Who knew one good cure for an aching back would be a bullet to the eyeball?

My poor old back was a bit out of whack after some lugging some heavy stuff to the airport shenanigans the previous morning, but after sitting down to a nice bit of the Xbox 360 version pf Rebellion’s superb Sniper Elite V2 last Thursday, I left the Edison Hotel with a spring in my step (but scanning high windows and rooftops for snipers). 505 Games is fortunate enough to be publishing Rebellion’s followup to their 2005 PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox sleeper (later ported to Wii in 2010) that’s still one of the most challenging and tightly focused war games ever put on a console. Sniper Elite V2 ups the ante with an even more phenomenal proprietary graphics engine, excellent sound design and gameplay that’s going to surprise a lot of people who’ve never experienced the original…

Let’s get one important thing out of the way first: This is NOT a first-person shooter and it’s ABSOLUTELY not a Call of Duty/Medal of Honor (or any other FPS) clone in any way, shape or form. Like the first Sniper Elite (and In the vein of games such as Tenchu and Metal Gear Solid), movement is third person as are the assorted stealth kills you’ll make when you get up close and personal. The only times the game goes into that first-person view are when you’re sniping or using binoculars to scope out an area. While you can indeed move around while sniping, you won’t be running and gunning (or making much progress, for that matter). Sniping here relies on breathing correctly, watching your heart rate and wind direction, adjusting accordingly before taking that shot.

The patience and persistence you’ll need to complete maps by carefully scanning for enemies before advancing means getting into protracted firefights with a pack of AI enemies isn’t the best strategy. Checking out alternate route to objectives, laying a trip mine to surprise anyone trying to flank your position or setting explosive charges on a street that you just cleared out in order to take out an approaching convoy are all brilliantly executed moments that work just as effectively as any modern shooter with more kinetic action set pieces. If you love planning things out and executing them well, this is going to be your game for quite some time as you play through each difficulty level.

That’s not to say the game doesn’t get extremely thrilling. Sitting down to watch parts of two different missions being played by a 505’s Mike Greening, with Rebellion’s Tim Jones walking me through things, it was apparent that the developer has been working on this one for quite some time. In the mission, a German V2 rocket scientist needs to be eliminated and some top-secret plans needed to be taken from his body. Of course, the fact that he was arriving as part of a well-armored convoy traveling through an extremely war-smashed Berlin and there were quite a few enemies to take out on the way to where the convoy needed to be intercepted meant things got sneaky and snipey in no short order.

Like the original, careful observation and navigation is key to success and survival. Unless that soldier is totally alone with his back turned, if you just shoot the first guy you see without taking stock of your surroundings, you’ll be pushing up daisies within seconds. You can “mark” and keep track of enemies, with colored bars appearing on screen to show their level of alertness and knowing who to shoot first, then dealing with the AI as it responds is another key. Enemies don’t all come rushing into your sights like in a few too many shooters. Instead, they’ll go prone, head for cover or try to flank you for starters while they try to figure out where the shot came from. Any enemy snipers in the area you may have not seen will also be alerted, which isn’t a good thing if you’re in their line of sight and don’t know it until a bullet comes your way.

There’s a minimalist HUD system that allows you to concentrate on the action, but whenever icons do appear, they’re important. Bodies can be picked up and hidden, the aforementioned trip mines and explosives can be placed and you can even throw a rock to distract a patrol from your hiding place while you work out a new plan. While there was a lot of waiting involved, the overall pacing of the gameplay is well done and there were a ton of amazing details I picked out that kept me smiling. One shot Greening got off went through the narrow gap between a streetlight and something jutting out next to it to score a kill, meaning the collision detection and bounding boxes around both objects were perfectly set up. Another shot took out about four or five enemies when it hit a grenade on the first soldier’s ammo strap, a nice touch that made that particular potential encounter go a great deal faster than expected.

Jones noted that these aren’t “canned” kills, either. Depending on each player’s skill (and some luck when their shots hit), enemies will react differently to your shots. The game does a rather excellent job of calculating all sorts of real life variables a real sniper would have to deal with and the end results are what keep the gameplay constantly engrossing.  Wounded enemies will go down hard, but yell for aid; you might hit a soldier in the leg and see him hobble about before your next shot hits its mark. As Greening was awfully good at the game, I saw very little wounding, but when he did miss or maim, he was able to finish the job quickly with a second shot and rarely a third. As with the original, there will be a nice selection of actual WWII era sniper rifles to choose from, but you’ll also be armed with a silenced pistol (for quick up close kills) grenades and a very handy Thompson SMG. You can scavenge enemy weapons and ammo if needed, but that Tommy gun needs to be used as sparingly as possible, as you won’t exactly be finding much ammo in the middle of a mostly destroyed 1945 Berlin.

