Sniper Elite FAQ and TipsQ: What kind of game is Sniper Elite?A: SE is a kind of hybrid game, combining elements of third-person shooters, first-person shooters, and stealth games into one unique experience. Much of the time you move through the levels in third person, stopping frequently to zoom in on targets with your binoculars or sniper rifle, and when zoomed in you switch to a first-person perspective. To play the game on the harder difficulties, you also need to use patience and stealth skills such as crawling, staying hidden, avoiding enemies, and setting traps to protect yourself from being flanked while you’re zoomed in on something far away.
Q: Why is SE different from other shooters?A: In addition to the combination of stealth and perspective discussed above, SE adds several elements of realism to sniping distant targets. You have a hear rate monitor in your HUD, and a button to empty your lungs. When you prepare to make a long shot and empty your lungs by pressing X, you feel your heartbeat vibrate in the controller, and you must pull the trigger between heartbeats so this vibration doesn’t ruin your aim. If you’ve run a distance before stopping to shoot, you must wait for your heart rate to slow before you can empty your lungs and make the shot. You must also account for gravity’s affect on your bullets by aiming above your target; the greater the distance, the higher you have to aim. In higher difficulties, you must also account for wind. The HUD has a wind meter, showing direction and strength of wind, so you must aim not only above your target, but also to the or left or right, depending on the strength of the wind and how it will affect the bullet’s travel. This sounds more complicated than it is—it doesn’t take long to get the hang of this. By the time you get the 6x scope and are shooting from FAR away, you’ll have made so many long shots that judging the wind and distance just becomes part of the fun.
Q: Who made SE?A: The developer is Rebellion and the publisher is Namco. SE is also available for PC and PS2.
Q: What is the story about?A: You play an OSS agent disguised as a German in Berlin. The year is 1945, and your goal is to help prevent Stalin from acquiring the Germans’ atomic bomb.
Q: What are the missions?A: The story’s eight missions are divided up into 27 parts, with one single-part Secret Mission at the end, for a total of 28 sections:
- Karlshorst (1 section)
- Assassinate Bormann (3 sections)
- Extract the Agent (5 sections)
- Karlshorst Reprise (1 section)
- The Scientists (3 sections)
- Raid on Nordsig (6 sections)
- Recover the V2 Technology (5 sections)
- Escape from Berlin (3 sections)
- Secret Mission—The Safe House (1 section)
Q: What are the controls?Directional Pad: Up/Down = Scroll Weapons. Zoom (Sniper/Binocular View). Left/Right = Scroll Inventory. Lean Out (Sniper/Binocular View). Left/Right = adjust time on Time Bombs.
Left Thumbstick: Walk. Run.
Right Thumbstick: Aim. Look.
A Button: Use Inventory Item
B Button: Hit once to crouch. Hold to go prone. From prone position, hit once to crouch, twice to stand.
X Button: Empty Lung. Pick Up. Drop. Swap Items.
Y Button: Actions. Commands. Lower Weapon.
White Button: Reload
Black Button: Lock Target
Left Trigger: Binoculars
Right Trigger: Fire
Start: Pause Menu
Back: Briefing Screen
Q: What are the weapons?A:
G43 rifle: 2x zoom, the rifle you begin the game with.
SVT rifle: 4x zoom, you get this at the Brandenburg Gate portion of Assassinate Bormann mission.
M91 rifle: 6x scope, you get this on Exfiltrate Nordsig portion of Raid on Nordsig.
P-38 Silenced Pistol: Very useful for Silent Kills--after equipping pull right trigger once to bring up cross hairs, which will turn red when you’re close enough to an enemy for a single shot Silent Kill.
PPSH41 Machine Gun: The machine guns have auto aim and will lock onto an enemy until he is dead.
MG-42 Machine Gun
MP-40 Machine GunPanzerschreck Anti-tank Gun: Shoot it at the back of tanks to blow them up, but make sure there is enough room behind you or you’ll die when you fire—also, this weapon is tricky to shoot over railings, so make sure you are aiming high enough over anything in front of you—if you are shooting it a long distance, you need to aim it high, as its projectile has an arc.
Q: What other items can I use?Bandages: These heal a portion of your health.
Med packs: These heal you to full health.
Binoculars: A major part of the game, you will use these all the time.
Grenades: Both type of grenades are tricky to use because throwing them is such a slow process. First you have to select the grenade and watch the animation of your guy putting his gun away and getting the grenade out. Then you pull the right trigger to adjust aim, then press Y to throw the grenade, then watch animation of your guy throwing. You just don’t have time to do all this in a battle, so be careful about when you decide to pull out grenades. Use them when you can throw one at a group of enemies you’ve snuck up on., or otherwise when you have plenty of time for the process.
Stick Grenades
Tripwire explosives: Plant the explosive end first, then draw a wire across a doorway or hall so that when an enemy walks into the wire the explosive kills him. Can also be detonated with a shots fro a safe distance.
TNT: Plant under a tank and detonate with a shot from a safe distance.
