Sniper Elite V2 release in May 2012...

[PZ]

No, there is not a resume feature, at least the last time I was in the game.  If you do not complete the mission in it's entirely, then you start over from the beginning.

[Art Blade]

the PC version saves occasionally, from where you'd pick up if you restarted and resumed the game, at checkpoints. Some of those are obvious, some are not.. but they're never too far apart from one another. So that's really an advantage compared to the console version.  :)

How stupid is that.. being unable to resume a mission on a console. :(

[PZ]

Indeed; that was the only real disappointment for me.  However, once I knew the "rules" of the game, it was not too difficult to get to a natural break point.

[Art Blade]

 :) I just stopped playing, Binnatics and I were playing coop again and tried several ways (restart from checkpoint) of taking out guards without getting spotted by them in the Tiergarten Flak tower. Well, grenades and trip wires and throwing rocks up to silenced pistol kills followed by carrying the bodies out of the way and out of sight.. it was a lot of fun.  :)

[PZ]

Nice  :-X

[Binnatics]

Heheh, we did all this to obtain an achievement. Art got it this morning I guess, and I kept struggling longer than good for me with it. Turned out that 'distracting' and 'blowing up' wasn't considered to be 'undetected' or 'spotted' as the game refers to. I kept blowing up my targets with well placed grenades or tripwires and landmines, meanwhile throwing rocks to lure them into my traps. I made sure they didn't see ME, but that didn't count. I found it out the hard way, after numerous tries. Once I tried to use silent pistol only and a few silent takedowns, I managed.
This ends up in the opportunity to kill Müller, headshot at a distance of 293.5 meters, LMAO ^-^

The level that comes after this mission, you have to obtain documents explaining the whereabouts of Wolff's plan and what Thaben means. I was impressed by the disaster shown in those streets. Imagine what war can bring people to do against each other. The detail level is amazing. I've never experienced a game that takes so much effort in creating a realistic chaos. And it works, its so damn immersive. I completed this level on elite, and that was a true madness scene. Playing cat and mouse with a bunch of Russian snipers can be pretty tough and you need all your skills to make it there. First the infiltration, where you have to make your way through patrols and snipers, I found a great spot where you could literally dominate the area. First, I caught the Pantzerfaust in the basement to the far left of the map, and then I made my way to the one building that's not totally destroyed in the area, in the centre in fact. From there, I could take out almost all Russian troops that would normally storm out of the HQ when you take out the tank. I teared down the tank with the Pantzerfaust for some extra bang, and from there it was easy to get inside their HQ. After receiving the intel, the game recommenced when I had to escape the area. Now those snipers really made me go crazy, and the game wouldn't give you a checkpoint halfway through the killing. In the end, I knew almost all sniper positions and had worked out an ideal path to take them out one by one. The hardest were the moving guys, but luckily I saw them before they saw me, heheh. The last 2 snipers, including the one in the far away church, I took down from the central building again. Great hiding place.

Oh, and the graphics are getting better and better throughout the game:

Impressing skyline....
[smg id=6047]

Somewhere out there is a bunch of snipers trying to kill me...
[smg id=6048]

Did it!!!
[smg id=6049]

The intel on Tabun. Wanted to see if I could read what's written there ;)
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An example of the detail; those shutters are moving in the wind, and even their shadow does accordingly. Great!!
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And here's my shadow when I sneak around :-()
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[Art Blade]

by the way, it's "Tabun," a nerve agent as you can read in the pic with the text.

Re: pics and all that: Nice, Binnatics :) :-X

I only wanted to get the game over with just that weekend (and I did) so I'd know what I'd be up against when played on elite difficulty. Elite difficulty basically means no help at all and really vicious enemies and that means a lot of time needed to make it. But it is worth it, I played and finished a mission on elite before. For me it's a matter of what mood I'm in. When I have plenty of time and feel like showing it to those byte soldiers, I do it. Else, I prefer a bit less grinding difficulty levels  ^-^
[smg id=6053 type=preview align=center caption="the end"]

[Binnatics]

Changed that.  :)

Now my next mission was to approach Gruezberg Plätze and find info on Wolff's plans. It was great 'coming back' to that place in SP. Art and I had already played this game numerous times in both Kill Tally and Overwatch missions. I love the place, and the small harbour that gives access to the metro entrance, made it even better. Not a hard mission this time, had no problems completing it on Elite (I started with Elite the first time by accident but it wasn't too hard) only the escape, where you have to make your way over the rooftops, was hard. The Russian Elite sniper team was deadly, and it costed me a few tries.

