Sniper Elite, Mission 1 Cleared.

So Natzis are doing bad things…gotcha.

The opening act was pretty neat. Better than I expected, actually. Had a short cinematic on Natzi missle testing and then was dumped into the map. Got to stab a guy in the heart, then dropped a load of cannons on some unsuspecting hooligans.  Fun first day.

Then of course I played around with dead bodies and dropped them off a cliff.

The bullet time is quite good and you can get some pretty cinematic shots. Haven’t gotten that fabled nut-shot, but there’s still a quite a bit of game to go. Being able to ignite grenades an enemy is carrying proves to be highly effective.

There’s quite a few challenges and collectibles, probably for replay-sake because I didn’t feel that any of it added to the story. Even after killing the general you got a voiceline of something you already knew (he was doing missile tests) so after this map I’m going to spend less time searching for the pickups like I tend to do in most games. I do like the fact blowing up Natzi statues is a mission goal.

I was worried that after achieving the main mission you would just END the map without having the chance of tying up loose ends. To my happy surprise you do need to ‘escape’ by running to a map marker and sailing off into the sunset.

The AI seemed to know where I was (the game called it triangulating) after a realistic period of time, but can’t seem to find the energy to chase me if I run 100 feet away. There was a couple times when mowing down Natzis with my machine gun was the preferred strat, and it proved to simple enough. Wound up killing all the enemies so the Escape portion was straightforward. I did spend a bit of time exploring which I probably won’t be doing as much later. I had started off on normal difficulty but may bump it up to hard unless the “realistic” ballistics prove too challenging for my sleep deprived brain.

All in all, good overall first impression.