animations are quite good, especially when you wound someone, and they just crumple up. They don't go flying, they just drop their weapon and fold, and lay groaning. This attracts their comrades, and getting a two for one is a real result. The hero rushes in, slings the unfortunately ventilated one over his shoulder, and if I judge the shot right, I get them both with one round.

 

Judging fall of shot, wind, etc is always a challenge but it's a beautiful accomplishment when done first time. Usually, when I go over about 200m, I need 2-3 ranging shots, observing misses and adjusting accordingly. You can't adjust the scope for elevation and windage, you simply aim off and fire, which isn't too bad as the scopes' reticles are simple, and it streamlines gameplay. Head shots on static targets are difficult enough, but then you end up engaging stuff like fuel tank caps and explosive charges, which really makes you sweat.

 

My only issue with the controls is the inventory system, which isn't well thought out. It takes too long to swap through things. The aiming is nice and sharp, once you've dialled down the massive default dead zone, and the motion controls are good and consistent (the demo animations, however, are not always clear).

 

As the game goes on, distances get longer and longer, rifles get better and scopes offer more magnification, until you're out near a kilometre, picking people off who are little more than stick men in the scope. A very different third-person shooter, and the best attempt at sniper-driven shooting I've yet seen.

 

But that's not all. What about this lovely little daydream.

 

Sniper Elite 2, a free-roaming snipe 'em up set in 1945 Berlin. Plot and set up basically the same as SE, but you can travel the entire city. The Nazis and Ivans are still duking it out, so you have two sides to watch out for. You can steal any uniform (German or Russian, for instance, providing a basic disguise as either side, and then SS and NKVD, where it works as a good disguise versus regular soldiers, but when you bump into an SS/NKVD unit, and you've got their uniform on, they want to know who you are, unit, etc). You could collect intel, allowing you to fake an identity, knowing which unit/officer is where, what they're doing, etc and so pass through 'friendly' lines. German/Russian phrasebooks could be scattered around the map and act as bonuses for interaction with the appropriate side.

 

Map would be very feature-rich, so perhaps not the whole of Berlin, but a good chunk of it. Sewers, streets, fortified buildings, rooftops, a park or two, a few monuments, etc. Perhaps implement a basic climbing system a la The Saboteur enabling you to avoid using the stairs, and have further opportunities for exploration. Very stealthy movement where enemies are concerned, silent killing with knife or suppressed pistol, day/night cycle, etc.

 

Sniping could affect local battles, taking out MGs, flamethrowers, NCOs, officers etc weakens the force, so if you want the Germans to take over a certain section (e.g. if there's an objective you can't get to which the Russians must not have time to recover), you snipe the Ruskies. Or if you want something to kick off, you go on a spree and incense both sides with sniping until they start shooting at each other. Selection of weapons (pistols, SMGs, rifles, MGs, etc) but with the emphasis on sniping, as the enemy will attempt to flank/encircle, hit you with mortars or arty, bring up MGs, send a sniper after you, etc. I'd have the ROF for the automatic weapons be realistic, so no matter how carefully you scavenge, even a full load of ammo (four mags/belts?) simply won't last you very long, so you can put up a brief, intense, fire and then escape if needed. Keep the tripwire grenades because they're cool (and real). Russian, though, so if you want them, you have to go thieving.

 

Enemy snipers, high ranking officers etc could be free-roam objectives, and obviously you could have plenty of German scientists or others to capture if possible, kill if necessary, with German resistance providing a pick-up service to avoid lots of escort bullshit.

 

10/10, multi-million seller.

[FullAuto]

Sniper Elite V2

 

[FullAuto]

Best pre-order bonus ever!

[silencer_pl]

Actually that is bit controversial. In new MoH there supposed to be mission to kill Osama but they removed it.

[FullAuto]

Not sure what possible objections one could raise over it, myself.

[silencer_pl]

What about mission to kill current Prime Minister of England or any of the Royal Family ?

[Pete]

Plus as the comments in the pre-order-bonus news linked to mention, it's not going to beat killing Hitler in Wolfenstein where he had minigun arms.

