Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Snipe Snipe!

I’m on top of a building, far from my target. I’m staring down the scope of my rifle, a Barrett fifty cal. Unlike most Barretts in video games this one is set up the way Barretts are in the field, stationary, stabilized by some sort of theoretical gel layer. It also has unlimited ammo, for some strange reason, but hey. It’s a video game.

I’m prompted to wait patiently for the correct conditions, which context clues like flags and urgency in the voice of my spotter will inform me of. These clues will tell me when it is time to shoot my weapon, eliminating my lone target. After that I’ll need to use my tools properly so that I can resolve the issue before moving on to the game proper. In the game proper I won’t be a sniper anymore, though. I’ll have to hold my breath to aim straight. My gun will be malleable again and I’ll be prompted to run between shots.

I will no longer be a sniper. I will be moving quickly from place to place, sharp-shooting when I can. I won’t be patient. I won’t be able to be patient. The rest of the game will be one made dash towards freedom. This is the way most games are.

Most games treat sniping as a battle of reflexes rather than one of patience. In Borderlands it’s a matter of rapidly moving from target to target, pulling off flawless headshot after flawless headshot. In Call of Duty’s laudable multiplayer it’s a matter of picking a shot and then running madly after you make your kill, shifting position to avoid killcam retribution.

Even though some games occasionally do make sniping feel like the patient hunt that I understand it to be even games with “sniper” in the title are usually little more than reflex games for shifty loners. But there are a few games that break the mold, games about patience and consideration, and I’d like to honor those games in this segment.

1 – Call of Duty 4 and Call of Duty 6 – Spec Ops

Most games want you to feel invulnerable during single player missions. Call of Duty 4 is especially guilty of this, often lending you hundreds and hundreds of allies during combat, endlessly streaming from some unknown font into battle beside you. But Call of Duty 4 does something bold midway through the game. After the first twist, the necessary death you have to endure, it puts players through their paces in one of the most harrowing missions in video game history: the sniper mission.

For the first time you’re told to hold your fire. For the first time avoiding a kill is the better tactical decision. Running and gunning is not an option. Shots have to be carefully chosen, rules of engagement selected painstakingly. Failure to consider your circumstances thoroughly enough is tantamount to suicide. And even though it all resolves in a fairly traditional gun battle, following a “meh” puzzle sequence that I began the article with, Call of Duty 4 offered up a remarkable sniping experience, one that was every bit as harrowing as you’d expect. Outnumbered, outgunned, you can’t be a font of violence and expect to survive. You have to play it smart. You have to choose your battles if you want to live.

Call of Duty 6’s spec ops had some missions in this vein as well, all the more impressive for the fact that they’re shared experiences. Creeping through snow capped peaks and Chernobyl fields with a friend is so much more fun, and while the levels are challenging they’re more rewarding than the entire meticulously designed single player campaign. Call of Duty 6 deserves a lot of criticism for riding on the coattails of its predecessor, for muddying an excellently balanced multiplayer system with an excess of bells and whistles and completely mistreating their consumer base with absurdly priced expansions that provide, at best, a handful of additional play scenarios that seem to favor only the most rapacious of players.

But the developers, as terrible as many of their choices were, deserve plenty of credit for creating co-op missions that allow players to play through some of the best sniper missions in video game history as part of a tandem pair. Creeping through the woods, carefully picking your shots while whispering harshly to your friend over your microphone, praying you won’t be noticed. Call of Duty 6 delivered handsomely on this front, and has some of the best sniper-specific game design I’ve ever seen.

2 – S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Stalker (spelled without periods from here on) is a mess of a game. It sports a realistic shooting game, frustratingly so. Guns completely lose their accuracy at a certain point, iron sights and scopes failing when you try to engage past your weapon’s effective range. Late in the game players finally acquire some decent sniper rifles and suddenly the game shifts completely. Where once running and gunning from piece of cover and choke point to piece of cover and choke point was the order of the day suddenly carefully selecting the way you want to engage enemies and moving forward based on those choices becomes the best way to play. Once you get your hands on a Dragunov and a handful of bullets the game becomes a calculus of how to engage each group of enemies at range.

The game is already enough about creeping and choosing your battles. But once you get some solid sniper rifles it becomes even more severe in the way it asks player to dictate their pacing. While the play is still far from perfect, with horrible enemy AI, bugs abounding and incredibly punishing late game scenarios that will consistently fuck up and force you to replay hours and hours of game play because of scripting errors, Stalker still sports one of the most interesting and intense open world sniping experiences I’ve seen. The painfully conservative resource management that the game enforces at certain moments, paired with unforgiving enemy AI and constantly shifting deadly terrain forces players to make choices about where and how to fight.

It forces players to think about their relative position to their enemies, their cover and their visibility. It forces players to consider range and accuracy and all the other factors that games normally ignore. It forces players to carefully choose each shot, and there’s no better shorthand for the behavior that Stalker encourages than the word “sniper.” Sure, it’s far from perfect, but its twin requirements of stealth and caution make it one harrowing experience, especially as you wander deeper and deeper into the ruined city.

3 – Far Cry 2

It’s been a while since I’ve praised Far Cry 2, hasn’t it? It’s not that I don’t love Far Cry 2 anymore. Far from it. It’s just that I’ve been distracted. Baby, you gotta know I still love you. Because there’s nothing quite like the feel of scouting an enemy position, watching them cycle in and out of range and carefully choosing the order you’re going to engage targets in. There’s nothing quite like the tension as you manually work your Springfield’s bolt to take down a squad of enemies with five perfectly placed shots. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as the execution of a perfect ambush in the African savannah.

See all the technical issues that Stalker has? Are completely absent from Far Cry 2, which remains, I think, the best open world game ever made (apologies to Brutal Legend, which kind of fails as an open world game in comparison). Far Cry 2’s technology works great, and even when it doesn’t it seems to improve the experience rather than destroying it. The occasional physics glitch, a necessity in a game like Far Cry 2, adds a bit of humor to an otherwise stark and unforgiving world. And that’s the worst I’ve run into in over one hundred hours of play.

Far Cry 2 immerses you in your character’s skin through this masterful weaving of well designed tech, minimalist UI and, at least at harder difficulties, pathetically human frailty. On my current playthrough I’ve been working on beating the game on the hardest difficulty setting, and each time I rush into battle I find myself being gunned down mercilessly. The way I win? By carefully selecting my shots, drawing enemies out and patiently waiting in my vantage point until I’ve got my opponents winnowed down enough for me to finish them off up close.

The conservative ammunition reserves Far Cry 2 forces upon players, along with other relatively strict supply limits on higher difficulties, makes choosing how and when to fight an absolutely critical decision to make. And, all too often, the best way to fight is by choosing a good vantage point and pulling out your high powered rifle.

Sure, the AI isn’t perfect, but the feeling of observing a camp, watching for enemy positions and, occasionally, searching madly for a sniper who may or may not give himself away with each carefully selected shot is still an intense experience, even with the occasionally terrible enemy behavior. And, for my money’s worth, there’s nothing quite like setting up shop on a hill and, one by one, picking off baffled enemies as they run about, horrified at what I have wrought upon them.

Does feeling this way make me a bad person? Probably. But there’s something deeply rewarding and satisfying about playing a game where your stealth and consideration are rewarded and your carelessness is punished severely. These games all champion this form of play, and for that they deserve recognition. So go on, play them again. They’re all old enough to be in the digital bargain bin, and they’ve all held up wonderfully, especially as sniping games.