Immersive and intense - this game's pro's really outweighs it's con's.
When i first heard of Sniper Elite i got very excited to say the least, but was kind of thrown of by the in-game screenshots presented. I like nice graphics in games, no let me put it like this: I LOVE spectacular graphics in games. When i first started up Sniper Elite though, it's immersive gameplay, it's outstanding sound production and it's intense sniping, really made me not care less about the fact that this game does not have the grahical strenght of Valves source engine for example.
Let's talk about the grapics then shall we? The good part - the sky is a real treat with nice lighting effects and the notorious bloom effekt. This bloom effekt is also applied to all textures and objects in-game and gives the whole graphical presentation this nice artistic feel. That's the good part, the bad part consists of "washed-out" textures (i.e low-res ones) and the enemy troops are not unique enough to contribute to the overall great feeling of immersion in the game. The surroundings in wich you crawl your way through, are really well done. Ruins of what used to be tall housing complex's and large squares including their respective landmarks, are like previously stated, really well done.
The sound presentation is remarkable and really helps set the mood for the game by shelling out all the sounds of the hell that is war, whilst you move from cover to cover and mission to mission as the sniper that you are. Spectacular sound.
On the pc, the controls are really well-executed when it somes to the game's first-person view, but can sometimes and in certain circumstances, leave you frustrated. The frustrating moments only occurs when you have to take out your enemies up-close, which fortunetely is the only part where the game lacks finesse in terms of fire-fights. Lets talk about the sniping shall we.
The feeling of crawling from cover to cover, to sometimes be rushing across an open square (only after scoping out the surroundings properly first offcourse) and then locate a safe place for you to take out any existing enemy troops from a safe distance, is truly AMAZING in this game. The game's settings lets you choose and customize the level of realism that will have an effect on how the actual sniping will be able to be carried out. We have the usual alternative of turning off head-bobing and sight-sway and such and other things i can not remember at the time.
One cool feature is the "bullet-cam" that in some cases, allows the camera to be fixed to the bullet all while it's flying through the air eventually hitting your target with a nasty close-up direct hit. You can not control this cam-feature in any way and it even seems that it's activated at random.
The game spans over 28 missions, each of them taking place in war-torn locales taking you atleast 20 mins to get through (and that's ATLEAST). This game is not about speeding it through like an FPS. It's about strategic thinking, watching your target and figure out how to take him down without letting his friends know of your precense. In some sequences though, you'll HAVE to duke it out with your enemies up-close and personal, not having any regard as to beeing quitet about your business. Those moments happen seldom enough not to make it distracting though. - imho.
Summary:
Winter season closing in on you and your looking for an immersive WWII game with heavy strategic tense action, and you just happen to love sniping? Get it.