Sniper Elite V2 Remastered Review – Death from a Distance Never Looked So Good

Developer Rebellion first released Sniper Elite V2 around 7 years ago for the last generation of consoles and the PC. We have been sniping around Germany with the remastered version for over a week, and the question is, “Can the game stand up to this generation of gaming?”

Read on to find out.

For those that never played Sniper Elite V2 from the previous generation of consoles and PCs, you missed out on a fun and gory game. It is a reboot of developer Rebellion’s original entry into the series, Sniper Elite, previous released in 2005. Sniper Elite V2 follows Lieutenant Karl Fairburne, an OSS officer who is inserted into Germany near the end of WWII.

WWII Is Ending but the Cold War is Just Beginning

It is his task to stop the Russians from acquiring German scientists and their latest technology, the V2 rocket. Fairburne is tasked with assassinating several of these scientists to keep them from falling into Russian hands, and as he searches for his targets, he uncovers a ruthless plan that would kill thousands more people in an already war ravaged London.

Fairburne is tasked with assassinating several of these scientists to keep them from falling into Russian hands, and as he searches for his targets, he uncovers a ruthless plan that would kill thousands more people in an already war ravaged London. He may not be technically at war with the Russians, but if they find him, they’ll kill him just the same. In war, things aren’t always black and white.

A Good Sniper is Seldom Seen or Heard

Gameplay consists of third person action, with quite a bit of stealth required for those playing on the harder difficulties. You’ll generally have to sneak to a location to find a good sniping perch, and you do have access to a single shot silenced pistol to aid you in this. Leaving bodies lying around will make folks nervous for some reason, so picking up the corpses and moving them out of sight is generally a good idea. You also have access to a few sub-machine guns and a tommygun, but if it comes down to machine gun combat, you probably aren’t doing a very good job as a sniper. Ammo is also hard to come by, but you can scavenge those corpses for extra ammo and other useful items like grenades and mines.

Once in your perch, the enemy are very apt at locating you by sound, and with no silenced rifles to be had, this means you’ll have to use noise to cover your shots or risk being shot yourself. The sniping for this game, on the harder difficulties with real world ballistics enabled, is some of the best to be had. The original game might be 7 years old, but the sniping is still some of the best around, with an x-ray death cam that no other game can match. We had so much fun with it that we compiled over 5 minutes worth of x-ray death and destruction for you. As you watch the video, pay attention to the minute details like the bullet as it exits a skull. The bullet deformity caused by said skull is incredibly accurate.

Plays Well With Others

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered includes the multiplayer aspects from the original release. What this means is that you can play through the entire campaign with a friend, working in tandem to take out the bad guys together. This actually makes the harder difficulties a little easier if you and your buddy can work well together. You can also revive each other when you go down, so this can also help make the game easier to complete.

There’s also several other modes for multiplayer. Kill Tally is a mode where two players fend off increasingly numerous and difficult waves of enemy soldiers and vehicles in an enclosed environment with an infinite supply point of ammunition and explosives. Bombing Run is a mission based mode where players must search the environment in order to repair a truck to escape before the entire area is bombed. The third mode is Overwatch where two players take different roles to complete an objective with one player as the operative who undertakes said objectives, armed with short range firearms and binoculars that can be used to tag enemies for the second player who takes the role of a sniper who covers the operative throughout.

Previous DLC Included

Sniper Elite V2 received four main pieces of downloadable content and all of them are included with the remastered version of the game. They are listed as challenges within the Single Player menu and can’t be played cooperatively. The added multiplayer DLC is also included but with the game actually out yet, we have had no luck catching any players online. We do know what modes are available. Distance King, both solo and team based where players’ success is measured by the distance of shots. Dog Tag Harvest Mode is a mode where you’ll have to scavenge the dog tags off of a downed enemy. There’s also Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and CTF.

Also included in the DLC is the option to play through the campaign as different characters. If you look through our photo gallery below you’ll find all of them near the bottom. While cut scenes will still only include Fairburne, the added photo mode gives you a chance to take photos of each character throughout your gameplay. All of the weapons included in the DLC are available from the beginning as well, and you can change your loadout prior to launching a mission.

Graphics Comparison

While we could have dusted off our PS3 version of the game and made our own comparison video, we found that to be unnecessary since the folks over at PlayStation has done that for us. Take a look.

Sniper Elite V2 really set the bar for sniping games back in 2012 and it’s no surprise that the gameplay stands up nicely to the next generation of gaming hardware. We played Sniper Elite V2 Remastered on a PS4 Pro and the game didn’t look like a remaster to us. It looked and played as if it was built for this generation.

Nicely done Rebellion. Nicely done.

9


Sniper Elite V2 Remastered review code provided by publisher. For more information on scoring, please read What our review scores really mean.

Louis Edwards

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