I love sniping. Any time there’s a sniper rifle available in a game, I use it, often to the exclusion of more sensible weapons. There’s something gratifying about zooming in on an unsuspecting foe and ever so quietly blowing their brains out. It’s fun in Halo. It’s fun in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It’s downright spectacular in the Silent Scope games for the arcade. It’s pretty much amazing in almost every game ever made. Fortunately, there are some developers out there who realize this and now there’s a whole sniping sub-genre, the most well-known of which is the Sniper Elite series.
The Sniper Elite series is pretty much the pinnacle of sniping games. There are currently seven games in the series, and even a novelization. Suffice it to say it’s rather popular with the original release of Sniper Elite V2 selling over half a million copies. Rebellion was so happy with its performance that they’ve decided to remaster V2 for current gen consoles, and here we are with Sniper Elite V2 Remastered on the Switch. But does a sniping game from 2012 with 5 sequels under its belt still hold up after all this time? Let’s take a closer look.
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered (which I’m going to refer to by V2 from now on for brevity’s sake) is noticeably a game from 2012. Upon playing, one immediately notices the clunky feel to the character animations, especially while in motion. Even in the tutorial, it’s hard to ignore how old V2 looks. The graphics are clean and crisp, but they’re noticeably from 2012. Character mapping simply shouldn’t be as jerky as this, and when you crouch, there’s pretty much no way the enemy wouldn’t see you. Ironically, this is exactly what happens, as all the Nazis apparently have eagle eyes and can see you from at least 200 yards no problem, even when they are barely a glimmer in your scope. Oh yeah, V2 is a WWII game where you complete assassination missions to further the war effort. The game is old and the AI is cheap. But is it a bad game?
One of the noticeable things about Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is the sheer array of weaponry available to you. In addition to pretty much every weapon available in real life in WWII, you can also scavenge those weapons from enemy corpses. I tended to prefer an M1 Garand, a rifle that my father actually owned that was passed down in my family from WWII from the North African engagements. It’s still in my family and I’ve actually taken that particular Garand out for target practice. An interesting fact about the M1 Garand is that it’s one of the first semi-automatic rifles available and uses an 8 round U-shaped clip made of brass. Once the clip is emptied, the clip actually shoots out of the top of the rifle, making a distinctive pinging noise that can be heard for some distance. During WWII, the US GIs would actually bang their clips on rocks or other hard objects to make that distinctive noise, making the Germans think they were reloading. As the Germans popped up to return fire, the American soldiers would snipe them with their Garands, taking advantage of a perceived weakness in their weaponry.
V2 perfectly simulates the M1 Garand right down to the ping, and I can only assume that every rifle, pistol, and machine gun is equally accurate in firing rates, sounds, and efficiency. That’s one of the best things about the game. It actually compensates for variable bullet velocities, wind, trajectories, and other real-life issues that actual snipers face. When increasing the difficulty, these issues become more pronounced, making a kill shot more challenging.
Unfortunately, the accuracy of V2 is something of a misnomer. Sure, the sniping physics are great. But everything else isn’t. Manipulating your sniper around buildings and obstacles is more of a struggle than anything. You need to be mighty quick on the draw to beat those Germans too, as they will see you crawling under cover surprisingly easily, even on Normal difficulty. And the gods help you if you try face to face combat and rush in guns blazing. Sure, you are playing a sniper game, but you’ve got a Thompson machine gun standard and it should be relatively easy to zip in and kill a few Jerries. Unfortunately, the Switch version of the game is difficult at best and it’s extremely hard to draw a bead with your machine gun or pistol unless you’re sneaking, resulting in a frantic spray of wasted bullets as you struggle in vain to sight on a soldier standing literally right next to you while he opens fire and slaughters you.
Suffice it to say that you’re basically repeating levels over and over in single player mode. It’s trial and error, rinse and repeat, which honestly, isn’t that much fun. Sure, there’s an insane X-Ray kill cam that shows your entire kill shot trajectory and the damage you do to your enemies in violent and excruciating detail, but after you’ve blown away about 30 or 40 soldiers and shattered most parts of their bodies, it honestly becomes tedious to watch all the kills. The AI is weak, the enemies are cheap, and ultimately, single player missions aren’t all that fun. All the original DLC is included in this Remastered version however, so at least you’re getting plenty of content!
In addition, there are multiple multiplayer modes, and the Switch has the unique ability to play 4 player local multiplayer, something not available on any other version of the game. On the other hand, online multiplayer is limited to 8 players, a choice that unfortunately makes V2 feel much more like a game from 2012. Multiplayer consists of 4 modes: Campaign Co-op, Bombing Run (scavenge for vehicle parts and escape before the bombers hit you), Overwatch mode where you work in a modified sniper/spotter team, and Kill Tally, reminiscent of Call of Duty Zombies, where waves of enemies rush you and you kill them. There’s enough content in multiplayer to make up for the rather weak campaign mode, and it plays pretty smoothly. I didn’t manage to get anyone to come play the local co-op with me, but I can assume profanity, abuse, and alcohol would flow freely with that one, so it’s a win in my book right off the bat.
In terms of control, there are some issues with V2 on the Switch. For example, zooming is done with the ZR button using a selected sniper rifle. You then use R to hold your breath, line up your shot, and fire with ZR. Unfortunately, those of us with adult sized hands accidentally hit both buttons simultaneously rather easily, so it’s a simple thing to miss your short due to an errant button press. The entire configuration of the buttons is somewhat non-intuitive as well, and I often found myself hitting the wrong button and failing to search a body or crouching when I meant to climb through a window.
Ultimately, Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is a mixed bag. It’s not the worst game ever, but it’s definitely not the best, and aside from the X-Ray kills which are uniquely graphic and spectacular, there aren’t a lot of big surprises here. Multiplayer is where the game shines overall, and if you want to play a portable sniping game, this is pretty much the only one available anywhere. It plays decently on the Switch undocked, but it’s sure damned hard to see some of your extreme range targets, especially at first while you’re getting the hang of the game’s controls! If you simply must have a sniping game, Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is good, but it’s certainly not the best game overall. At over $44, it’s not the cheapest either, so it’s hard to recommend V2 to anyone but the hardest of hardcore military combat fans and sniper simulation addicts, and even they’ve probably already played it on the PC. But hey, if you’ve gotta shoot, it’s always good to shoot some Nazis and maybe even kill Hitler if you’re lucky!
This review was based on a digital copy of Sniper Elite V2 Remastered for the Switch provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked mode. All brass ejected during the writing of this review was recovered and reloaded. Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is also available for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One with slight differences from the Switch version.