 

Back to reality slightly, I find myself agreeing with some of the other comments proclaiming the madness of pre-order goodies - it is getting a little silly now isn't it? I mean there are actually some cases where you would have to buy the game from several different shops in several different countries just to get all of the content (Star Trek Online was initially a pain for this, not that the extras are usually that good or anything, but it highlights my point).

 

The game does look stunning in that interview though

[silencer_pl]

Yeah - where are the times where games had something that was called UNLOCKABLE

[FullAuto]

What about mission to kill current Prime Minister of England or any of the Royal Family ?

 

I'd actually be fine with that. But your example is not a fair one. You must compare like with like. As much as I detest the current PM and the Royal Family, none of them are responsible for starting the world's largest and deadliest conflict. None of them are responsible for the attempted extermination of an entire race. None of them are even dictators. You could, quite fairly, I think, compare Hitler with Stalin, for example, or another absolute ruler from history who used aggression, slavery, warfare, and racism to kill millions.

 

Killing Hitler would have saved lives, not just on the German side, but in every country in the fight, and not just military lives but civilians too, who, shamefully, made up most of the casualties of WWII.

 

I don't believe in 'bad guys' and 'good guys' but some people are entropy personified and their good qualities do not outweigh that.

 

Back to reality slightly, I find myself agreeing with some of the other comments proclaiming the madness of pre-order goodies - it is getting a little silly now isn't it? I mean there are actually some cases where you would have to buy the game from several different shops in several different countries just to get all of the content (Star Trek Online was initially a pain for this, not that the extras are usually that good or anything, but it highlights my point).

 

Publishers and developers are finding themselves in a bit of a hard place currently. I've no sympathy for the monoliths, EA and Activision can go to Hell, but Rebellion is a small British (hand on heart, teary eye, flag in background, etc) developer, and 505 Games is not a massive publisher. They have to maximise first-day (or that first burst) sales, before the second-hand market comes into it, to make a profit. For a great game that doesn't have a big name, this can be an almighty struggle when behemoths bestride the land like colossi, shitting adverts everywhere. You could see innovative titles die off purely because they don't have the advertising spend not even to get noticed, but merely to even be one of the crowd.

 

Thankfully, all the bonus stuff ends up on sale some time down the line, or gets bundled into a gold edition. You can sit back and still get it all.

 

Edit: Because I'm an incredibly boring chap, I was busy adding the info about the pre-order bonus to Wikipedia. The captcha was wonderfully apt:

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/angryaxis.jpg

[Pete]

Looking at that Captcha, do you reckon they're cleverly pulling it from the rest of the article? That would be neat.

[silencer_pl]

Well I can also make Chamberlain responsible for this because he did nothing to stop Hitler. But that leads to big off-topic I think and will produce nothing.

 

My point was that buying special bonus of killing named person is unethical.

[Space Voyager]

Well I can also make Chamberlain responsible for this because he did nothing to stop Hitler. But that leads to big off-topic I think and will produce nothing.

Very sensible. Debates like this can go endless.

 

My point was that buying special bonus of killing named person is unethical.

I agree. Things like that should be avoided, no matter how big a criminal a person is. It can all become personal when you attach a real name. Nothing good can come out of this.

[Sunflash]

*snip*

 

I agree. Things like that should be avoided, no matter how big a criminal a person is. It can all become personal when you attach a real name. Nothing good can come out of this.

 

 

So, by that logic, you can't have ANY name that any 'real' person has ever had.

 

 

Let me know how that works out for you.

[Space Voyager]

So, by that logic, you can't have ANY name that any 'real' person has ever had.

No, I'd just like it more if isn't a person whom a group of people would identify with. Or against.

[FullAuto]

Well I can also make Chamberlain responsible for this because he did nothing to stop Hitler. But that leads to big off-topic I think and will produce nothing.

 

My point was that buying special bonus of killing named person is unethical.

 

Assuming Hitler could have been stopped, and that Chamberlain had the power to do so?

 

People are only responsible for their own actions, not those of others. If I'm with a friend, and I go out and shoot someone, my friend is not responsible. He may fail to stop me doing it, but the responsibility for the shooting is mine.

 

No, I'd just like it more if isn't a person whom a group of people would identify with. Or against.

