I'm a fan of the murder-puzzle genre, inasmuch as it's a
thing we admit exists within the world of video games, a thing we sometimes go
so far as to cherish, when it's well-executed.
It has rich component parts: a focus on problem solving and careful measured
action, wrapped around systematically executed violence, often expressed in
glorious/gorious detail. A well crafted murder puzzler can leave you
with a feeling of accomplishment and empowerment, and make you look at the
every components of the world around you as elements of a puzzle. Not a murdery puzzle per sec, but a series of
moving parts you can employ to execute a task.
Such is the way of things with any well crafted puzzle game. I could try to establish a roughshod
collection of the "must haves" a murder-puzzle game should include,
but I'm not sure such a list exists: the genre's evolution, and its best
representatives, seem to eschew such demarcations. There are, however, some relatively simple
qualities that solid murder-puzzle games seem to have in common: clearly
defined rules, tight controls, and a strong overarching sense of situational
awareness.
This brings me to Sniper
Elite: V2, which I just downloaded for free off of Steam this last week. More an entry into the murder-puzzle genre
than anything else, Sniper Elite
doesn't really have any of these qualities.
The rules of the game, most notably when someone can see or hear you and
when they can't, seem largely arbitrary: if you're stuck to cover at one angle,
with a massive rifle poking out over your shoulder, you're invisible, but if
you're stuck at another angle, apparently fully concealed, you're a fucking
bullet magnet just waiting to soak up rounds.
It's also never clear just how far sound travels; a seemingly covert
kill might be noticed by an enemy across a courtyard, but a noisy firefight
will be totally disregarded by patrolling troops on its outskirts. These issues are exacerbated by the controls,
which feel anemic when it comes to anything other than rifle play (which is, to
Rebellion's credit, reproduced in exacting, wonderful detail). If you want to use a pistol or a submachine
gun, you'll find yourself wondering why your expert marksman has suddenly
transformed into a bumbling, hip-firing idiot, and your ability to move from
area to area will feel slippery, especially if you're exploring off the beaten
path between firefights. The scoped
shooting is great, when you're set up in a good position and you know the
direction you're supposed to be shooting in, but outside of those situations
the game seems unsure of itself. Even
locating enemies, a seemingly simple aspect of a sniper game, is actually a bit
of a challenge: you often won't know where enemies are until you stumble into
them or, in the case of countersnipers, are shot by them. Perhaps there's a more effective way to
slowly, carefully scout, I don't know, I'm not willing to spend more than an
hour on each mission painstakingly eyeing enemy positions for any trace of
movement. In the end, it's actually
faster and easier to run into an engagement, memorize the positions of enemies
firing at you, and restart the game from the last checkpoint after you die.
This all adds up to make a lackluster murder-puzzle game, an
odd thing considering just how lurid the violence in Sniper Elite is. Each time
you pull off a particularly impressive shot the game will slow down and focus
its camera on your bullet, at which point it will enter the body of your
target, and depict in graphic detail how your shot will reconfigure the
internal organs and bones of your victim.
The result is an almost pornographic level of gore, usually showcased in
rapidly recurring instances, before engagements resolve into tense stealth game
portions that terminate with you being shot in the face by a collection of
unseen foes, usually without warning, at which point you reload the game and
get ready to replay that particular sniper battle.
So Sniper Elite
isn't a good game. It has good parts, but
it feels like it's at odds with its genre of choice. The end result is a mess, in both gameplay
(sloppy, slippery gameplay, which will sometimes end with you dying in a matter
of seconds to magically combined enemy fire, then reloading and swiftly
devastating the entire enemy line facing you without taking a scratch), story
(much of which is either implied, or told through a series of gruff,
uninformative cutscenes and German language in-game radio broadcasts that elude
my elementary grasp of Deutsch), and tone (vacillating between frenetic,
hopeless violence and boredom second to second which, now that I say it out
loud, might be a hyper-accurate aspect of what work as a sniper is really
like).
So why am I still playing it? Why do I plan to play more? What is it about Sniper Elite that keeps me playing when I know it's bad for
me? It's like the Dorito's of video
games: I know it's awful, but I keep shoving it into my craw.
Perhaps it's some sort of catharsis: there are few groups of
people more pleasant to shoot in the face than Nazis. Brushing aside the complexities of World War
II and the horrifying internal politics of Hitler's Germany, Nazis are a pretty
vile, detestable villain, and occupy a laudable space within video game-dom as
a universally appropriate target for bullets to hit. What's more, I feel like I've been
conditioned, not just by games but by popular culture, to feel little bursts of
good-feelings each time I see red blossom on a Wermacht uniform or watch a
Stormtrooper helmet go flying up.
Perhaps it's the almost pornographic depictions of bullet
entry which, while self-assuredly terrible in their execution, are also
somewhat beautiful. Even to someone
desensitized to violence in popular culture, these moments stand out, which is
saying quite a bit. Watching a man's
skull explode from the inside out is sort of remarkable, even if it is stomach
churning. Or perhaps it's the rifle
mechanics, which really are superlative: this is bullet physics at its
best. Wind adjustment, parabolic flight
path, relative positioning, these are all concerns. Landing a headshot on a target two kilometers
away during erratic wind conditions feels incredible. Laying waste to exposed enemy positions, or
picking through the nearly invisible holes in heavily defended areas, is
likewise compelling. Sniper Elite: V2 is a love letter to the
1903 Springfield rifle, and it isn't shy about that fact. It's impossible to play it without marveling
at the effort that went into illustrating that weapon's interactions with the
world, a fact accented by the unpleasant afterthought that is every other weapon
in the game. Whatever it is, I can't say
I recommend Sniper Elite: V2 to
anyone who isn't interested in investigating the structure of strangely
designed game-artifacts, still pretty angry about WW2, or an un-medicated
psychopath. But, to be fair, I am
writing this without having tried the co-op.
I don't know how that could change the complaints I've issued herein,
but you never know.
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