Sniper Elite 3

My honest take: I came for the sniping and mostly got the sniping, but Sniper Elite 3 makes you work harder for those dopamine hits than it probably should. Set across the sun-baked landscapes of WW2 North Africa, this is a third-person tactical shooter built around one central promise - that lining up a 300-metre shot, factoring in bullet drop, your breathing, and the distant rumble of an airplane engine, should feel like a small personal victory. And it does. Every single time. The X-ray kill cam - which cracks open skulls, severs lungs, and tracks the bullet through its full, gruesome journey - never quite gets old, even after hours of play. Rebellion clearly poured the most care into that moment, and the open sandbox level design (think wide canyon ruins, mist-covered lakes, fortified desert villages) genuinely supports the fantasy of being a patient, methodical sniper rather than a run-and-gun soldier. Where things wobble is everywhere outside the scope. Enemy AI is goofy enough that soldiers will return to their patrol routes after a brief alert phase, which makes the "relocate and reset" loop feel more like a cheat code than a tactical challenge. Close-quarters combat is notably rough - your silenced pistol is slow to reload and barely effective unless you nail a headshot, the knife only works from behind, and if multiple enemies rush you at once, expect to die fast. The game essentially punishes you for going loud without a proper setup, which is fine in theory but occasionally frustrating when stealth sections drag. Difficulty settings help: crank it up and wind actually factors into your shots, turning the ballistics from approachable to genuinely demanding. The multiplayer and co-op side of things deserves a proper callout. The full campaign supports two-player online co-op, which transforms the experience nicely. When both players use binoculars to tag enemies and coordinate firing lines, the strategy opens up in ways the solo run never quite reaches. The dedicated Overwatch mode is the highlight - one player snipes from a distance while the other moves on the ground spotting targets and completing objectives. It is genuinely tense and communicative in the best way, though it is content-light with only a handful of maps. Survival mode rounds out the co-op options with wave-based horde action for two. One important heads-up for couch players: there is no split-screen. All co-op is online only, so four friends on one sofa are out of luck beyond watching each other take turns. For a PC game released in 2014, it has aged reasonably well. Steam user reviews sit around 77% positive overall, which feels accurate - this is a solid, not spectacular, mid-tier action game with a genuinely excellent core mechanic. The weapon customisation system (swap scopes, barrels, stocks, and triggers on your rifle, with XP earned across all modes) adds light progression that keeps the loop rewarding across the campaign's eight or so missions. DLC missions extending the story are available separately. If you have played Sniper Elite 4 or 5 first, going back will feel a little rough around the edges - the AI and some mission structures show their age. But as a standalone, unhurried, pick-off-the-bad-guys experience shared with one friend online, it still holds up.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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