Time Bombs: Adjust the time with the D-Pad, can also be detonated with a shot if you have no TNT.
Rocks: Throw as a distraction.
Q: Does the game have a tutorial?A: No, but the first mission defaults to Tutorial Mode being on. As you move around, tips on controls and strategy pop up frequently. These are useful the first time you play the game, but quickly get bothersome, so you can turn them off like this: Start button, Options, Game Setting, Tutorial Mode = Off.
Q: How else can I customize the game/interface?A: In the Difficulty Menu you can turn Instant Scope/Binoculars on or off (this feature lets you switch from Binocs to your scope instantly, without having to watch the sniper put one away and take the other out. It saves a lot of time during game play, but makes the game easier, so if you’re playing for a high POF score, you’ll likely want this Off), AI Difficulty (4 settings), Grenade Blast Radius (2 settings), and five settings for Sniping realism: gravity, wind, posture, heart rate and empty lung. The first four are on/off choices, while empty lung is how long your lung stays empty for, 10, 15, 20 or 25 seconds, 10 being the hardest as it gives you the least time to make your shot before having to reset your breathing.
There are Control Options such as sensitivity and invert y-axis, as well as the ability to remap the controller’s game play functions. In Game Settings you can toggle on or off various elements such as tutorial mode and interaction hints, subtitles, and the Bullet Cam, which shows you a slow motion replay of POF shots, often in quite gory detail when your bullet hits flesh.
Q: Is there a co-op mode?A: Yes, there is 2-player co-op.
Q: Is there online Multi-player?A: Yes, with a maximum of 8 players. MP game modes are: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Assassination (assassins try to eliminate the VIP, collect proof of kill and exfiltrate, bodyguards try to protect VIP, teams take turns being assassins/guards). Game also has Voting for map selection and player removal.
Q: How does the Single Player Online scoreboard work?A: As you progress through each level, you earn points for various accomplishments, called Points of Fame (POF). The points given for each item on the POF list increases as the level of difficulty increases, so if you want to post a high score, you need to play on Marksman or Sniper Elite difficulty. You can choose to post your scores online or not. When you finish a level, if you’ve chosen to do so, your score is uploaded to the SE scoreboard.
Q: What do I get points for?A: You can check your Points of Fame at any time by pressing Start, then War Record, then X for POF. The following explanations of POF items are from my own experience playing the game. There may be other ways to earn these points than the examples I give. You get points for:
- Two for one kills—for killing a soldier who is trying to carry a wounded comrade to safety, for example
- Three for one bonuses—if you see three enemies running toward you in single file and you can put a lethal shot through all three of them…
- Four for one bonuses—if four enemies are foolishly standing around an explosive barrel…
- Silent kills—most often with the pistol, but you only get points if the target doesn’t see you soon enough to make an alert noise
- Long range covert kills—if you are far enough from the target that enemies can’t tell where the shot came from, or if you mask your shot with an ambient sound, like an explosion
- Double covert kills
- Triple covert kills—a nice one is at the start of The Scientists—three guys are standing around a truck and you have a long but clear shot at the gas tank: blow it up, and get a triple covert
- Long range headshots—most common POF item, generally, but you must be 30 yards or more away from your target to get credit
- Moving target kills—must be a fatal shot on a moving enemy, not just one that drops him so he rolls around before dying
- Remote detonations—trip wires are you best friend for this bonus, but you must be far enough away that it qualifies as Remote. You can also score these by placing TNT under a truck or tank, and shooting it from a sufficient distance, as long as it results in a kill—blowing up a vehicle with no one inside earns nothing.
- Minimal Damage Taken—every time you get hit you lose some of this score
- Accuracy—grows during the level for accurate shooting
- Longest Shot—the longer the shot, the bigger the bonus
Q: Does the game have a tutorial?A: No, but the first mission defaults to Tutorial Mode being on. As you move around, tips on controls and strategy pop up frequently. These are useful the first time you play the game, but quickly get bothersome, so you can turn them off like this: Start button, Options, Game Setting, Tutorial Mode = Off.
Q: How else can I customize the game/interface?A: In the Difficulty Menu you can turn Instant Scope/Binoculars on or off (this feature lets you switch from Binocs to your scope instantly, without having to watch the sniper put one away and take the other out. It saves a lot of time during game play, but makes the game easier, so if you’re playing for a high POF score, you’ll likely want this Off), AI Difficulty (4 settings), Grenade Blast Radius (2 settings), and five settings for Sniping realism: gravity, wind, posture, heart rate and empty lung. The first four are on/off choices, while empty lung is how long your lung stays empty for, 10, 15, 20 or 25 seconds, 10 being the hardest as it gives you the least time to make your shot before having to reset your breathing.
There are Control Options such as sensitivity and invert y-axis, as well as the ability to remap the controller’s game play functions. In Game Settings you can toggle on or off various elements such as tutorial mode and interaction hints, subtitles, and the Bullet Cam, which shows you a slow motion replay of POF shots, often in quite gory detail when your bullet hits flesh.
