While making the video preview of Sniper Elite 5, I sent a question to the developers inquiring why they added non-lethal options on top of the already-present stealth takedowns and ranged combat. I don’t know if any response could have satisfied me, or convinced me that it was a good idea – I suppose the best possible version would be ‘We really liked the whole ‘clean kill/silent assassin’ thing in Hitman, and we wanted to do exactly that’. Maybe this was all just a huge misunderstanding, and the developers were so laser-focused on the mechanics of their game that they didn’t stop to consider the context in which those mechanics were being implemented.

Part of the response does have that vibe, but another, more concerning part, absolutely does not.

The first section talks about player choice – those who would clear the map, versus those who want to test themselves by being true ghosts, slipping in and out without ever being detected. So, as I said – Hitman franchise stuff.

They also discuss the extra challenge of leaving someone unconscious, because if another guard wakes them up, they’ll be back on-mission and will likely sound an alarm.

We also get the strange justification that ‘knocking people out is silent‘, making it tactically useful. But of course, stabbing people in the throat or brain is also silent, unless the developers have made the decision to make it unrealistically noisier. Likewise, sub-sonic ammunition exists in the world – that’s what allows Karl’s iconic Welrod pistol to be functionally noiseless – it’s not just that the whole gun is a silencer, it’s that the bullet never breaks the sound barrier.

There are all mechanical considerations, though, and have nothing inherently troubling about them – where we run into trouble is the middle paragraph, which talks about the ‘enemy bio’ items that come up when the player uses their binoculars to tag foes. This has been in the series since Sniper Elite 3, and there I found it to be cute, but worried it was being used to humanize Nazis, which is a terrible idea that can only lead to bad outcomes.

My fears have been realized in Sniper Elite 5, as the developer specifically says that the bios are there to give the player more information when making their decision whether to kill or merely knock out enemies.

That’s right – the developers want the player to judge for themselves whether they’re dealing with ‘good Nazis’ or ‘bad Nazis’ and factoring that into a choice to kill or merely subdue. This is reminiscent of Watchdogs‘ mobile phone scanning, where the player can link up with anyone on the street and learn a fact about them. It was a nice mechanic there, because you would learn fun things about random people on the street, and then occasionally one would be a serial killer, and you’d murder them.

The problem with using this mechanic in a Sniper Elite game is that it creates a framework in which such a thing as a ‘good Nazi’ exists. While I was a little concerned about this before, in the end it wasn’t problematic since all the Nazis had to die, no matter who they were. Players would learn a colorful piece of information – occasionally something that might even humanize them a little – but at the end of the day, they’re still Nazis, and as a consequence, they have to get killed. Sure, plenty of them were conscripts, but these are men wearing the uniform of a genocidal regime bent on total domination of Europe and beyond, so it really doesn’t matter whether they love puppies or not, they have to die just the same.

By adding in non-lethal options, however, the developers are saying that maybe it doesn’t matter what actions a person takes part in if they’re a ‘good person’ inside. From a moral standpoint, this is abominable. At the end of the day, it’s not important whether a Nazi soldier loves their children. It doesn’t matter if if they get aroused while setting prisoners on fire. Their internal lives are irrelevant – this is a war, they’re wearing Nazi uniforms, and that means there can be only two ways out – they can abandon the cause and surrender, or they can die. That’s it.

And, as a commando behind enemy lines, Karl Fairburne isn’t in a position to be taking any prisoners.

That’s not the worst of it, though – I’ve been writing this criticism under the assumption that people were going to let the ‘good Nazis’ live, and just kill the ‘bad Nazis’ – but there are people out there with a very different conception of what constitutes good and bad. In Sniper Elite 4, if you didn’t want to kill a specific Nazi based on his bio, it made the game more difficult, because that was one more Nazi trying to kill you. Sniper Elite 5‘s non-lethal takedown mode makes it easier for people to save their preferred Nazis – whoever those might be.

Has Rebellion not thought this through?

They’ve essentially ensured that someone is going to make a video where they play the game killing any Nazi who’s insufficiently passionate about genocide, and preserving the lives of Nazis who enjoy machine-gunning people and love to taunt American prisoners in English before murdering them. It was theoretically possible, with lots of saving and loading, to make that video in Sniper Elite 4 but the non-lethal options in Sniper Elite 5 remove all the difficulty, ensuring that those videos are going to be made using the game engine.

By stepping outside the ‘kill or die’ paradigm and creating a third option in which a soldier gets to decide for themselves which Nazi is a decent person who gets to live, and which is a bad person that has to die, the developers at Rebellion have opened the door to moral depravity, and if they care at all about their game’s impact on the world, they’ll take out the non-lethal options before the game is released and the Sniper Elite franchise can go back to serving its longstanding purpose – reminding us that Nazis need to die, and it’s better if those deaths are brutal.

VIDEO SCRIPT

There’s a new Sniper Elite game coming soon.

On one level this is super-exciting because as a longtime fan of the series I’ve reviewed all of them for Gamecritics, and have watched as the franchise has gradually improved and been perfected over the years by developers with a passion for delivering the most intense stealth and sniping experience possible.

The setting this time – France – promises castles, rivers, ports, and the kind of verdant forests we don’t get enough of in the franchise, The wooded area in Sniper Elite 4 was a delight, and the little bits of nature that I saw in this hands-on preview were both gorgeous and a perfect place to explore and stalk through.