 

But this is every war game ever, though they often don't bother with names on the enemy side. Group A versus Group B. I think it's very strange that shooting nameless German soldiers in countless WWII games is fine, but killing Hitler makes some people feel a bit funny. What about killing Martin Bormann in the first Sniper Elite game? Still dodgy?

 

These are not nice people we're talking about. They're quite far removed from your average government officials. Whatever good they did was far, far outweighed by the bad. "Sure, he was behind the industrialised mass murder of millions of people, but he was also behind the building of a great road network!"

 

If it were Churchill, or de Gaulle, or any number of others, yes, I understand there are arguments for and against. I can't think of anyone who could argue sensibly that no, Hitler shouldn't have been killed.

 

Looking at that Captcha, do you reckon they're cleverly pulling it from the rest of the article? That would be neat.

 

Neither word features in the article!

[silencer_pl]

He was prime minister of the strongest nation in that time. He could just threaten him to stop and take actions.

Yes I know about the League of Nations but it was failure.

 

If I'm with a friend, and I go out and shoot someone, my friend is not responsible. He may fail to stop me doing it, but the responsibility for the shooting is mine.

 

It would make you his accomplice and thus make you a suspect in the matter. Though if you were found innocent it's up to the court.

 

But this is every war game ever, though they often don't bother with names on the enemy side. Group A versus Group B. I think it's very strange that shooting nameless German soldiers in countless WWII games is fine, but killing Hitler makes some people feel a bit funny. What about killing Martin Bormann in the first Sniper Elite game? Still dodgy?

 

It's not about killing named person in general but advertising that. Hey pre-order our game so you could kill mr X. And don't take me wrong I am not protecting this bastard. I wish that one of the assassination attempts would succeed

[Pete]

I'm going to jump in for a single post as whilst I don't like jumping in on these topics for fear of looking like an idiot if I get my facts wrong, there's some interesting debate going on here.

 

He was prime minister of the strongest nation in that time. He could just threaten him to stop and take actions.

Yes I know about the League of Nations but it was failure.

 

I'm reasonably sure Hitler would not listen to threats. I think if the UK had intervened earlier there would have been a bit of a shit-storm from all the other European countries as we had an empire (easily the stupidest thing we ever did for many reasons, but in the context of WWII it screwed us over in the eyes of a certain US president which in turn led to trusting Russia too much at the time and led to Europe being split in two, as well as the totally unforgivable screwing-over of Poland) and they would have seen that as a touch aggressive on our part.

 

Thing is, even today, there's too much politics sitting in the way of doing the right thing - the current situation in Syria being the obvious example as we should all have collectively put a stop to that months ago. In the words of Bill Paxton in Aliens - "Well what the hell are we supposed to use? Harsh language?!".

 

It's just a desperately sad situation, but I don't think anything could have been done much earlier in Germany because everyone else was either trying to play by some sort of rules, keeping to themselves and/or looking after their own interests.

 

I know the two situations aren't comparable beyond mass extermination and bat-shit insane leaders, but I think that's enough to be going on with.

[FullAuto]

I'll see if I can reply in an organised manner.

 

The situation in 1938

Hitler came to power in 1933. He immediately began re-armament. He already saw war as inevitable, because he wanted to destroy the current European balance of power and replace it with German hegemony.

 

In 1938, there was the Anschluss, Austria was bullied into becoming part of Germany. Later in 1938, Germany started on Czechoslovakia, principally the Sudetenland, whose population was primarily German (Czechoslovakia's population was about 14 million, 3 million were ethnically German).

 

The Czechoslovakians weren't too happy, mobilised their forces, and placed their frontier under martial law. Czechoslovakia had a treaty with France. Britain knew fine well it would be drawn into the conflict. No-one, except Hitler, wanted a war. The memory of WWI was still very strong with a lot of people. No-one wanted those kind of casualties again.

 

Desperate to avoid war, Chamberlain appeased Hitler with the Munich Agreement and sold the Czechoslovakians down river, allowing the Sudetenland to be annexed.

 

Those are the basic facts, I think. If any of those are wrong, feel free to correct me. I'm using a slim moron's-guide-to-WWII kind of book because it's the only one within reach and it suits my tiny moron brain.

