Sniper Elite 3: Ultimate Edition (Switch) Review

Some months ago, I reviewed Sniper Elite V2 Remastered for the Nintendo Switch. When Rebellion (the developers of Sniper Elite) announced the port of V2, they announced a Switch port of Sniper Elite 3 would follow a few months later. Now it’s fall and the port of 3 has been released. How does it compare to V2 Remastered?

If you never watched/read my review of V2 (or just don’t remember it), my thoughts were that as a port it was very well made and the amount of content the game came with made it a worthwhile purchase. However, I wasn’t exactly keen on V2 either. It’s a somewhat mediocre shooter held together by its excellent sniping mechanics and that’s really about it. I also compared how the game looked in its new “Remastered” state compared to how it originally looked on the 360 and Wii U. And a lot of this was simply due to the fact that I already had experience with V2 long before playing Remastered. I bring this up since with Sniper Elite 3, I was going in completely blind. Having never owned or played the game on previous platforms.

Initial impressions were that Sniper Elite 3 felt more like an enhanced V2 than a full sequel. Which makes sense considering 3 was developed and released only two years after the original. This isn’t the first time a game used the previous installment as a base for a new game. And it’s not a bad practice either, in my opinion. Sniper Elite V2 was a game with many flaws but its general gameplay was not one of them. So taking that and building on it means that the game can only get better, right? In short, absolutely.

If you’re not familiar with Sniper Elite, it’s a third-person stealth-action shooter series that takes place in World War 2. The game’s big primary mechanic is its in-depth sniping which stands apart from the simple pointing and clicking of sniping from other contemporary military shooters by adding variables into the fray with bullet drop over distance, velocity, wind speed, sound, etc. Similar to V2, the game comes with several difficulty modes that scale up both the enemy AI’s skill and the variables you have to worry about while sniping all the while also having a custom difficulty setting that allows you to set all of these things to your liking. For example, if you want tougher enemies but less of a focus on sniping.

Also similar to V2 are the number of playable modes. There’s a single-player campaign along with bonus side missions (both of which are fully playable with a second player in co-op), a survival mode (this was a late Xbox 360-era game), and a pretty standard multiplayer. As this port of Sniper Elite 3 is deemed as the “Ultimate Edition” any previously released DLC for the game is now included. Including the bonus missions and some new weapons. There is one new addition with the inclusion of a “Shooting Range” which basically is just an environment for shooting all of the in-game guns at various targets.

So what’s the story of Sniper Elite 3?

Uhhhhhhhh….

You shoot German and Italian soldiers in the desert. That’s really all you need to know. These Sniper Elite games are not exactly story-heavy though there is SOME semblance of a plot in 3 with some big bad German with a magical McGuffin and you’re the only one who can stop him. Y’know, I’ve played two of these Sniper Elite games this year. I had played V2 previously some years ago. And I even recently played like 5 seconds of Sniper Elite 4. I still have no idea what the main protagonist’s name is. I’ve read it out to myself multiple times and I still cannot for the life of me remember it. Also, strangely enough, despite V2 taking place at the end of WW2, 3 takes place several years prior. Odd.

Graphically, the game looks pretty alright. 3 was one of those cross-generational releases so the game was developed for 7^th generation consoles primarily and then given a bit more detail for the 8^th generation systems. From what footage I’ve seen of other versions of the game, the Switch is definitely leaning closer to the 8^th gen versions as opposed to the 7^th gen as the Switch version features similar foliage, detail, and lighting. Despite V2 getting a graphical overhaul for its Remastered releases, I’d still say that 3 looks a lot better. And I also noticed that the framerate seems a lot stabler than V2, too.

So how is 3 a step up from V2? Well, the game is designed almost completely different. My biggest problem with V2 was that, despite being a game that focuses heavily on sniping and stealth, the game was way too linear and often times just funneled you into some very unfun standard third-person shooting. As 3 takes place in the desert, as opposed to industrial areas and cityscapes, levels are now these semi-open sandbox environments. These levels aren’t totally non-linear, there’s a certain progression in the objectives that you have to follow. But the spaces are now much more open which allows the player to pretty much take any approach they want. There’s also more in the environment to play around with, like generators you can sabotage to create noise to cover your gunshots or various little side objectives. I feel like the biggest plus to this new design is that there’s more of a reason to flesh out what you had in your inventory. Since it now feels like you can probably use these different explosives for different scenarios instead of shoot shoot shoot. And the addition of a weapon wheel to quickly switch between your weapons and secondaries is also a very welcome addition.

The other major change is with the stealth mechanics. To me, the “stealth” in V2 felt like less stealth and more like “the game doesn’t want you to be loud right now”. There’s now a much more heavy reliance on keeping hidden and moving from hiding spot to hiding spot to not get caught while using your secondaries to create diversions. It’s actually quite a lot of fun.

A big problem I still have is the third-person shooting. Automatics and pistols still feel incredibly awful to shoot. Luckily, the stealth being redone means that the game has you shooting your secondaries much less often. But, it still really sucks in the instances where you feel like mixing up the styles of play or when the game wants you to go loud, and all of your guns become inaccurate immediately following the first shot. It’s especially infuriating with the pistols.

All I have left to talk about is the multiplayer aspect which, just like V2, as this was a review copy I couldn’t really test. However, this time I was able to try out the online co-op. It’s a ton of fun. The bigger environments definitely help in this regard as you and your partner can basically cover entirely separate portions of the levels to clear out certain objectives. Any instance of my friend firing upon German soldiers to keep them distracted while I would sneak around sabotage or capture intelligence or whatever else I had to do felt really cool.

Overall, I really liked Sniper Elite 3 Ultimate Edition. If you’ve ever been curious about the Sniper Elite games, or you just want a solid World War 2 game on your Switch, or even just a quality co-op game, this is the game to get.

Now if only Rebellion could bring Sniper Elite 4, Strange Brigade, and the Zombie Army games to Switch.

Please?

4/5