Gameplay-wise, Sniper Elite 5 mostly offers refinements to the design elements we saw in SE3 and SE4.

For example, instead of swapping out their starting kit, players scavenge weapons from the fallen dead and hold onto them as temporary weapons to be used for a few minutes and discarded. It’s a decent system, and does a good job of showing off the different ways guns can be customized, as enemy weapons come with a wide variety of sights, barrels, and magazines. This leads to some questions about why there’s a silenced colt .45 with a 17-bullet capacity lying around a French farmhouse, but players are ostensibly expected to enjoy sampling the armaments rather than worrying about the realism of the situation.

The game even takes a note from Hitman‘s book by setting up specific ways to kill mission targets for rewards. In the level I played, I was asked to drop a chandelier on an officer’s head while he was surveying stolen art in a ballroom. It’s an interesting addition that should encourage players to go back to levels multiple times and test out a variety of approaches.

If these were all the changes that Rebellion made to Sniper Elite, it would be one of my most-anticipated games of the year.

Tragically, this isn’t the case.

Why? Because they made one additional change that transforms the adventure from a delightful fantasy to be savored and turns it into a nightmare to be deeply concerned about.

That change? Non-lethal options.

I was genuinely aghast when I watched the ‘how to play’ video and saw Karl Fairburne – the main character of the SE series, and a man known only for massacring nazis – flip his knife around and clonk a nazi over the head instead of slitting his throat. I don’t have footage of this because why would I ever do something like that in this game? I do, however, have footage of SE5‘s menus which clearly establish that not only does the game have fantasy non-lethal ammunition for weapons, but there are actual badges for getting through a level without killing any non-key targets.

That’s right – Sniper Elite 5 will award experience points for NOT killing Nazis.

To be absolutely crystal clear, this is the Sniper Elite franchise – a series that leads the industry in depicting the brutal murder of Nazis, and I revel in the joyful depiction of shrapnel perforating the internal organs of Nazi soldiers in gruesome slow-motion. Indeed, the point of this series is to remind people that Nazis are monsters, and to allow them to deliver brutal deaths to the Nazis whose actions have earned them… and yet, apparently the developers at Rebellion have decided you should be able to liberate France and dispense justice without hurting Nazis?

To those who might say – ‘Well, this is for people who don’t like games to be disgusting‘ I say turn off the x-ray death cam.

To those who might say ‘Maybe there should be less-violent options for people who are interested in the story‘, I say play something else – Sniper Elite is, and has always been, a game about murdering Nazis. If you want to avoid killing things, play a Thief game, or play Metal Gear – they require or at least heavily encourage stealth without murder.

For disturbed individuals who want to play as a Nazi, I’m sure EA and Activision will be happy to take your money, but this is Sniper Elite. This is a game about killing Nazis.

What makes this design decision even worse is the reality that in our current political climate, American politicians go in front of cameras and use Hitler as a role model and an actual fascist is in a head-to-head runoff to be the president of France. At this moment in time as literal, real-world fascism is on the rise, Rebellion has decided to make killing Nazis optional. The game is literally about stopping a Nazi invasion of America and the developers think it’s a good idea to say that hey, maybe we don’t have to kill Nazis?

Who was asking for this? What were the developers thinking??

And no, that question is not rhetorical. I actually need to know because this game has been in development for years.

Hundreds of people have worked on it.

At some point, at least one of them had to say ‘Maybe Nazis shouldn’t die in this game.’ and then some number of people had to approve that decision.

And then people had to code in an ‘unconscious’ state to enemies.

And then they had to craft animations of people getting knocked out.

And then they had to design the badges that players get for not killing Nazis.

This didn’t happen accidentally. People decided that Sniper Elite, which had, up until this moment, been where people who want to kill Nazis in videogames go to have the best possible experience killing Nazis – should suddenly become be a game where maybe it’s okay for Nazis to get a pass??

This is disgusting.

Luckily, there’s still time to fix this. Sniper Elite 5 doesn’t come out for another six weeks, and this isn’t a difficult thing to patch out. Remove the ‘knock-out’ button and prompt. Delete all references to non-lethal ammunition from the loadout screen and game world, and erase those badges from the awards menu.

Nazis need to die, and it’s Sniper Elite‘s job to make those deaths as entertaining as possible. So fix this, Rebellion, or be remembered as the company that pulled an abrupt about-face in a world with real, actual fascism on the rise and said ‘Hey, maybe the Nazis weren’t so bad, after all…‘

HIGH Getting a scope shot from 250 meters away.

LOW Fighting against technical limitations on PSVR.

WTF That’s a strange replacement for Swastikas everywhere!

There wasn’t a moment of Sniper Elite VR that didn’t feel familiar to me. Sniping German officers from church towers like a holy avenging angel, infiltrating rail yards to sabotage infrastructure, having run-and-gun battles through bombed-out villages — everything it has to offer, I’ve already seen in Sniper Elite 4. Literally, in most cases, because the game is built almost entirely from assets snagged from it. That said, if a game is going to be made out of recycled assets, this is the way to do it.

