Sniper Elite 4 (Switch) Review – An Elite Experience

Perhaps one of the most undervalued companies making games for the Nintendo Switch has got to be Rebellion Developments. They’ve been porting some of their older titles to the console since late 2017 but starting in early 2019 they’ve been porting over nearly every single game within the Sniper Elite franchise and Zombie Army spin-off series; and I’ve had the good fortune of being able to play and review each of these games. Considering how consistent Rebellion has been thus far with their Switch ports, it wasn’t too terribly shocking when Sniper Elite 4 was announced. At the same time, I was very curious. Whereas V2, 3, and Zombie Army Trilogy were ports of last-generation games (or enhanced current gen versions of last-generation games), 4 is a full-stop current generation game from 2017 running on a brand new engine.

I guess that’s where this review should start off, talking about the port itself. That’s 99% of the reason you read reviews of third-party Switch ports. Up until now, Rebellion’s ports have been very, very good. V2 was a little smudgy and had a tendency to hitch every now and then during gunfights. 3 managed to be sharper and stabler than V2 despite pushing larger environments. But Zombie Army Trilogy was completely rock solid, maintaining a consistent and steady frame-rate and if the game had a dynamic resolution system in place I couldn’t tell since the game ran at native resolution throughout the experience.

So how does the much newer and much more technically intense SE4 hold up? Well, you know it’s gotta be good when my first impression when booting up the game’s single-player was “Does this really look better than the Xbox One version?” After a bit of playing and going back to compare the two, not quite but close enough that to the untrained eye I don’t think you’d be able to tell the difference. As one would probably expect from a third-party Switch port, the game does run with a 30fps cap while sporting a dynamic 1080p in docked mode and a dynamic 720p in handheld mode. To be fair to the Switch though, the other versions of the game on Xbone and PS4 share the same framerate and resolution target. Other visual differences from the Xbone version are a seeming lack of depth-of-field or ambient occlusion, along with a lower level of distance and lower lighting/shadow resolution. That being said, SE4 still manages to look extremely good during general gameplay. Despite utilizing a dynamic resolution, in docked mode the game manages to basically stay at native 1080p for most of the experience and only seemed to drop when in environments that naturally were so jam-packed with foliage and other debris that naturally the system would be a bit strained. The same cannot be said for handheld mode though so the game will always look just a bit blurrier than desired on the Switch’s screen although not low enough to actually manage to hinder gameplay in anyway. And the framerate? Perfect. Or at least very close to it. I noticed a hitch or two during extremely few random intervals but during gameplay (even intense sequences) I never noticed any performance drop. So if you’re here just to know how Sniper Elite 4 looks and runs and nothing else, there you go. It’s a fantastic port. Potentially one of the system’s best.

Now for the most important part of the videogame review, the videogame portion. I mentioned in my review of Sniper Elite 3 that on top of being a better port than V2, I also thought it was a better game overall. And that seems to overall be a common thread with these ports. With each new port of each new game both the quality of the port and games have only increased. So with Sniper Elite 4 being the latest in the franchise, I guess that also makes it the greatest of the franchise. Rebellion seems to have a thing for consistent improvements and I’m here for it. I guess we ought to start with what is a Sniper Elite game? Sniper Elite is a stealth-action game set in World War 2 with a heavy emphasis on third person shooting and a significantly heavier focus on the near-simulation-like mechanics of firing a sniper rifle at enemies from a great distance away. So unlike other military shooters where you just have to essentially point and click on enemies, in this game you have to account for variables including distance/drop, wind, velocity, the sound of your shots, bullet placement, etc.

As for the plot of the game… Well… So far I’ve made it a running gag in these reviews where I completely forget the name of the series’ protagonist (I finally remembered it’s Karl, I think) and then joke about how there really isn’t a story just some loose set-up of there being some German baddies you gotta go shoot real good. And it’s not like I particularly care about a World War 2 game having a deep, intense narrative. They don’t totally need it. However, games about World War 2 have been around since forever and having played three of these games in close proximity to eachother, I really did begin to find myself growing disinterested simply due to the feeling of “been there, done that”. What’s even more goofy is the fact that V2 took place at the END of WW2 and even a little bit afterward. But then 3 just goes right back to taking place during the middle of the war and 4 takes place right after 3. All I’m saying is I hope for Sniper Elite 5 they go for a nice change of scenery and maybe a totally different setting entirely. Why not set it in the ’50s or ’60s and do a cool Cold War Spy/Bond thing? I really don’t know what else they could do with the World War 2 setting outside of sending Karl to the Pacific campaign and I really hope they don’t send Karl to the Pacific campaign. Okay, rant over. Back to praise.

