Sniper Elite 3 (Xbox One)

The third installment of the Sniper Elite series released in 2014 and is a slight improvement on the predecessor. There isn't really a whole lot of difference, but I enjoyed this one slightly more and the graphics look sharper, but also a slight cartoony look. Set in Africa, prior to the events of the previous game, it's now sunny and bright as oppose to the dull, bleakness we had previously.

We play as the same character again, I forget his name as he's not very memorable. He's still as bland as he ever was, the story again is nothing special. The missions are fairly decent and are much more enjoyable with a friend in coop. The xray kill cams are back and they are even more beautiful, it's a shame again that I barely got to see any, I have no idea how to trigger them.

You can now use all the of the d-pad to switch your weapons, rather than just scroll through. There's an inventory wheel, so you can now look and pick from your whole inventory at once, this was a great improvement as you have a lot of equipment. There's a new alert system that pops up over an enemies head when they see you, it shows yellow when they can see something and turns red when you have been spotted. You can now do a relocation by running away and hiding if you alert the enemies, so you can try your hand at stealth again. Using your binoculars to tag enemies, vehicles and explosives was a brilliant way to keep track of everything and plan your mission better.

I think this game is boring to play one, but with a partner it's made much more fun, they can help you out too if you get in a tough spot. There's now a wave mode where you and a friend can take out hordes of enemies. There's an online multiplayer that I didn't like too much, mainly because everyone else was a sniper so we were all just camping. It wasn't very fun to play.

The reviving was much better but the issue of you character going prone after was still present, it always caught me off guard and usually lead me back into trouble. The sprinting looks ridiculous, his torso can move around but his legs always look forward, it looks so dumb in an otherwise well done game. On one mission, when protecting an AI, he stopped moving and he needed to escape the area to finish the mission, this lead to having to restart the checkpoint. Even worse, when at the end of a mission, the cutscene wouldn't trigger meaning we had to restart the whole mission again.

I enjoyed Sniper 3 much more than 2, doing all the optional objectives made the game fun and when me and my partner tried to be really stealthy, we communicated and really worked on not getting caught and it was fun. Getting caught was always a nightmare and being in gunfights is not what you want in this one. I'll be investing in Sniper Elite 4, as long as it has a coop campaign. Also, show more goddamn xray kill cams!

7.1/10