A first-person VR take on Sniper Elite 4, Sniper Elite VR starts in the 1980s as a now-elderly partisan spends his days reminiscing about the bloodshed he was responsible for while taking Italy back from the fascists, and attempting to convince himself that it was all worth it because it created a comparatively safe and free world for his children to grow up in. It’s a hell of a framing device to come back to between each mission of virtual reality sniping, because the game is constantly reminding the player of the stakes of each mission.

It’s impressive how thoroughly the developers have recreated the Sniper Elite experience in VR — this isn’t merely a stationary shooter where the player perches on a series of rooftops and kills their targets. No, players will be taking on nearly all of the activities one would expect from a SE game like sneaking through enemy lines, executing soldiers with their silenced Welrod pistol, and sabotaging generators to give them audio cover while they snipe enemy soldiers.

The only thing that doesn’t feel completely Sniper Elite is the stealth, which is a little on the awkward side. There’s a reason that most stealth games tend to have a third-person perspective — the ability to follow enemy movements while remaining in cover is integral to an accessible stealth experience. SEVR does a good job of keeping things playable by not packing levels full of enemies whenever stealth is a necessity, but they’re consistently the most difficult sections to play because of the limited perspective.

Thankfully, Sniper Elite VR‘s sniping is impeccably tuned. There’s a wide variety of rifles, and the devs go to great lengths to adhere to realism as much as possible. True to their historical counterparts, the rifles all have fixed-range scopes — the only zooming possible is when the player uses their ‘focus’ meter to slow down time and perfect their aim, and even that only lasts a few seconds. The vast majority of sniping takes place in the 100-250 meter range, though, so it shouldn’t be too taxing. There’s even an easy mode that turns bullet drop off and makes every bullet hit the center of the crosshairs.

As usual, there’s also a red dot sight that shows where a bullet will hit before the trigger is pulled, effectively teaching players how to compensate for bullet drop in case they ever want to play the game on a higher difficulty level. The developers even added a red circle that lets players see where their SMG and pistol rounds are going to hit for people uncomfortable with VR aiming — in a nod to realism, the aimpoint only appears if they physically raise the gun up to their eye level and look down the sights. Essentially, every aim support in the game is designed to get the player comfortable enough with the controls so that they won’t have to use them any more.

In a slightly bizarre move, the developers have made the decision to include their famous ‘bullet cam’ sequences — when the player makes a particularly skillfull shot, the camera will follow the bullet through the air on the way to its target, then show the bullet tearing the enemy’s body apart in excruciating detail. My objection isn’t to the brutality on display — I’ve long since made my peace with this aspect of the franchise — but instead, the issue is in how these bullet-cam sequences break the flow of gameplay in a way they never did in non-VR iterations.

In a regular Sniper Elite, when the bullet cam ends, the player is returned to the moment they fired, aiming at the exact same point when they pulled the trigger. In VR, if the player moves their hands even slightly while watching the violent execution, it’s impossible to predict where they’ll be looking when the camera snaps back. This loss of situational awareness got me killed more than once, and after struggling against it for the better part of an hour, I did the unthinkable and turned off the X-Ray camera.

Apart from this issue, I ran into a few fairly serious technical problems while playing the game. For example, when playing with a Dual Shock, instead of letting the player aim with their eyes as in Resident Evil 7‘s VR mode, the developers expect players to awkwardly lift their controllers in front of their faces. It’s a disaster.

The Aim controller makes sniping feel much more natural since I was actually holding a ‘rifle’ up to my shoulder to shoot, and the thumbsticks ensure that navigating levels is a breeze. Trying to use pistols or picking up items feels unnatural, though, so it’s a tradeoff.

The Move controllers let the player realistically grab things in the environment, wield a pistol in each hand, and manually throw grenades, so if immersion is important, that’s the way to go. That said, the biggest problem with the PSVR is an issue of lag. Not only did I have an unusually large amount of drift, but there was a slight lag between my real-life movement and actions happening in-game. It wasn’t much more than a quarter-second, but in VR any delay is extremely noticeable. I also played the game on Vive with motion controllers and experienced none of these issues — if it’s possible, PCVR is the best way to play.

Sniper Elite VR has scrunched down everything great about the series and created a near-perfect recreation that players can now experience from the inside.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Just Add Water and published by Rebellion. It is currently available on PC/PS4/PS5. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC and PS5. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game was rated M by the ESRB, and it contains, Blood, Intense Violence, Language. There’s some mild swearing in the game, but as usual, the main reason to keep kids way from the game is the omnipresent hyper-gore that happens whenever a bullet explodes someone’s eye.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes for the game’s subtitles, allowing players to choose the main and background colors that are most visible to them.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be be altered and/or resized. I played much of the game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. While there’s no enemy radar, there are onscreen indicators to let players know which directions they’re being fired at from. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable. There is no control diagram. The game can be played with a DS4, Aim Controller, or Move controllers on Playstation, and with Motion controllers on PC.

HIGH Hitting an enemy sniper halfway across the map.

LOW Up-close combat not involving sniper rifles.

WTF The x-ray testicle shot. Ouch.

Sniper Elite 4 originally came out in 2017, and like many other previously-released efforts, it’s getting a Switch port. I can’t offer any comparison to the original release or the previous entries in the series, but overall this (wait for it…) hits the mark.