Although pretty realistic, the game does make concessions to the fact that yes, it’s still a video game at the end of the day. A single well-aimed shot at the fuel cap can destroy a tank (although the game doesn’t explicitly tell you this, it cleverly lets you know if you’ve got a good eye). There are zero healing kits in the game to seek out, but if you take damage, your health recovers over time. This doesn’t mean you’re an invincible bullet sponge, however. Getting wounded decreases your aim and increases your heart rate, which makes you a lousy shot when your BPM is all over the map. The game was played in Marksman mode (the “Normal” difficulty setting), but Jones noted that bumping the difficulty up to Sniper Elite mode would present its own set of challenges (which made me laugh and cringe, as I recalled how hard the original was on the highest setting).

As you can probably guess, the game looks great. The attention to detail in the destroyed environments, lighting and smoke effects all add to the realism and you can now climb over some walls and navigate a bit more into the game world. Another thing vastly improved from the original: the assorted kill animations, which are even more graphically realistic. Early on, Greening was able to put a single shot through two approaching soldiers and I actually noticed the bullet deformation as it passed through one guard’s head and through the neck of the other. Some kills reveal a nicely gory slow motion “X-Ray” effect that shows the shot piercing vital organs and cracking bones, so like the first game, this isn’t for the squeamish.

Yet another excellent design choice is how well sound is used in the game. Dramatic music cues up when the action start, fading out when you clear an area and need to move onward. The second mission I saw too place at night in a destroyed section of Berlin where a ringing church bell could be used to mask gunshots. This added bit of stress, plus the darkness that hid its share of camping snipers looking to add their own notches to their rifles made this one of those missions I can see driving players more used to “spray and pray” action quake in their boots a little. That, and the fact that there was a well-hidden enemy tank near the start of the level will surprise players who manage to miss it.

As far as multiplayer goes, other than campaign co-op, Rebellion is doing their own thing, skipping the expected death-matching and clan play for more focused action. The entire campaign can be played as an online experience with one other player and there will be Kill Tally, Bombing Run and Overwatch modes, each with a different type of gameplay.  I got to play one of the Overwatch maps as a sniper with Jones as the spotter and it was a very different (and incredibly fun) chunk of tension as we both worked together to clear out a map full of German troops. Here, cooperation and communication is important, as the spotter has to be on the move to secure an objective while the sniper protects him from things he’s pointed out or hasn’t yet noticed. The action in this mode is a bit more intense for both players as each objective is completed and another set of enemies arrives to keep things cooking. All I’ll say is both players reloading at the same time without letting each other know isn’t a good thing for either of you…

I also got to see the pre-order “Kill Hitler” content and won’t spoil that either except to say it’s definitely worth plunking down that cash for the game a bit early. While brief, the mission manages to be a total rush thanks to the level layout and your target being pretty fast and crafty once the opportunity arises to take him out. Thanks to my oddball sense of humor and film history, I really want to see an updated mod to this mission that make Charlie Chaplin’s Adenoid Hynkel or Groucho Marx’ Rufus T. Firefly the intended target (and that map should be in glorious black and white, of course). But that’s more of a future thing that may or may not take place (based on future sales and demand for more content, no doubt). Then again, I’ll just take more missions and a sequel, as I can see anything funny added to the game going well over the heads of some players who want their serious games deadly serious and that’s that.

My own kooky content ideas aside, in the meantime, Rebellion and 505 Games want to make sure that gamers looking for the best sniper game currently available pick Sniper Elite V2 as their go-to game when it hits stores on May 1, 2012. If what I’ve seen and played are any indication, this could be one of the best and most intense third-person action games (as well as one of the best shooters) you’ll play this year. Granted, getting some fans of certain shooters to give this one a shot may be tricky, but I’m here to nudge a few of you towards something a lot different than you’re used to that’s going to be as rewarding in its own fine ways. Back in a few with more on this superior sleeper…