I missed one gold bar and one bottle after my first playthrough, and a quick check on the net learned me that they were 'again' in locations that made me think; "How could I NOT have seen them??!!" So I rushed through the mission on cadet settings, which is cool too. Bed time now, tomorrow the launch site is about to get messed up >:D

[Art Blade]

 :-()

I'll be doing those missions on elite now except the one I already did.

Started with the "silly" tutorial/prologue and made it to the world ranking #230 (out of say approximately 200,000 players) with 25,995 points and when I checked the ranks above me I realised that a bloody awful lot of those players cheated.

There are usually 25 enemies you get to kill and one extra if you are damn quick (see pic below) making it 26. However, I saw stats of higher ranking players with 250 kills or total points a good tenfold of mine. Impossible without cheating. Like always when it comes to world rankings. However, I didn't do it to rank highest but to make the best out of a silly tutorial  :-D

The guy one tends to miss, literally. It's the Russian guy next to your designated target.
[smg id=6054 type=preview align=center caption="gotcha Mr 26"]

[PZ]

Very nice, guys!  :-X

[Binnatics]

Nice score Art!! :-X And clever to catch that Russian 'salesman'  ^-^

[Art Blade]

cheers, guys :)

I already tried to kill that Russian before but for various reasons I couldn't even injure let alone kill him. Then, on elite, I decided to try hard until I'd get him. Took a couple of attempts until I got him. I think a headshot on elite difficulty can only be a fluke, you're already lucky if you hit him at all. A headshot, however, should add some 2 or 3 thousand points to the score I got.

[Art Blade]

Heh, I finished the first "real" mission, that convoy mission on Schöneberg street or something like that. I finished with 62,900 points ranking #174 in the world.  ^-^ I had a nice 86% accuracy. I even "killed" a moving vehicle shooting the lid of the gasoline tank. If you just blow up the bag with explosives to stop the convoy, you don't get any points for destroyed vehicles. Stopping the first vehicle as shown below will give you roughly 1,400 points and for every other vehicle you blow their tanks up, too. You can even shoot through the visor slot of a tank next to the cannon so you kill the guy behind it, counts as vehicle kill, and then you blow up the gasoline tanks for a second score on it  :)

[smg id=6055 type=preview align=center caption="moving vehicle kill"]

[Art Blade]

I was just thinking, those of you who don't know the game.. my first attempts on that mission with lower difficulty settings caused me a "nice" score of some 25,000+ points. Binnatics topped that and scored some remarkable 36,000+points, ranking somewhere #16,000. If you now compare that to impressive 62,900 points rank #174... should give you an idea of how much more effort I put into it in order to get a nice score  :) And I already thought I did well when I had those 25,000  :)

[PZ]

Excellent job!  :-X

[Binnatics]

I just finished the entire campaign on Elite :wink

....and for the first time I thought that I was taking it easy and doing everything bent backwards and enjoying it to the most, lmao ;)

[Binnatics]

forgot to mention; Excellent job on that convoy Art! :bow

[Art Blade]

LOL

and thank you  :)

[Art Blade]

What I like about this game, particularly when played on sniper elite difficulty, is the fact that you can't do it gung-ho style with guns blazing. You'll be dead before you revved up. So you need to observe and think and try different tactics. And you'll need time. Basically it starts when you fired the first round.. they'll never calm down again until either they killed you or you killed them. And they actually try hard to find you. They'll enter houses and run up the stairs and search more or less every room.. intense. :) And they are great shots. You'll survive just one sniper round, maybe a second one in succession, but you will die with the next hit. So bloody hell, take cover! :) You recover slowly from hits on that difficulty level which means you just have to stay out of their line of sight and at all costs prevent them from putting another round in you. You can just forget about surviving any face to face encounter with them. A guy in the same room with you? You're almost certainly dead or at least you'll be nearly dead if you manage to finish him off before he does you in. But you may use "stealth" -- sneaking up on someone from behind always works. Until he turns around  :-()

Here an example of a delicate situation. At the end of the street away from me on a roof top was a sniper who had spotted me before I saw him. He took a few shots but missed (mostly) after I found cover behind a lamp pole and then I pierced him good :-D By the way, if you look closely, you'll notice pale pink spots scattered about in the pic which is my blood - it means "almost recovered". Else the landscape would fade to grey and the blood splatters be a lot more and red.