If you were to ask me what the differences between Sniper Elite 3 and V2 are, I’d tell you that whereas V2 is a pretty overall linear but mediocre shooter and 3 takes the same gameplay loop but tightens it up, makes it faster, adds a few Quality-of-Life improvements, and opens up the levels quite a bit. Now, if you were to ask me how 4 improves on 3, I’d say it takes the same gameplay loop but tightens it up, makes it faster, adds a few Quality-of-Life improvements, and opens up the levels quite a bit. Obviously on paper, this doesn’t really sound like much but the end result was 3 feeling like a massive improvement over V2. And the same can be easily said for how much those changes make 4 a massive improvement over 3. Sniper Elite 4 takes the franchise from what was originally a pretty straight and narrow shooter to a wide-open plinking sandbox. Lemme tell ya, it’s great.

Right off the bat, third person shooting with the secondary weapons (SMG, assault rifles, shotguns, pistols) no longer sucks! Of course I know the lethality of these weapons was nerfed so players didn’t rely on them too much instead of the sniping but it did result in the few instances of having to use one of these weapons feeling incredible frustrating. All of these guns now have a significantly tighter shooting pattern (although quickly kick up and spread out due to recoil) and overall now just feel outright better. Now I actually feel like I can switch up my play-style and get myself out of any jam. And this is only one of a mountain of QoL improvements. One feature I always thought was very neat was the customization of difficulty. SE4 comes with 5 flavors of difficulty but also a ‘Custom’ setting if, for example, you wanted to keep enemies tough but tone down the sniping simulation mechanics or vice versa. But where the custom difficulty setting in previous games consisted of a couple of options, now you’re given several pages of options to fully fine-tune the experience however you’d like.

The real star of the show are the levels themselves. While not something someone would call open-world, they are BIG and they are BUSY. As one would expect from really any videogame level, you start on one end of the map and there’s some big objective on the other side of the map you gotta do before you can leave along with a few smaller optional objectives along the way. The major difference being where previous games (even in 3) had you still following a somewhat linear path to reach your goal, in this game, the levels are basically massive circles laid out real actual tangible locations and you’re able to go anywhere within this space, in any direction or path you want to take. This of course means that there’s no longer just one certified way the game wants you to approach any objective as there’s now enough breathing room to really mess around with all of your weapons and gadgets. To contrast this, the enemy forces you go up against now have a much more varied selection of soldiers instead of a bunch of grunts and a few officers. You have snipers, jägers, radiomen, armored trucks and tanks, panzerjägers, pillboxes, etc. So even with the extra freedom, you may want to be a bit more careful about what sections and areas of the map you end up sneaking into. The game’s campaign contains 10 levels which may not sound like a lot but considering their size, as well as the amount of objectives and soldiers within each of these levels, my average playtime for each would last somewhere between 45-60 minutes in the early missions and 70-90 minutes during later levels. So there’s a lot of game to play. One thing I especially like is how each location feels significantly different so you don’t feel like you’re playing the same location twice. First level is an island, second is a harbor town, third is a forest, fourth is a dockyard, so on and so forth.

This review is already getting pretty long so let me quickly cover…everything else! Just like the previous games the entirety of the campaign along with the included survival game mode is completely co-opable with friends either offline over local wireless play or online with a Nintendo Switch Online membership. The game also has a multiplayer mode but for some odd reason it’s offered as a piece of free DLC to download so I was not able to play before the game’s release and even once the game released, no one was playing it. Last thing to cover is the DLC itself. Unlike V2 or 3 which were significantly older games, Sniper Elite 4 does not include all of the released DLC with a purchase of a standard copy of the game. So you either have to buy each piece seperately, the season pass, or instead buy the Digital Deluxe Edition for about $20 than the standard edition. The DLC mostly focuses on new missions you can play but there’s also a fairly absurd amount of DLC weapons. And I gotta be honest, most of these paid guns are kinda broken. Especially the Delisle Carbine which is a suppressed rifle and the suppressed semi-auto pistol the HDM. They’re like the tranq gun in every Metal Gear Solid game they make things a little too easy.

All in all, Sniper Elite 4 on Switch is an absolutely solid experience. I had a ton of fun playing it and I’m excited to jump into the DLC missions.

Oh also I’m excited because this means we’re probably getting a Zombie Army 4 port in the near future and oh man oh boy oh man that’s gonna be a good one.

Unless they do a Strange Brigade port first.

Please don’t do a Strange Brigade port first.

Score: 8/10

And a quick thanks to Rebellion Developments for supplying me with a review code!