Sniper Elite 4 takes place in Italy during World War II. Players control a U.S. sniper making his way across enormous levels, with such locales as rural villages, coastal urban centers, and military bases. Gameplay is mostly third person, with a scope-centric, first-person view when needing to snipe a distant target.

Most missions are rather linear but the vastness of each stage, plus the addition of multiple sidequests, helps to make things feel more open-ended. Goals usually revolve around killing a certain person, but also things like sabotaging military equipment and intel reconnaissance. Add in dozens of stage-specific collectibles like journal entries and letters home, and players can spend hours in just a single map.

A good chunk of that time will be spent as a sniper, which is a good thing as sniping is the highlight of combat here. Precise controls mean successfully lining up a shot that hits a moving target halfway across the map is quite satisfying. I would have been perfectly content spending the entire game in sniper mode – it’s that good.

Players earn experience for well-placed shots, like the eye, heart, or even the testicles! Many of these hits are shown up close and personal with x-ray vision that appears as the bullet zooms towards the unfortunate recipient – bones shattering and organs being punctured are displayed in gory slow motion. This occasionally feels like overkill, but squeamish players can turn this option off if they so choose.

Unfortunately, combat when not sniping isn’t as gratifying. The third-person aiming is clunky and I found myself preferring to hide, rather than taking on soldiers face-to-face. Much of the campaign can be completed solely by sniping enemies from afar, but there are a few parts where close combat becomes a necessity. I was always pleased when these sections were over quickly.

My only other complaint about Sniper Elite 4 is that it’s not a complete package. Three years after initial release, the Switch version arrives with numerous DLC options that require additional purchase – none of which appear to be new content. I’m not completely against DLC, but it feels like players are being nickel-and-dimed here.

Fortunately, the core experience is enjoyable enough to look past these minor shortcomings, and more often than not, Sniper Elite 4 hits the bullseye.

Disclosures: This game is developed by and published by Rebellion. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, Switch, PC, and Stadia. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. No time was spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Language. A well-placed shot often results in an x-ray vision of splattered brains, ruptured intestines, punctured lungs, and shattered bones. Even with the option to turn off, the game can be overly violent. This game is definitely not for little kids.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Subtitles are on by default, but text size cannot be changed. The game appears to be fully captioned, as I noticed numerous dialogue additions (laughs, scoffs, etc.) allowing players to know what game characters are doing besides talking. In-game audio cues, like planes and tanks moving nearby, are shown on screen with a flashing icon. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. However, players can invert the Y axis and there are optional motion controls for aiming weapons.

HIGH I’ll never get tired of killing you, Zombie Hitler.

LOW Waiting two minutes in an empty arena to kill a shield zombie.

WTF That is… a lot of tank.

Fans of the first three installments might be confused that Rebellion took the word “Nazi” out of the title for number four, but it’s understandable from a marketing perspective since actual Nazis are attempting a comeback around the world. However, one could also make the argument that it’s the perfect time for a game featuring the wholesale slaughter of (undead) Nazis that have crawled out their way out of hell. Thankfully, this slight change in branding is the only compromise that Rebellion has made — this latest entry is still the grindhouse splatterfest that fans of the series have come to expect.

In the aftermath of Super-Hitler’s death at the end of NZA3, the world expected the zombies he raised to quietly march back to their graves. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred — it seems that sending Hitler to hell has only made him stronger, and now portals releasing nightmarish monstrosities are opening up all across Europe. It’s up to Karl, Boris, and two new additions to the roster, Jun and Shola, to end the occult war once and for all.

From a gameplay standpoint, this feels as much like a sequel to Rebellion’s 2018 3rd-Person Shooter Strange Brigade as it does a follow-up to the NZA trilogy. It’s a fantastic choice on the developers’ part since SB was a masterful example of quick and brutal co-op gameplay, and transitioning those mechanics into the gore-strewn locales of Zombie Army 4 works perfectly.

While there’s plenty of opportunity for Sniper Elite purists to practice precision shooting, other playstyles are also encouraged and ZA4‘s varied arsenal adapts well to player preferences. Each weapon category (rifles, secondary weapons, and pistols) has multiple options available, varying wildly in firing speed and power. SMGs, shotguns, and even pistols are all effective choices, and just like in SB, killing enemies quickly unlocks a brutal takedown that can end any enemy’s unlife with the simple tap of a button.

The devs have also added special powers to each weapon class — pistols can mark and execute half a dozen zombies in less than two seconds, rifles can stagger an entire horde with an overpowered round, and secondary weapons slow time to let the player unleash a hail of lead while dodging out of trouble. Each weapon also has a unique upgrade tree where players use upgrade kits found in the world to imbue them with elemental powers, buff their damage, or even make them unusually effective at smashing zombie skulls.

The thing that elevates ZA4 above the rest of the franchise is the care that the devs have taken to build a world where the gameplay makes perfect sense. The rest of the series was always held back by having to use Sniper Elite V2‘s assets — fine for stealth kills and long-range shooting, but never ideal for taking on hordes of zombies. This time the levels feel perfectly balanced for battling the undead thanks to defensible chokepoints to mine, overlooks for sniping, and plenty of debris-strewn arenas for players to dodge through while shotgunning zombies to pieces.

