Sniper Elite 3 review | games™

"To discuss Sniper Elite III is to process a protracted shopping list of integral cracks and problems. The actual sniper gunplay remains taut and astutely refined, but you’re still required to engage in periodic battles with your other weapons, which (as before) is when the game really falls flat."

[RedDeadLB]

I see it's becoming a trend to give unreasonably low scores. It's time to stop reading reviews, I suppose.

[Bathyj]

Yep. A 4 is a ridiculously broken unplayable game I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. SE3 looks like it improves on 2 in everyway, which I loved.

Clearly not a game for everyone, especially COD players with short attention spans, but not a broken unplayable mess either. I thought reviews were meant to give an accurate gauge of quality.

[FrostyZipper]

"I thought reviews were meant to give an accurate gauge of quality."

Mate, in the end, reviews are merely opinions. More informed opinions mind (or they should be, but I doubt it's any great secret that gaming 'journalism' is a joke at best), but in the end they're carried out by people like you or I, with their own particular set of likes and dislikes.

[RedDeadLB]

@Frosty:

Shouldn't reviews be objective instead of subjective? If game reviews are subjective, then they're basically saying "well, this game works well, does what it was advertised to do, but I personally don't like it, so here's a 3/10."

That's mainly the reason I don't agree with a lot of reviews these days. A review is supposed to be 95% FACT and objective observations with only a personal note in the conclusion.

It could be due to the fact that most of these reviewers, so called journalists are merely amateurs. Heck, I'm a student in information sciences, by no means a journalist, and I could write a better review than most of what we see today.. And that's sad.

[gamesTM_dom]

I'd argue that a 4/10 is just below average, with a 1 denoting a broken, unplayable game?

[SilentNegotiator]

If a 4 is "unplayable" then what does 1-3 mean?

[bumnut]

It was time to stop reading reviews years ago, I just watch gameplay footage now.

[RedDeadLB]

I have to agree on that.

[SilentNegotiator]

The average score for this game is a seven, people. He didn't give a four to Half Life 2.

And it's definitely true that the combat with the other weapons is no where near as good as with the sniper rifle. Sort of bad even.

[RedDeadLB]

But the problem here is some people actually would give a 4 to Half Life 2. Just because, you know, they see things we common folk don't.

The game is in the 7-8/10 region, that's true. But then you have reviews like these which take the score down unjustifiably. Presumably, after a couple of years, people will talk about what an "under-appreciated game" XY was, probably after the studio closes..

Something reviewers don't understand is that reviews, no matter how much some people find them unnecessary, still have a direct impact on the sales of the game and crappy reviews which downplay games for no apparent reason serve no purpose other than to boost the writer's ego.

At the end of the day, the only one at loss is the studio that made the game. No one will remember the author who bad-mouthed it or the one who praised it. People will see a score. A score that depends on way too many want-to-be reviewers.

On a side note: Yeah, using SMGs feels pretty mediocre, but the Welrod and the sniper rifle are basically all I need - in my personal play style.
So in a way, I understand the attention given to sniper rifles and the silenced pistol. You can't expect someone to go run and gun with a Thompson in a game called Sniper Elite, can you :) And to be efficient with the sniper rifle, you need the Welrod to keep you from a lot of confrontations. And the shot distance for the Welrod is very well done. You need to try to get close enough without getting spotted, adding tension to the mix.