[Review] Sniper Elite 4 - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Rebellion
Published By: Sold-Out Software
Categories: Shooter, Stealth
Release Date: 11.17.20

Before playing Sniper Elite 4, I was only remotely familiar with the series, mostly with a certain feature the games had. My first thought was that it’d be a game like Silent Scope, but what I got instead was a rather good third person shooter, stealth game hybrid with unbelievably satisfying kills.

So how exactly is it so satisfying? The Sniper Elite series is well know for a particular thing that happens upon a clean kill, a slow motion, x-ray kill cam. The game suddenly gets cinematic, and follows the bullet as it speeds off into your target, then showing in graphic detail, much like the modern Mortal Kombat games their demise. Bones shattering, organs exploding, it’s all incredibly gruesome, but at the same time makes taking anyone out with skill a more the better. Now, you can turn this whole thing off, but why would you want to do that?

The nazis have made a new weapon, discovered in Italy. It’s up to you, the hero Karl Fairburne to take them out. World War 2 stories are as generic as they come at this point, but I always enjoy a good excuse to kill nazis. While the overlying story didn’t really do it for me, you do get more to learn and hear with notes you’ll find throughout the vast levels you play in. These can just be random conversations with people you stumble upon, letters to home, and more about nefarious plans. This adds a little bit to the experience. You can even learn about the people you’ll kill in messy ways by examining them with your binoculars. There’s two sides to this, yeah the guy might have just became a family man, or they may be really young, or even really just new on the job, but they’re also still nazis.

So covering how the game actually plays, it’s a fairly standard third person shooter mixed with a pretty good stealth game. You can really play it either way, but the game definitely rewards you with a smoother experience playing stealthily. Speaking of experience, you can earn some and rank up depending on how you kill. Do it by sneaking up behind someone and slitting their throat? Giving a clean(?) headshot and watching their eye explode? Hell, even shooting them in the genitals counts for something. There’s a lot of things to shoot too, so you’ll get a mighty bit of practice. but even with that there is a training ground mode just to fiddle around with targets. Each level has you in a rather big area, which if it wasn’t for the maps, would be quite easy to get lost in. There’s main and side goals such as assassination these generals, destroying their cameras, and even minor things like collecting all of a certain collectable. Considering the size, I got majority of the items, but still missed out on quite a few. I definitely will be replaying the level to find everything, since I’m sure there was somewhere I didn’t look. This can also all be done with a friend, which for shooting games is always up my alley, and can probably make finding the collectables easier if you split up.

I’m not sure if I enjoyed the game because of the kill cam or regardless of it, but I know for a fact I enjoyed Sniper Elite 4. I wish there wasn’t so much DLC for a port of a game from three years ago, but in my play time, I did feel like I had a quite decent amount of content and replayability.