Incredibly, the maps work just as well for single player as they do for co-op. A lone soldier can easily move from one area to another while changing their tactics as the tide of battle shifts, but bringing a team will allow each player to pick a role and stick to it. A sniper can provides overwatch for an emplaced machine gunner while a melee specialist covers their flanks, for example. ZA4 doesn’t require teamwork to be entertaining, but it certainly rewards it as co-op is clearly the best way to experience ZA4.

Also impressive is the wide variety of enemies. Offering the largest roster of any Zombie Army game, ZA4 offers more than a dozen different types, from plain zombies and Resident Evil-inspired creepers, all the way up to nightmarish shadow demons that teleport soldiers across the map and scream the skin off their bones.

Just as in Strange Brigade, these enemies are meted out gradually over the course of the campaign to ensure that there are always surprises in store for the length of the campaign, and the final boss must be seen to be believed. The only dud is the shield zombie that hides behind a bulletproof barrier and lobs grenades with unerring accuracy. It’s completely manageable in co-op because it’s easy to flank, but solo players will find themselves frustrated as they wait for the shielder to pop its head out from behind cover while a horde closes in around them. In fact, they disrupt the flow of combat so badly in 1P that they should have been included only in multiplayer.

After wondering where it could go after the third entry, Zombie Army 4: Dead War is a fitting finale to the franchise. Everything about the presentation is top-notch, and there’s even a special surprise for anyone playing on the PS4. Between Left 4 Dead and World War Z, the co-op zombie shooter is a genre with some truly great titles, and now Rebellion has finally made a game that deserves to be named among the best of them.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Rebellion. It is currently available on PC, XBO and PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed multiple times. 5 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Language. This is as far from acceptable for children as you can get. It’s brutally violent, full of Nazi iconography, and even contains the odd naughty word! Seriously, though, the loving detail with which exploding torsos are rendered in slow-motion will be troubling to any parent. Consider Strange Brigade instead – it’s a largely bloodless take on the same concept by the same developers.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Please stick to Easy difficulty. While the game does an incredibly good job of being accessible by offering resizable subtitles for all in-game dialogue and onscreen indicators to let players know when zombies are approaching, there are ‘Suicider’ enemies that run screaming towards the player before blowing themselves up. They move fast, and the only real warning they’re on the way is the distinctive sound they make. Without that warning, they will hit you, and frequently. On easy difficulty they can’t one-shot kill you, though, so the game will be playable. Only attempt higher difficulty levels if you have a good team that’s always ready to revive you.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. It does, however, offer the option to plug in a USB mouse and keyboard if you want to enjoy more precise shooting!

HIGH Pulling off a 400-meter headshot in high winds.

LOW No longer being able to choose what kind of scope I want to use.

WTF The often-strange bios that appear over enemies when watching them with binoculars.

Well, Rebellion has done it again. Every time a new Sniper Elite game has come out since 2012’s V2, I`ve noticed that each title is a marked improvement over the previous one. There’s something new this time, however — something that elevates Sniper Elite 4 beyond incremental improvement, marking it as the first great game in the series. Rebellion has finally embraced open levels that can be fully explored and traversed, and the difference is tremendous.

Moving the action to Italy, Sniper Elite 4 follows franchise hero Karl Fairburne on his quest to safeguard the Allied invasion of Sicily. The Axis want to deploy radio-operated drone bombs capable of sinking the fleet before it nears land, and they must be stopped. To accomplish this he’ll have to work with Italian partisans, collect secret documents, and, naturally, shoot people from hundreds of meters away.

At long last, Rebellion has both the will to design an incredible sniping game and the technology to realize their dreams. Gone are the tight canyons and claustrophobic cities of the previous entries. While players could (at best) expect three or four great sniping setpieces in the earlier games, SE4 offers choice sightlines and perfectly-placed roosts in every single level. Each area also offers a wide variety of sound-masking options to give players the chance to shatter skulls all over the map without the enemy having the slightest idea where the shots are coming from.

The first level acts as a kind of statement of purpose — Karl is set loose on an island where the drone is being tested, and tasked with killing a general and his four officers. Players can approach this task any way they want, including blasting their way from cover to cover, riddling Nazis with SMG fire, sneaking around patrols, setting traps and slitting throats, or — and this is where the game really stands out — climbing to the top of a tower and shooting the general from 400 meters away. Sniper Elite 4 is now both the most versatile entry in the franchise, and the most sniping-focused.

Sniper aficionados will find that playing on Authentic difficulty is once again a sadistically satisfying experience. Where the normal mode simplifies matters by letting players zoom in and out with both the sniper scope and the binoculars they use to mark targets, Authentic locks them into using a standard magnification – 20x for the binocs, or considerably lower for the rifles. Not being able to mark targets and watch silhouettes move behind cover changes the game completely. Accurate shooting requires binoculars to find out an enemy’s exact distance, adjusting the scope for bullet drop, and some quick calculations to determine how wind strength will affect their aim. It’s harsh training, and at the start of the game, every successful shot feels like a miracle. By the end of the campaign, players will be able to hit their marks entirely on instinct.

The multiplayer is excellent once again. While it features standard deathmatch modes, the real standouts are the sniping challenges. No-Man’s-Land mode forces teams to stay on opposite sides of a barrier, engaging solely with rifles. Distance King, scores players (or teams) based on how far their killshots flew before putting their opponents down. Both work incredibly well and feel like nothing else out there. While there are just a few maps currently available, each is dense and complex enough to allow for intensely strategic gameplay.

