Top 10 Best Things About Sniper Elite III: Afrika
Sniper Elite, already a favorite franchise for many, has returned new and improved in this third installment.You know when you make a headshot and you get to see their brains explode out the back of their skull? Yeah, that. Well, it is even more improved in this installment. The eyeballs liquefy when shot, the blood splatter is even better, and the testicle shots - whew, those just look painful. Yikes.
I personally like not having to color by the numbers step-by-step. The exception to this is that if you finish some of the maps out of order, you end up too far away for your final mission to be completed, and there's no way to fix it. However, you can more or less do what you want. There are a lot of possibilities when you don't have to go in a straight line.
You can make some long shots in this new SE. You can approach every objective from a different direction every time you play. You can become a ghost.
In this installment, you have to be much more aware of your surroundings and have to work harder to make sure you stay hidden. This adds a different, more active dynamic to the game, making it less likely you'll get bored, and just not as easy. You have an attention meter that lets you know how much attention you're receiving, and now, when you shoot without sound masking, most of the time you need to move around to avoid discovery. If someone knows where you are, and you don't relocate, they will come and find you. Camping isn't as much of an option in this version.
If you kill and relocate often enough, you get ghost kills. If you get enough ghost kills, you achieve ghost status. Then, in one of the levels, if you've gotten enough ghost kills and you eavesdrop on the soldiers, they talk about you but call you the Desert Ghost. "One minute you're sitting there, the next minute, your head is goneā¦"
You heard me. If you place a mine, of any kind, and don't use it and need to move on, you can pick it up and take it with you. Say what? This is such a nice option to have, so you don't have to scramble to keep your arsenal up.
In SE3, destroying motor pools is an optional objective. You get XP points for it, and it's a lot of fun. You can target the vehicles with your binoculars, which shows you where to shoot on the vehicles to disable them. However, you have to shoot them twice: once to break through the grill and a second time to penetrate the engine.
Your job will be to cover someone's back while they escape, and it's a lot of fun. You basically sit by a cache of ammo and just fire away. They're almost always concentrated on their target, so they ignore you. Unless you stop or, for some reason, don't shoot, it's hard to fail.
Having said that, it's still super intense and suspenseful. You can take a little bit of time to perfect your headshots and then work on exploding some testicles. It's really a blast.
Each level of this installment has replayability up the wazoo. I'll finish one new level, and then do it three more times, seeing what happens if I go this way or that way. Then, you want to go back and use something you just learned on the map two levels ago. This game is a time sink, in the best meaning of the words. I feel like there's no perfect way to do it, but you can sure try some fun things when you've played a level enough times to anticipate what is going to happen, and change your course or actions accordingly. But even with that, the enemy moves around enough that it's not always the same.
This may sound messed up, but I have yet to find an activity as stress-releasing as shooting a Nazi in the face. Popping the top of someone's skull from afar keeps me from thinking about doing it in real life. Having a bad day? Shoot a Nazi in the face! Boyfriend dump you? Shoot a Nazi in the testicles and watch them explode! Boss a jerk? Shoot a Nazi in the kneecaps! No matter how bad my day has been, this game always makes me feel better. I think it helps that I'm really good at it, and it's fun to do something you're good at. But I think a bigger portion of it is that you get to legally, guilt-free, and crime-free, graphically shoot someone in the face.