 

Stopping Hitler

Britain, sadly, wasn't that strong in a purely military sense. We've never relied upon the kind of massive armies the continental Europeans raised, for several reasons (population, cost, not our first line of defence, etc). We've always had a small, professional force which then became the core of the much larger conscripted force in times of dire need. In 1938, IIRC, we had an army of about 230,000 men, with another 400,000 reservists/Territorials. Our army was used as a colonial police force, mainly, so we never had a lot of troops sat around the UK doing nothing. At most, we could have sent a few divisions to assist the French (even in 1940 we could only produce 10).

 

For comparative strengths of other nations, this picture is about right:

 

We had a very strong navy at the time, but the RAF was in poor state, lacking modern bombers with the range to reach Germany (we did have a few experimental types who had the range, none were in production). We had only 29 squadrons of fighters, of which 5 were Hurricanes, no Spitfires. The Royal Navy would have been able to thrash the Kriegsmarine, no problem, but could only bring so much pressure to bear on Germany, when this stage of the conflict was essentially to be contested on the ground.

 

The French, sadly, were of a defensive mindset and I can't think what would have motivated them to invade Germany. Polish assistance would have been more probable, and I think they would have acquitted themselves very well indeed, but asking them to beat Germany would have been a bit much. The Soviets were crippled by Stalin's purges and separated from the conflict by Poland, who was sensibly unlikely to allow vast Soviet forces to march through her to fight Germany.

 

In conclusion, I have bored everyone to sleep

To sum up, I don't think we were in a position to stop Hitler, because he could not be stopped by anything less than death. The man was a gambler, and he took risk after risk, which initially paid off and sent him to the top tiers of power. These results reinforced this behaviour, and he carried on doing it far past the point it produced any rewards.

 

After Munich, a time when he was set on war and was only diverted from it by giving him exactly what he wanted through negotiation, Hitler bitterly reminisced about not fighting Czechoslovakia. The man was an utter loon. "Okay, you gave me what I wanted, but I wish you had made me kill people for it!"

 

I don't think any country was in a position to stop him. Even if he had been stopped cold over Czechoslovakia, and backed down from war there, he would have found other fights to pick (the Polish Corridor, Yugoslavia, etc).

 

I wish we could have stopped him.

 

It's not about killing named person in general but advertising that. Hey pre-order our game so you could kill mr X. And don't take me wrong I am not protecting this bastard. I wish that one of the assassination attempts would succeed

 

Fair enough, mate. I think I've been focusing too much on it being Hitler, and not really thinking about it being used for other people.

[silencer_pl]

Just to add my few cents - Poland did ask France to invade Germany when Hitler was gaining power. Also we had a pact of non-aggression with Germany.

 

Sending Royal Navy for port blockades would might crippled Germany in import of precious resources - mainly oil from Norway also it would prevent them from invading us through sea. Well there was certainly many factors that could be put under consideration.

 

Britain, sadly, wasn't that strong in a purely military sense

 

England as a country no... But if you would combine the forces from colonies + Canada + Australia and New Zealand that would make quite a force.

 

 

But enough of this - we made a conclusion about this pre-order thingy we can OT about the war somewhere else.

[Sunflash]

...

 

SO. How about that new sniper game, FA?

[FullAuto]

What about it, Sunflash?

 

/shoots a passing NKVD soldier in the testicles

[FullAuto]

Headshot, eventually.

[FullAuto]

Preview.

 

You'll obviously be doing a lot of sniping in V2, but it wouldn't mean much if the gameplay wasn't rewarding. Fortunately, it is. After accounting for distance, gravity, heart rate, velocity -- and, on harder difficulties, wind speed, where you need to track the direction of smoke flying and flags rippling -- a successful shot will award you with a bone-shattering kill camera, which will follow your bullet from the barrel to its target. The detail given here is down to the last eyeball. Yes, I actually saw an eyeball pop out of its socket. But there's more to see than that; you can see a once fully functional jaw become dismembered in an instant through an X-ray camera. What's even better is that these animations aren't canned, and will play out differently each time you see one.

 

Two more days!

[FullAuto]

It's released on the fourth of May!

 

NOT APRIL.

 

SHIT.

[Sunflash]

And this, lads, is a classic example of what happens when a man's hopes are crushed in a horrible fashion.