While the entire campaign can be played in two-player co-op, the standout co-op mode is Overwatch. This mode offers two huge maps packed with objectives, but the twist is that one player controls Karl, moving along a series of cliffs and bridges looking down on the mission area, while the second player controls a partisan commando who must sneak through the levels, stealing files and sabotaging facilities. The commando also marks targets for the sniper to execute, and the sniper picks off the soldiers that have the commando pinned down under heavy fire. It’s a completely different experience than the campaign, but it’s every bit as polished and fits perfectly alongside it. It’s only two levels, but they’re beautifully constructed and do an incredible job of encouraging and transforming teamwork into satisfying gameplay. 

Sniper Elite 4 is the best sniping game I’ve ever played, and is absolutely the high point of the series. This is a perfect example of what can be achieved if a developer understands what their game’s potential is, and never stops working towards it. Rebellion has made huge leaps forward with every new entry in this series, and they’ve finally reached a point where the results are flat-out incredible. I can only imagine the great things they’ll accomplish in the future. Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Rebellion. It is currently available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 4 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains violence, blood and gore, strong language. As always, I’m going to suggest that you keep the kids as far as possible from this title. Exploding eyeballs, crushed testicles, punctured livers spewing bile everywhere — this is as disgustingly violent as games get. I know it’s tempting, especially today, to teach children the value of shooting Nazis and Fascistas, but try to find a game that’s a little less gruesome unless they’re in their mid-to-late teens.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: On the higher difficulty levels sound is an important element of the game’s design, but so long as you turn the mini-map on you should have no trouble playing the game. There’s still a sound-masking symbol onscreen to let you know when it’s safe to snipe.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The Zombie Hitler battle.

LOW The fact that some levels basically can't be played solo.

WTF It's the zombpocalypse. Why are zombies hiding inside suits of armor?

Nazi Zombie Army was a fun departure for the Sniper Elite series, repurposing V2's assets to build a charming little zombie massacre simulator. The war-torn cityscapes looked great with viscera and pentagrams splattered on every surface, and shooting hordes of zombies with well-placed sniper rounds was a nice change of pace. Yes, the levels were a little on the short side, and yes, some areas were obvious pulls from sections of V2, but both NZA and its sequel were easy to like since they were made as a lark by the devs as a side project, and sold at discount prices.

Now? They're being released as a full package along with a wholly new third chapter, and the entire franchise has gone from a 'minor investment/meager reward' affair to a genuinely fantastic package.

Players who enjoyed the first two games in the series will find little new in their presentation here. They've been faithfully recreated on consoles, with players of V2 still able to enjoy taking a tour of numerous familiar locations now overrun by the hungry dead and their annoying skeleton sidekicks.

The gameplay design is relatively simple—players run through some narrow alleys to a defensible location, then some pretext is given to begin a zombie siege. Repeat 18 times, and the first two episodes are basically covered. It's all well-built, but there's nothing in it to impress players looking for something more than a slower-paced Left 4 Dead.

On the other hand, the third episode surpasses all the expectations that the first two create.

Obviously built as new from the ground up, NZA3 features a wide variety of interesting locations that move the soldiers out of the city, through a haunted forest, to a mad scientist's castle, and finally the mountainside headquarters of the undead Reich. The level design is stellar, the new enemies are challenging and scary in equal measure, and it finally offers the series a boss fight worthy of the name. If Nazi Zombie Army was an experiment, the third chapter proves it was a successful one.

That's not to say the NZA Trilogy is without problems, though. The biggest issue is that the lack of AI helpers makes the game exceptionally frustrating for solo players. Even when the enemy spawning rate is set to a level meant to be appropriate for a single person, many of the siege setpieces are designed so that multiple angles absolutely must be covered at all times, making them basically impossible for anyone not in co-op. A few AI characters throwing down some additional covering fire would have gone a long way towards improving the solo experience.

On the upside, playing with co-op partners works fantastically. The levels were clearly designed with this in mind—areas are big enough so that there's always room for each player to set up their own angle against the onrushing hordes, but streamlined enough so that players will never get lost and trapped without backup. There are even a few new survival levels that challenge teams to survive wave after wave of Nazi zombies in a series of large forts. These are also essentially unplayable by solo players, but a complete blast for teams working in sync to set traps and explode skulls.

The Nazi Zombie Army Trilogy is one of the better co-op shooter experiences available on current generation consoles, and the slower pacing and shambling foes give it a character unlike anything else out there. Taken as a complete package it's a great shooter, but given that it's such an impossibly uphill battle for single players, only those with Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus need apply. Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 10 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed 1 time) and 10 hours of play in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood and gore, intense violence, use of alcohol. Parents should keep their children very far away from this game. There's no booze, smoking, or sex, but almost every surface in the game is decorated with either internal organs or a screaming corpse. Games don't get much gorier than this, and it's absolutely not for kids.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: You will be mostly fine with the game. For the most part you'll have visual warnings about approaching zombies, and all instructions are presented as text. Unfortunately the 'suicide zombie', who runs up and pulls the pin on a grenade, usually killing with one hit, announces himself primarily by screaming at the top of his lungs(does he still have those?). He's much more brightly lit than other zombies, and easy to pick out of a crowd, but if you happen to be covering another angle, not being able to hear his wailing can lead to a nasty, game-ending surprise.

