I was on the subway headed down to see and play Sniper Elite III at a 505 Games media preview when I realized I’d forgotten my eyeglasses. Oops. You can’t be a good sniper at all if you can’t see a damn thing even with a scope, but amusingly enough, that absent-minded error on my part made the demo even more enjoyable.

Thanks to veteran developer Rebellion making the game much more flexible and thrilling than its predecessor, even a quarter blind bat like me was able to have a total blast making as many mistakes as I did. Okay, that’s not sounding like a ringing endorsement for the game, but it’s coming – keep reading. Even if I had brought my gaming spectacles along, my plan was to play the demo in as loose a manner as possible, making mistakes to see how the AI would react while seeing how expansive the level designs were this time out. In Sniper Elite V2, despite some alternate routes, most maps felt a wee bit too boxed in and linear and displacement wasn’t emphasized enough throughout the game (although the best players learned those levels and probably did some of their own shoot and scoot tactics… Continue reading →