[smg id=6056 type=preview align=center caption="lamp pole cover"]

[Binnatics]

The AI is remarkable. They indeed act very clever and won't easily give up. Even patrolling soldiers are acting completely unpredictable. There's no pattern or repeted situation after a restart, it's all seemingly unique.

[Art Blade]

yep, I saw that too. Key positions will of course be the same, like that sniper on the roof top, but even that may vary, they may be in a different position, different roof, or in the building behind a window.. so restarting after a checkpoint is not always the same :)

[PZ]

Great graphics in that pic. I must get back into the game one of these days.  :-X

[fragger]

I'm enjoying reading about your experiences, chaps :)

[Art Blade]

 ^-^

really, anyone who likes to snipe, should definitely get this game. Never had so much fun. Of course, additional sniper rifles that come with various DLC are adding to the fun. I very much prefer the Karabiner 98k but basically all rifles are interesting. They do "act" differently, as in different zoom levels and bullet drop (muzzle/bullet velocity).

[Art Blade]

Interesting:

I had reached a checkpoint (I knew it was one because it always is when you completed an objective, respectively when you get a new objective) and realised, by catching a bullet, that there was a sniper across the church square. I spotted him and he copped it, headshot, a nice 3,000+ score on that. Well, I thought I might have got an even better one if I had walked a bit backwards in order to increase the shot distance so I voluntarily restarted from checkpoint. Walked a bit back, headshot, 1,800+ points only. What the.. again, again, again, couldn't get much more but a lot less than 1,800.

Here is my then 3,000+ shot.. it went through his head all the way through his body and probably popped a toe, too.  :-()
[smg id=6070 type=preview align=center caption="head to toe"]

This was in accord with what I had realised before: The first shot always scores higher. Meaning, if you hit someone in the head at your first attempt, you'll get a nice score. If you miss him but get him with your second bullet, it's perhaps only half the score it would have been at the first attempt. The more often you miss, the worse the score although it doesn't keep halving the score after each miss.

What I didn't know was that a checkpoint restart "remembers" your failed attempt. Or it doesn't and I just didn't put a bullet all the way through the body again. Well, however. It is still interesting if you regard it as an encouragement to actually AIM PROPERLY before you shoot :-D To increase your score, reaction time also adds to the score. If you spot an enemy and kill him with a headshot, your score will be significantly higher than after a long period of aiming. Also, targets that are hard to see due to shadows or obstacles will result in a higher score. Or try a "moving headshot" for a really decent score :-()  In other words, the more difficult, the higher the score. The aforementioned is only true while aiming through your rifle's scope. Checking the area and enemies with your naked eye or binoculars doesn't have any negative effects, only the moment you scope an enemy, it counts.

On sniper elite difficulty "aiming properly" means that you need to really know your weapon, the bullet drop which means how many notches down the centre on your vertical crosshairs do you have to aim with to cover say, 200 metres, you need to be able to guess distance right in order to aim properly which is even harder if you have to shoot up- or downhill. Know how to hold your breath to steady your aim (at the time you keep zooming in perhaps one magnification level beyond your normal maximum zoom) The wind keeps changing direction and force even while you're aiming which means aim a bit left or right from the centre so you can't "just" aim, you need to keep checking the wind, too. All that and get your shot right in a single attempt and without losing time between acquiring your target and taking it out.

You know, when I play on sniper elite, the first thing that is on my mind, and stays on my mind, is one single thought: "How do I survive this?" And only then do I think about getting the best possible results. For me it means that I need time to check the area, spot enemies and kill them while maintaining a safe position. I often retreat after one or two kills so the enemy loses track of me while I try getting them from a different angle or position. It is fun to watch them from there how they are still looking and sometimes even shooting towards my old position. ^-^

So.. I just played some three hours for a single mission (St. Olibartus Church) and I got 66 kills, 49 of which were scoped headshots (the rest were explosive kills -- I chucked a frag grenade into a room with three soldiers in it.. heh heh -- various silenced pistol kills and 3 vehicle kills). My scoped accuracy was 94% -- I don't think that I ever had such a high accuracy in any game  :) I got rewarded with 79,010 points and world rank #85. Yay. :-D