Sniper Elite PlayStation 2

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Apr 6, 2007

Sniper Elite PlayStation 2

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Oct 26, 2006 | 4 out of 5 found this Sniper Elite review helpful

Pros: Headshots; lengthy and challenging single-player campaign with a couple of really cool missions; long-range shooting is fun and satisfying; great sound puts you right in the middle of battle.

Cons: Bland graphics with lots of reused textures and characters; hit detection is a bit off sometimes; the missions can take a long time, so if you have a short attention span you'll probably get bored quickly.

The single-player campaign is quite lengthy. There are 28 missions in a variety of different (but very similar) war-torn settings. The missions are pretty much what you'd expect from a sniper game. You'll have to assassinate high-ranking officials, steal secret documents, rescue captured allies, and shoot hundreds of guys in the head. The campaign can easily take 12 hours or more to finish. If you complete all the optional objectives and take the time to set up all your shots rather than just blast away recklessly, this game will easily take up as much time as you're willing to give it. Therein lies the conundrum with this game. If you play it carefully, a single level can take well more than an hour to complete. The stealth is well done here, and the game does a great job of building up the sense of tension that comes from sneaking around and picking off enemies. After awhile, though, that tension fades into tedium and you'll eventually just be wishing you could move on already.

The missions aren't particularly satisfying, either. Some of the more complex missions are great, like when you have to climb your way up a cathedral tower and then snipe enemy soldiers as they rush your ally, who's stuck waiting for transport. The problem is that most of the missions are rather anticlimactic. You'll spend a long time fighting through as many as six or seven fairly simple but time-consuming objectives, only to have the final objective be something as simple and unexciting as walking to the ex-filtration point, unchallenged, so you can exit the level.