HIGH Sneaking up on a tank and putting a bullet in its gas hatch.

LOW Dying stupidly and finding out that my last checkpoint was 90 minutes ago…. because there aren't checkpoints.

WTF Perfect headsh—He's got a metal mask? Who wears a metal mask?!?

Sniper Elite 3 Ultimate Edition takes players back to the North African Theatre of World War 2, offering all the sniping action of the original release, along with three new missions on two new maps, and a host of new weapons to experiment with.

I enjoyed this version far more than my last experience with the game, although that's less to do with the fairly mixed new content, and more because I used this opportunity to try the game's 'realistic' difficulty setting. To my surprise, I found it to have a transformative effect that elevated the game's accomplishments and made its flaws melt away.

The meat of the Ultimate Edition is a three-mission pack about saving Winston Churchill from assassination by a team of elite German commandoes, but these missions are something of a mixed bag.

The first reuses one of SE3's maps—it's an inspired reuse, with interesting enemy placements and plenty of new obstacles to overcome, but it's still not a wholly new mission. The second takes place inside a secret weapons lab. It's an interesting location, but far too small for many sniping opportunities to arise. The mini-campaign is wholly redeemed by the third new mission, which has two halves. The first concerns eliminating foes in and around a cliffside village and a Roman ruin. The second is even more impressive, as it's an epic sniper duel against a team of marksmen—exactly the type of nail-biting setpiece action that SE3 was woefully short of.

The new weapons added to this version aren't anything special. While it's nice to finally have a quick-firing pistol to make the stealth sequences a little less awkward, the new rifles (each with their own strengths and weaknesses, of course) aren't so different from the four base weapons. Their inclusion seems mostly like a nod to firearms aficionados.

While the bonus content may not set the world on fire, I'm still going to recommend the Ultimate Edition more strongly than I did the base game, and that's because of my experiences with the 'Authentic' difficulty level. It's rare that a harder difficulty level changes not only how a game is played, but what it is on a fundamental level, but this isn't just a sadistically difficult way of playing. ‘Authentic' is a new game, and a much better one.

Playing on this level of difficulty takes away all aiming assistance, the mini-map, and the ability to tag enemies. Where SE3 allowed players to muddle through with decent stealth skills and sniping only when it was convenient or flashy, Authentic difficulty makes sniping a necessity, and it's players' only hope for survival.

In this mode, enemies are smarter and far more accurate, and their bullets are incredibly deadly. The only way to survive is to develop the kind of sniping skills that the game should have been about all along—things like sneaking from cover to cover, setting traps, and shooting enemies in the head and then disappearing before their allies can figure out the shot came from. Doing these things feels vital and intense in a way that the regular game never did. While in this mode I strongly recommend that the X-Ray Bullet Cam be turned off before playing. Not only does it seriously distract from the flow of combat, avoiding indulgence in the gore is considerably less damaging to the human soul!

However, even this stellar version isn't without flaws.

Since players can't count on a visual cue to calculate their bullet drop, it only makes sense to use the rifle with the highest muzzle velocity, since it makes long-range shooting something other than impossible. There's just no reason to ever use the other guns. The other drawback is that in-mission saving is completely turned off for Authentic difficulty, and these are some punishingly difficult levels. The fact that one mistake can cost players a full hour of progress provides a significant disincentive to trying it out. I understand that letting players save and retry shots as many times as they want would have drained the tension that's so vital to this mode's success, but Rebellion could have left automatic checkpoints in to make the thing a little more accessible without compromising their vision.

Sniper Elite 3: Ultimate Edition isn't a huge improvement over the original version, but going back and playing it again showed me that I'd seriously underestimated that game in my original review last year. On second glance, it's an amazing sniping experience available at a budget price. This is a game that shooter fans who are willing to push their skills and patience to the limit absolutely shouldn't miss. Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 20 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed 1 time) and 3 hours of play in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood and gore, intense violence, language. Dear lord, don't let your children anywhere near this game. It's not for them. Just… no. This is violence so far on the other side of acceptable that you must protect them at any cost.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: You should have an okay time. This time around there are clear visual signals letting players know when they've been spotted, and even a distance meter letting them know how far they are from safe cover, so they won't have to rely on hearing an enemy say 'hey, where did he go?'. The onscreen 'sound masking' icon makes a return, allowing you to silently snipe foes without trouble. That being said, if you want to try playing it on my preferred 'Authentic' difficulty level, you're going to be in a world of hurt. Without any visual cues for offscreen enemy positions or alertness, audio cues are all the game offers to let players know it's safe to move and shoot. Consider that mode—the best version of the game—basically unplayable.

HIGH Watching a single bullet plow through five zombies.

LOW Anything with skeletons. Seriously, the skeletons are horrible.

WTF I'm disappointed by the utter lack of zombie Hitler, Rebellion.

My problems with Sniper Elite V2 were well-documented, and beyond a few technical issues, they boiled down to this: reveling in the brutal, anatomically explicit destruction of human beings left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The sniping mechanics were great, there were some well-designed levels, and overall the whole thing felt polished and professional. It also felt deeply disturbing.

