I must say I was really excited to get my hands on Sniper Elite 4 as I have played the last 3 and thoroughly enjoyed them. The main part has always been the X-Ray cam, the ability to see you destroy a Nazi spleen from 386 meters away was always a joyous experience.

In this installment of Sniper Elite the x-ray cam has remained and somewhat improved. The sounds made when your bullet penetrates your enemy’s helmet is somewhat therapeutic, and if this happened to be missing from this game then I don’t think it would be as exciting.

When you begin the first mission and land in the occupied town with your rifle in hand it’s really evident that a different strategy was required from the previous games. Playing on the hardest setting it’s essential that you channel your inner sniper and use the cover to the best of your ability. The staples have remained so using your binoculars to scope out the patrolmen and work out tactically how you eliminate them without causing too much noise or commotion. The beauty of this game is that it takes all the parts that you enjoy doing in a fully fledged first person shooter and rolls it up into this. SE4 won’t give you an edge in playing a FPS, but it will help you hone your skills. The team at Rebellion always do well at making you feel like a professional sniper. The ease of this game, even when you remove all the assistants still makes it incredibly enjoyable.

Rather than just channeling you through a narrative with dramatic long range kills, the game has shifted to more of an open, larger map style game. This allows you to use the space in a more effective way. Scoping out the enemies with your binoculars has always the way to identify where everyone is before calculating a plan of attack. And with the added space comes more and more cover and also vantage points.

With the added space comes smarter A.I. Enemies naturally react to the finding of a dead body so it becomes important that when you take out these Nazi henchmen that you hide the bodies. Using your inventory effectively to wire the dead bodies with explosives, load up door ways with trip wired mines and choosing your ammunition wisely has been a skill that eluded me until this game. To complete these missions in the best way I found that setting myself up with these tools in my arsenal properly lead to better success and less running and gunning.

The graphics in Sniper Elite 4 have definitely improved over the years. Do they give other games out there a run for their money? I’m not sure if they do, but the X-Ray cam has remained as detailed as ever and what the team at Rebellion have sacrificed in polishing graphics, they have made up with bigger and better maps.

All in all I will never get sick of WWII shooters, and will always continue to play Sniper Elite. There’s always something satisfying about these games that keeps me interested.