Q: How many times and how often can I save my game?A: Each profile has four save slots, which you can use in any combination you wish. Each mission begins with seven saves.
Q: Can I transfer my profile to a memory card?A: No.
Q: What is the longest shot in the game?A: The longest I made is at the airfield, from the top of the control tower at a guy standing by an AA gun: 1006 yards. If you watch the game intro movie, the last scene before the Sniper Elite title screen is of this shot being made, though the POF bullet cam is edited way down—it takes the bullet much longer to get there than is shown in this movie. If you decide to try this shot, aim HIGH, and set some trip wires at the bottom of the stairs so you’ll know if someone is coming. It took me five or six tries to hit the guy in the back. I should’ve aimed a tiny bit higher.
Q: What are the difficulty levels?A: Rookie, Cadet. Marksman, Sniper Elite. In addition to the four preset difficulty levels, there is a Custom page in which you can adjust any of the settings to your preference. Games played on a Custom mode, however, do not earn POF points.
The average player will find Rookie very easy and Sniper Elite very hard. The main difference between the levels is the accuracy and aggressiveness of the AI, and the wind and lungs settings when sniping. On Sniper Elite, the enemies are ridiculously accurate with their clumsy weapons, and can pick off a prone sniper a hundred yards away while running sideways and firing a PPSH41. Since they can pull off such ridiculous shots at you, you must play the game in the stealthy way it was intended to be played. They can also sense you around corners and often don’t need to see you up in a perch to emerge from an alley and shoot you dead, so you must crawl and move slowly to avoid triggering their freaky sense of where you are.
SP Tips:Reload often, your pistol and rifle especially. Try to keep these small clips full so you won’t have to reload when you want to shoot. When you anticipate having to shoot, like when you’re sneaking around a blind corner, pause before you peek to make sure you’ve reloaded and have full clips in all weapons.
Crawling will usually get you past guards or close enough to make a Silent Kill. The AI notices you much more when you aren’t prone, even around corners and through walls. This sometimes means crawling long distances to remain undetected, but that’s part of the game.
The Map sometimes lets you down by not showing all of the play area and indicating objectives that are off its display. So use your Red and Green indicators on your HUD compass. If The Red arrow is pointing in a direction you can’t seem to get to, you probably need to go up or down a level, so look for stairs or a doorway.
Use trip wires to protect your position. Not only do they kill enemies trying to flank you, but if you are far enough away, you get a Remote Detonation bonus.
Watch for multi-kill opportunities, such as enemies standing around a vehicle. Try to get a shot at the gas tank cap, which should explode the tank and kill anyone standing by the vehicle.
Scavenge like crazy for ammo, grenades, med kits, especially on harder difficulties. Pick up every kind of ammo, even if it’s not for a gun you are carrying at the time. You may run out of ammo for your current weapon and have a chance to swap it for another one with only 5 rounds of ammo. But if you’ve been collecting all kinds of ammo, when you pick up the new weapon, suddenly you have 100 or 200 rounds for it.
Just because you passed down a street early in the level without getting sniped at doesn’t mean there is no sniper there. They move around, sometimes from one side of a building to another, so always be careful and check rooftops and upper windows and portions of bombed out buildings. If you miss a sniper who is close to you, a hit will take a lot of your health.
You don’t have to do each objective in order. If Objective 1 takes you to the other side of the map and Objective 2 is close to your spawn, consider doing #2 first on your way by.
When planting tripwires, you may sometimes find that you are too close to a wall, in which case pressing A will only make you back up a step but not plant the first part of the wire. Just press A again to plant the explosive side of the wire, and back up to plant the other side.
Tripwires can be detonated remotely by shooting them, just like TNT bundles. This is useful not only for kills, but for removing tripwires that are suddenly in your path.
As you move, look behind you as well as where you’re going. Enemies can and will materialize out of thin air, sometimes right in front of you and sometimes right behind you—the area with the fuel tanks in Holzmarkt Train Yard seems usually plagued by this. I had an enemy pop-up about ten feet in front of me. So don’t assume because you looked behind you a minute ago and it was clear that someone isn’t sneaking up on you. Don’t assume that because you have a dead end alley behind you an enemy won’t appear there as if he walked through the wall.
Use the Third Person perspective! You can crawl to a corner and move the camera so that you can see around the corner without being seen.
Attack from multiple areas. When you have a goal, the map will usually offer more than one way to attack it. Especially on the harder difficulty levels, sneak in from one route, get a few kills, back out and try from another route. Sometimes this is the only way to use your unique abilities to defeat the enemy.
Watch for routes not shown on maps. There are many alleys and passageways too small too be bothered with by whomever made the maps you’re given. These often provide shortcuts, but are also dangerous for the possibility that an enemy will emerge out of one to kill you as you’ve passed by.
Mind your Saves. If you use them too soon, you may get near the end of the mission with too long or too difficult a section still to go. If you’re having trouble completing a mission, use the Mission List to judge how far you have to go and when to make saves.
Lure enemies into traps. Make them pursue you down an alley at the end of which waits a tripwire you’ve already planted.
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