The developers have addressed this specific complaint in the most logical way possible—by populating the war-torn streets of Germany with zombies! While this new iteration comes with a few flaws all its own, it's certainly solved its predecessors' biggest problem since it's now entirely possible to play the game without feeling like a terrible person.

Throwing players into the action with only the barest figleaf of exposition, Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army (NZA) invites 1-4 players to stalk their way through shattered structures, find clean fields of fire, and then watch as bullets tumble in slow-motion through the rotting organs of a horde of zombified nazis.

While it is technically a stand-alone game (purchase of Sniper Elite 2 is not necessary), NZA is built on Sniper Elite's architecture, and as such recreates all of that game's features and flaws. The cover system is still fairly useless, but since almost none of the game's enemies have guns, it's not much of a flaw here. The sniping mechanics are as gorgeous as ever, once again giving players a choice of just how realistic they want marksmanship to be.

There is one key restriction, however. Unlike in V2, sniping difficulty has been tied directly to overall difficulty level, and the 'custom' difficulty option has been removed, even for single-player games. While I'm not certain that letting players decide exactly how hard they wanted the game to be was a most-used feature in V2, its was definitely a nice addition, and I missed it this time around.

NZA takes place over five levels culled from V2, but all of the maps have been completely redecorated so the game never seems like a simple revisiting of well-worn locations. While the plethora of bloody pentagrams and clutches of gutted corpses get a little over-the-top at times, the set dressing, along with thick fog and a notably creepy soundtrack, do a fantastic job of giving NZA a tone and atmosphere all its own.

The new enemies are more of a mixed bag. Zombies are exactly the foes one would expect, lumbering forward with relentless bloodlust. The game manages to put two twists onto this classic villain, however, which keeps the game interesting.

Vital shots are just as important here as in V2—zombies not executed with a headshot have a bad habit of getting right back up to continue the fight. The second development is actually quite a coup on Rebellion's part—the sheer number of zombies that can appear onscreen is huge for an FPS. At certain points the players will find themselves having to defend strongholds from a 'siege' of zombies, and here that word is not being used lightly.

Dozens of zombies clog the narrow city streets, and unlike the lumbering mooks of Dead Rising, each one of these resurrected soldiers can easily kill the player if they manage to get within arm's reach. Every one of these sieges is a skilltesting struggle the requires expert marksmanship, clever planning, and the careful implementation of high explosives. This is even more true in co-op mode, where the number of zombies for each fight is more than doubled.

The other foes are where the game gets into a little trouble. The enemy snipers are just fine—in fact, they're better than the ones in V2, since these ghouls can jump from rooftop to rooftop, rather than just ducking in and out of a single piece of cover. Less entertaining are the giant zombies that fire an MG42 and wear bulletproof coats. Having an enemy that needs to be shot in the head is nothing new, but asking players to shoot the same guy five times in the face goes from challenging to frustrating— especially when half a dozen will show up per level.

Then there are the skeletons who represent everything wrong with the Sniper Elite franchise, in that they basically cannot be sniped.

From time to time a portal will open and a group of skeletons will leap out—visually, they're an interesting idea, but in practice they simply don't belong in the game. The skeletons run so fast that they can't be tracked with rifles, and even if the player manages to get a bead on one, their animation is so jerky that targeting their vital organs is nearly impossible. This forces the player to take out their pistol or SMG and just start firing wildly. It’s super-effective, but also the exact opposite of the gameplay that people are coming to a Sniper Elite title for.

While there's nothing original about Rebellion's decision to offer 4-player zombie-killing co-op, its implementation in NZA is nothing short of fantastic. Every level in the game is littered with multi-tiered killzones that give sniper teams a chance to spread out and fire on zombie hordes from a variety of angles and elevations. Teamwork is both easy and incredibly necessary—as mentioned above, there are far more zombies to tend with in the co-op mode than the regular game, so only by focusing fire is survival even possible.

While these hordes of zombies are something to see, there is one major hitch in the co-op mode: the number of enemies do not scale based on the number of players, and there are only two settings— single player or co-op. This isn't an issue normally, but if a player or two drops out during the course of one of the half-hour levels, the remaining two players will suddenly find themselves up against a horde of the undead so huge that they simply cannot be defeated.

With V2's incredible mechanics being employed to take on a more morally acceptable foe, Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army makes a worthy addition to the Sniper Elite franchise. With its extremely budget-friendly price and surprisingly large amount of content, NZA will please existing sniper fans, as well as anyone curious to check out what it might be like to shoot a few hundred zombies in the face from 70 yards away. The skeletons are a disaster and the bosses aren't great, but the core mechanics are so good that it deserves a look solely on their strengths. Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately eight hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed one time) and four hours of play in multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is not rated by the ESRB, but it contains blood and gore, intense violence. Parents should keep their children very far away from this game. There's no booze, smoking, or sex, but you probably don't want your children spending this much time looking at zombies' internal organs.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: You will be mostly fine with the game. For the most part you'll have visual warnings about approaching zombies, and all instructions are presented as text. Every now and then some skeletons will teleport in behind you, however, and without an audio cue to warn you, don't be surprised if you find out they're there by taking a non-fatal hit.