It actually looks a little worse when docked, though it does run a little smoother. Sniper Elite 3 looks lovely on the Switch, and there are very few drops in frame rate even in handheld mode. Or you can create a custom difficulty to tailor the challenge to suit you. You can even just replay the campaign with a different difficulty if you want to, removing all the aides and hints. Outside the campaign there’s a variety of modes including a sniper fight PvP, a two on two mode where one of you plays the spotter, and a challenge mode to really test your skills. Every slow motion, high-detail X-ray kill looks cool and they never get old – especially as you now earn bonus XP for hitting organs or using the environment. Climbing up a crow’s nest for a bit of binocular Recon, spotting and marking targets and points of interest, before hunkering down and cracking out the long-barrel is incredibly satisfying, and when you actually start shooting, lining up your trajectory guide before holding your breath and squeezing the trigger… there aren’t many things in gaming more immediately cathartic. While the 3rd person shooting is still a little clunky and unwieldy, the sniping has lost none of its appeal. Of course all this variety and environmental improvement would count for nothing if the sniping wasn’t absolutely sublime.
You can even customise your sniper rifles with various mods for efficiency and deadliness.
You can take an impressive variety of weapons and gear into each mission with the option to unlock more, including claymore mines, sticky grenades, tripwires and a nice selection of guns. Returning protagonist Karl Fairburne, who they keep bringing back despite his undeniable forgettable-ness, has a few more tricks up his sleeve now, including some nasty stealth kills, a variety of close quarters takedowns and the ability to use cover properly in gunfights. And their stupidity only fuels your bloodlust. Enemies will react to your noise but will often ignore dead bodies, and will forget the sight of a heavily armed sniper charging at them if you get into cover within a few seconds. That said, the AI isn’t exactly dialled up to eleven. The bright environments aren’t just better looking, there’s also something unsettling about playing stealth sections in burning sunshine. The change of scenery is probably the biggest improvement in SE3, moving away from the gloominess that dominated the first two entries and instead taking place on the sun-scorched battlegrounds of WW2’s Africa campaign. And yes, you could do that in V2, but beige streets and dull grey textures are no match for the searing heat of the African desert. I had no idea that blowing Nazi brains out in super slow motion while on the khazi would be so much fun. I’m continuously surprised by just how many games really are a fit for the Switch, and Sniper Elite 3 is no exception. Turns out that maybe V2 was a just an appetiser, maybe even a field test to gauge interest.Įither way, 3 is finally on the Switch and, just as when it was originally released, the step up in quality from V2 is impressive. I also wondered why Rebellion hadn’t opted to go straight for Sniper Elite 3. While a perfectly competent sniper sim, V2 was a particularly bland and uneven title that stumbled and fell any time you weren’t belly-down with a rifle under your chin. When Sniper Elite V2 was ported to the Switch earlier this year I wondered long and hard why it was worth the time and effort. Sniper Elite 3 originally scored 8/10 in July 2014. Find out more about the paid membership service.Switch Re:port covers the Nintendo Switch port/version of a game newly released on the platform. Online play requires paid online membership. Some online services may not be available in all countries.
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